Poster for the movie "The Pianist"
Before I saw the movie "The Pianist" (aka "The Field Pianist"), I thought it was a film about a Jewish pianist who survived the difficult years with the power of music. But after watching it for the first time, I was disappointed by the film, which told at least 95% of the story had nothing to do with the romantic and artistic profession of a pianist: in the face of the powerful and evil Nazi legion, whether you are a pianist or a shoemaker, if you want to escape the fate of the Holocaust, you must endure patience and patience on the basis of good luck, endure the intolerable teeth and swallow blood, and endure hunger and cold until the sky is barren and the time comes. And "The Pianist" tells such a story of endurance.
American actor Adrian Brody, who plays pianist Spielmann, became the youngest Oscar winner in history for starring in "The Pianist"
The story should begin in 1939. In 1939, the famous Polish pianist Wladek Shpilman's family, whose Jewish identity was demanded by the Nazi regime in occupied Poland because of their Jewish identity, moved out of their comfortable mansions and lived with their fellow Jews in the "Jewish Ghetto" in a corner of Warsaw— that is, to enclose a field with walls and imprison all Jews in the field, forbidding them to come out and have any contact with the outside world. Shortly after moving into the Jewish ghetto, the Spielmann family obtained Nazi work permits for his father and other family members, which meant that the family could legally work in the ghetto and their lives were not threatened for the time being. But soon after, one night, a group of Nazi officers burst into their dormitories and demanded that they leave the ghetto immediately with their luggage, and that the government transfer them to labor camps. Just as the family was about to board the train, a Nazi-led but Jewish policeman stopped Spielmann and told him to run and not to get on the train. In this way, despite all his reluctance, Spielmann left his family and secretly ran back to the city of Warsaw, hiding with his friends for a few days, and then began to work in the Warsaw ghetto.
Pianist Spielmann himself
Because the Nazis regarded the Jews as inferior, they showed no concern for their health and lives except to squeeze their labor force. In the Jewish ghetto, pianists who once had unlimited scenery on stage and lived a good life continued to endure a life of lack of food and clothing. To make matters worse, the Nazis did not know when to pick out a few kills among this group of working Jews, which made Spielmann live in the shadow of fear and death. After two years, Spielmann felt that he could not continue like this, and managed to escape from the Warsaw ghetto to find his former friend and her husband, both Polish. Although hiding Jews would result in capital punishment, her friend helped Spielmann because she and her husband could not bear the death of such a talented master who represented the highest level of piano performance in Poland. They first arranged Forsylemann into an empty apartment, let her stay quietly inside, and brought him food in the dead of night. Soon after, however, as the fighting escalated, food became less and less likely to arrive, and Spielmann was forced to retreat from hunger. Finally, one day, he accidentally broke a stack of plates and was found by the neighbor, who discovered his Jewish identity, but he escaped before the neighbor called the police and fled to the emergency address given to him by his friend's husband.
There, he met an organization that helped Jews escape the Nazi Holocaust, and the organization arranged an empty apartment for him. There was a piano there, but he couldn't make any sound, he could only play it in his imagination. The organization locked him in his apartment and occasionally brought him food. But as the fighting intensified, food and water were gradually depleted, and Spielmann fell seriously ill first, and then lost his water and rice when he got better. So he waited in that little apartment, waiting for the Russians to call, for the Fall of the Nazis. From the window he saw too many human tragedies—the Nazis were killing people in the streets with guns in the dark without the slightest compassion.
It wasn't until the Arrival of the Allies that the Nazis began to bomb the city of Warsaw with tanks, and Spielmann tried to escape, but he found that his door had long been locked by the organized men. With a loud bang, a large hole was blasted out of the wall of his apartment, and just like that, Spielmann left his hiding place in years and walked outside for the first time. Warsaw was devastated at the time, and he had to constantly search for food and water in the broken buildings, waiting to be rescued. Later he simply moved to the attic of the Nazi command and lived in the corner like a humble rat. It wasn't until one night when he was lucky enough to find a jar of pickled cucumbers that he was spotted by a Nazi officer who asked him what he had done before the war, and he said he was a pianist. He played the piano to the Nazi officer, and the Nazi officer asked him to go back. The next day brought him food, and then intermittently delivered food to him until they retreated, and the officer gave him his coat.
In this way, Spielmann waited for the Allies, waited for the rescue. After the war, he continued to play the piano for Radio Warsaw, and the Nazi officer who rescued him later died in a Russian prisoner-of-war camp. Spielmann lived in Warsaw all his life and never left.
Looking at the whole of Spielmann's story, it is found that the story has little to do with his identity as a pianist, except that the Last Nazi officer asked him to play a piano piece. Moreover, it is said that the Nazi officer had saved many people, which means that even if Spielmann was not a world-class piano master, he would not have been killed by the Nazi officer. If you look at it this way, the so-called "world-class piano master escaped the Nazi massacre" has basically become a gimmick in the movie, which seems meaningless. At the same time, compared to other films that depict the Holocaust—such as Jojo's Whimsical World, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, Beautiful Life, Toy Island, etc.—the film is too straightforward in its presentation of harsh reality and Nazi atrocities, which seems to lack the necessary artistry for me when I watch it for the first time. You know, in the films mentioned above, the director has placed a "fantasy" that overrides real life, and euphemistically shows the cruelty of reality indirectly by discussing the relationship between the real world and the fantasy world. For example, in "Jojo's Whimsical World", the German teenager Jojo fantasizes that Hitler is his good friend like a father and brother, fantasizes that he defeats the fiancé of a Jewish girl to win her love, and shows the cruelty of reality through reality that is more absurd and bizarre than juvenile fantasy. For example, in "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas", Bruno, the son of a Nazi officer, thinks that the concentration camp is a game for everyone without knowing the truth, and the camp uniform is a striped pajama and the number on the camp uniform is the game number, which coincides with the world described by Guido to his son in "Beautiful Life". Similarly, in the German short film "Toy Island", the Jewish neighbors tell the German children that they are going to the toy island, there are many toys, and the children want to go to the clouds, so the little boy Heinrich in the short film pretends to be a Jew to chase after his friend David's family.
Poster of "Boy in Striped Pajamas"
It is by expressing the difference between the fantasy world and the real world that the directors of these films indirectly and moderately express the heinous cruelty of reality. Even in the most brutal of plots, they did not show the audience directly to these plots. For example, in "A Beautiful Life", when Guido is shot by the Nazis, the audience sees nothing more than a series of gunshots coming from an empty concentration camp; for example, in "Jojo's Whimsical World", when Jojo's mother is hanged, Jojo only sees a pair of her mother's feet instead of the full picture of her being hanged; for example, in "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas", when showing the piles of slain Jewish corpses in the concentration camp, the director gives the shot of Bruno's sister's pile of unplayed, naked dolls instead of direct representation And even if this shot is given in "A Beautiful Life", the audience will only see a bunch of unclear objects in the thick fog.
Poster of Jojo's Whimsical World
However, this indirect and restrained expression is broken in "The Pianist" and is shattered. In "The Pianist", the scene of the Nazi killing is extremely straightforward, how they pull out their guns, how they ask the Jews to lie down one by one so that they can hit the back of their heads with one shot, and, the most terrible thing is that after the Nazi officers shot a series of Jews lying on the ground, when they hit the last person, the person was shot and did not die, so the Nazi officer made up another shot.
This way of acting too bluntly to be straightforward makes people feel very frightened after watching it, and behind this horror there is also a clear understanding of the evil degree of Nazi behavior. At the same time, the film's straightforward approach dissolves the possibility of a fantasy world arising from the art form of playing the piano and the romantic profession of a pianist. In other words, in the face of such a tragic reality, the art form of playing the piano is no longer able to support the entire fantasy world. So, at the end of the film, when Spielmann has nowhere to hide and is foraging around like an animal, the ability to play the piano to the world's best level is no different from a can of pickled cucumbers, a moldy loaf of bread, or a bunch of muddy sewage for his survival. That is to say, an art form so elegant and full of spiritual power that music became the most basic life-saving tool in the cruelty of the Holocaust and the fleeting cycle of life or death. How ironic is that?
Short film "Toy Island"
Ironically, it was the Germanic peoples who produced this brutal massacre with a series of outstanding musicians such as Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Hendell. Under Hitler's propaganda and policies, the people who created unparalleled music also personally destroyed the faith and culture they had built with beauty, music, and reason.
Although the pianist eventually survived the desperate situation, and wrote his story into a book and then adapted it into a movie and spread it around the world, the cruelty of reality was not reduced in the slightest because it entered the art world, but this cruel barbarism cut down on art in the world of art. When "A Beautiful Life" was released, the film was criticized by the audience because of its overly artistic way of expression, thinking that when faced with such a human tragedy, how could it be so lightly brushed over? The movie "The Pianist" is obviously not brushed up, but the cruelty shown in it is really shocking to the viewer. I can't judge which expression is more clever, but I can only show my doubts, so that I can leave this question to the gentlemen who read this article.
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