The Pianist is the amazing true story of Wladyslaw Szpilman’s life and struggles during the holocaust. The book was published right after the war ended but was suppressed quickly thereafter. Later Roman Polanski, a fellow holocaust survivor, made a movie based on the book. While I felt that the movie captured the general ideas from the book and showed similar scenes, there is an obvious difference between hearing the story from the first person perspective versus seeing it from the third person point of view.
One of the things that differs between the two perspectives is that in the book Szpilman describes everything in great detail. This gave me the impression that he was very attentive and always alert to his surroundings. In the movie is seems like he glazes by everything without paying very much attention. One of the scenes in the book that showed Szpilman’s attention to detail in the ghetto was his description of the “lady with the feather.” He meticulously describes her appearance and the color of the garments she is wearing. He analyzes her actions and even remarks on the tone with which she talks to people on the street. In the movie we are not given this insight because from a third person perspective is appears that he is simply brushing past this odd woman in the marketplace.
Another thing that is different between the movie and the book is Szpilman’s relationship with his brother. In the movie we are once again only able to see the outside perspective of their relationship. It appears harsh and competitive, it seems to go beyond brotherly quarrels. However, in the book we are given Szpilman’s perspective of their relationship and the reader sees that him and Henryk do care about each other and how they understand that their quarrels are insignificant. In this way we can see that while Szpilman doesn’t appear to have a very close relationship with any of his siblings, in the book we know how much he thinks about them. We are shown a side of understanding as he discusses how each of his siblings thinks and why they act the way they do.
The one large difference I see between the movie and the book is Szpilman’s thoughts about death. In the movie we see how he has to walk by dead bodies in the street all the time. However, it doesn’t seem to affect him very much. He might give them a glance once in a while but doesn’t appear to pay much attention to them. The movie portrays him as being desensitized to the corpses on the sidewalks. I felt that this took away the humanity that we see in him throughout the book. In the text I think that he shows how he never truly got used to seeing so much death. He mentions dead bodies frequently in the book. He describes their appearance, smell and how other people ignore them. I think the movie lacks when showing how the war is truly affecting him. The book paints him as being a much warmer and compassionate person while in the movie I thought he was shown as having been damaged by the ongoing war to the extent that he has lost his humanity and has now grown accustomed to the inhuman actions taking place around him.
Otto - Comment on Asmussen- The Pianist
ReplyDeleteAlthough I agree that there were significant differences between the film and the memoir, I think the film should get a little more credit. Obviously in the film we cannot get inside the head of the protagonist without an auditory narrative of what he thinking to himself, however we are provided with the images of destruction that he sees, as well as the auditory background music which can often be very helpful when it comes to determining the mood of a character. Szpilman’s first person narrative does provide more detail but I don’t think the film should be thrown out because of it. It portrays the city of Warsaw as well, and simply creates a different view of the same story. I think there is more emotion reading the story, but the film allows us to, instead of being in Szpilman’s head, create our own mindset of living life during this time as a Jew.