The Pianist is an autobiographical novel based on the accounts of gifted Jewish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman and describes in great detail his journey of survival in Warsaw Poland and the trials and tribulations which were soon to come spanning from his time spent in Segregated Jewish Ghettos to his escape and efforts to hide himself with the help of non-Jewish sympathizers. As it is written as a narrative the novel is told to the reader in Szpilman’s voice.
This brings an irreplaceable authenticity to his words and his accounts therefore particularly of the richer Jewish people who were also forced to occupy the ghettos but still did not want to associate with the poorer Jews and as such uses their wealth to self segregate themselves even further is a point of view I myself have never seen in any other Holocaust literature. As such I believe his words not just to be a source of inspiration but also a historical document to a time long since over but never forgotten.
Szpilman’s story is told once again this time in film by Roman Polanski’s feature film adaption of the same name. Which having seen the film I believe to have done a very good job at remaining faithful to it’s novel counterpart. Polanski’s mother having been a holocaust survivor herself no doubt impacted Polanski’s vision of the movie and it is shot in a realistic fashion with very subdued lighting and clear direct focusing. The story itself becomes third person and although Adrian Brody did a great job at recreating Szpilman (having won an Oscar for it and all) it is my belief that first hand accounts will always be more emotionally touching than a third person retelling of it.
Having said this the film version of The Pianist is not without it’s own visual impact. Descriptions offered by Szpilman on his dramatic weight loss and his encounter with a Nazi for whom he plays the piano can sometimes lose its impact when written in words. Polanski’s film offers it to the viewer as a scene, which in turn becomes more stimulating to the viewer. Another advantage of the film is that unlike the novel it had more global influence and having watched the film long before I even knew it was based of a novel, I would wager to say that the film, not the book really introduced Szpilman’s story to the public's eye.
I was also shocked by the accounts Szpilman gives of how the wealthier Jews treated the impoverished ones during that time period. In most other literature it seems that since everyone was in the same situation of being confined to the ghetto that people tried to help each other. They were compassionate and understanding because everyone was in the same boat of being mistreated by the Nazis. However, in the book we are given accounts that paint a much different picture. Because of this I was surprised that this was not included in the movie. While a clear difference was shown between the much wealthier people who went to restaurants versus the poor that fought in the streets for soup, no harsh interaction is shown between the two. I feel like their interaction was one of the large elements that set The Pianist apart from other accounts of the war. While the Nazis are obviously always the greatest evil present, other accounts of the holocaust portray everyone else to be extremely nobel.In this way Szpilman’s first person account is very realistic because it shows the wealthier Jews still do not want to be associated with the poor even though they are in a time of war, they have not changed and all of a sudden become compassionate people.
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