Originally posted by tabuno
I found Adrien Brody's character hollow and as the central figure in the movie, I found it difficult to develop much sympathy for him. As those around him suffered even greater indignities and sacrifices, Brody's character through luck and his artistic talent appeared to survive. Yet even throughout the movie, there is very little that we find out about Brody's character's feelings, his thoughts in the darkened nights, the terror on the streets. While the audience gets many images, Brody's central presence almost cries out for how such horrific events played on the blankness of Brody's character. For so much happening, there was so little character development, so little meaningful interaction between characters. I get more in terms of emotional empathy and emotive feelings fifteen minutes of watching a television series such as "24" than I did in The Pianist. The shock value of the brutal, random killings does echo harshly, but yet somehow, I found something central missing in this movie...it was the lack depth of passion, interaction, the humanity the survived in the war in addition to just the strength of the music itself.
Tabuno___ A writer for The New Republic, Michael B. Oren, makes the same point in the March 17 issue. I took exception to it then as I do now. As a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst I know that some people, for varied and many reasons, learn to hide the outward show of their emotions. This does not mean that they are hollow or superficial. Ever hear of the saying, "still waters run deep?" The clue to Szpilman's depth and emotionality is the quality of his playing. No one can play Chopin like that without deep feeling. One has to appreciate music, musicianship and creativity to fully understand that.

Further, the Brody character, as you cooly put it, is not just a person, but the embodiment of an entire race of people, a people who survive despite all obstacles and all brutal assailants. The history of the Jewish people seems to indicate that we survive by accident, despite anti-Semitism and the genocidal impulses of a hostile and barbaric world.

Szpilman is a poetic image, a metaphor, of the contrast between the barbarism of the anti-Semites and the civilization of the Jews. The fact of our survival hints at some divine plan. Maybe the Jews ARE CHOSEN, to carry the torch of civilization in spite of everything. The movie shows that with some help and some accidents and some divine providence, Szpilman survives, Chopin survives, art survives, humanity survives bestiality.

The aristocracy of this seemingly implacable Jew, who doesn't even care that he is a Jew, doesn't declare that he is a Jew, is evident in his bearing, and in the ability of Chopin's music to touch the soul of a Beethoven lover. The movie transcends mere human emotions and shows the universalizing magic of music and reflects to all the arts.

In the horrible carnage of World War II and the Holocaust, artistic passion unites the Jew and the Nazi and so the movie depicts the real purpose of the Jew on the face of the earth, to show the world that civilization is superior to barbarism and cannot be trampled or stifled.

How does this happen?

As if by magic.

vb