Piyanist (2002)

Piyanist bir saklanma süreci. Sıkıştığın köşenin içinde bir kıvranma hali. Teslimiyetçi ve yardım arayan bir bekleyiş. Piyanist işini yapamaz hale getirilen, daha da kötüsü kendi olmaktan çıkarılan insanların ağıtı. Asla avcı olamayacak bir avın hikayesi.

İşgal Polonya'sındaki kötülükler buharlaşıp gitmedi aslında. Ezeli kötülüklerin ne zamanla ne coğrafyayla sınırlı kalması mümkün değil zaten. Yaşadığınız toplumu düşünün. Orası da saklanarak yaşama şansı bulabilenlerin ülkesi. Benliğinize sahip çıktığınızda isminizin ardına küfürden uçurtmalar takılan bir cehennem. Dedelerinin ahmaklığını ve alçaklığını sahte bir dini tescille mutlak gerçek ve doğru yol diye sloganlaştıran cahillerin yuvalandığı bir coğrafya. Sloganların temsil ettiği gelenekler en meşru katliam aracı.

Şimdilerde bu sloganların hakimleştirildiği dönemlerdeyiz, hatta yakın bir gelecekte kanunlaştırılacaklarına dair açık işaretler var. Böyle bir bataklığın içinden geçerken seyredilmesi ayrıca ibret verici bir film. 

Trenle ölüm kamplarına gönderilmeyi "beklerken" Yahudilerden birinin sorgulamasını not düşmeden geçmeyelim:

“Why dont we attack them? There’s half a million of us here. We can break out of the Ghetto. At least we can die honorably, not as a stain on the face of history.”

IMDB ALINTILAR

[Szpilman is discovered by the Polish army, wearing the German dress coat given him by Capt. Hosenfeld]

Wladyslaw Szpilman: No. Please. I'm Polish. I'm not a German.

Polish Soldier: Then why the fucking coat?

Wladyslaw Szpilman: I'm cold.

Wladyslaw Szpilman: What are you reading?

Henryk Szpilman: "If you prick us, do we not bleed? It you tickle us, we we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?"

Wladyslaw Szpilman: [seeing that it is Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice] Very appropriate.

Wladyslaw Szpilman: They all want to be better Nazis than Hitler.

Wladyslaw Szpilman: [taking off his watch] Here, sell this. Food is more important than time.

Wladyslaw Szpilman: I love to see a woman playing the cello.

Feather Woman: Excuse me, have you seen my husband, Izaak Szerman? A tall, a tall handsome man, with a little grey beard. No? Oh, excuse me. Goodbye, sleep well. But if you see him, write to me, yes? Izaak Szerman!

Yehuda: [regarding the underground newspapers] These will start the uprising. Majorek hides them in his underpants, and leaves them in toilets.

Majorek: As many toilets as I can find. Germans never use Jewish toilets. They're too clean for them.

IMDB TRIVIA

Roman Polanski himself experienced the Holocaust. His parents were sent to two different concentration camps: his father to Mauthausen-Gusen in Austria, where he survived the war, and his mother to Auschwitz where she was murdered.

Adrien Brody lost 14 kg (31 lb) for the role of Wladyslaw Szpilman by eating a daily diet of two boiled eggs and green tea for breakfast, a little chicken for lunch, and a small piece of fish or chicken with steamed vegetables for dinner over a six week period. Initially his weight was 73 kg (161 lb).

Adrien Brody became the youngest person to date to win an Academy Award for Best Actor when he won for this film at the age of 29.

This is the first film ever to receive the Best Film Award at the Césars (France's national film award) with not a single word of French spoken in it.

The film is based on the memoirs of Wladyslaw Szpilman. The director Roman Polanski tried to make the film as faithful of an adaptation as possible, with additional inspiration coming from events that happened to him while he was a boy during the war.

The scene in which Wladyslaw Szpilman is saved from going to the concentration camps and is told "Don't run!" is inspired by a similar event in director Roman Polanski's life. Originally, Szpilman was told "Run!", which he did, but Polanski deliberately changed that element to reflect his own experience.

In order to connect with the feeling of loss required to play the role, Adrien Brody got rid of his apartment, sold his car, and didn't watch television.

Adrien Brody learned how to play the piano for his role.

Notice how director of photography Pawel Edelman slowly drains the color out of all the scenes as the film progresses to signify the deterioration of the city and of Szpilman himself.

The character played by Thomas Kretschmann was Captain Wilhelm Hosenfeld who, along with Oskar Schindler, shares the rare distinction of receiving the Righteous Among the Nations medal from the Jewish population. The real Hosenfeld died in Soviet captivity in 1952, possibly as a result of torture by the Russian authorities who held him responsible for war crimes. The real Szpilman didn't learn his real name - and fate - until 1951 when he did his best to save him, only to no avail.

Director Roman Polanski considers this his best film. At the end of the documentary Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir (2011), interviewer Andrew Braunsberg asks him which of his own films he believes to be absolutely perfect, and wouldn't change a frame if he could. To this, Polanski replies: "If any film cannisters were to be placed on my grave, I'd like them to be The Pianist's".

Daniel Szpilman, the real grandson of the main character Wladyslaw Szpilman, plays the part of the boy in the ghetto (on the market place and later again on the Umschlagplatz).

Wladyslaw Szpilman's autobiographical account of his life in the Warsaw Ghetto during the war under the Nazi regime was published shortly after the war ended. However, the Communist government that took over in Poland refused to have it published for many years as it didn't fully comport with their "officially documented" version of events.

Director Roman Polanski could not attend the Academy Award ceremony in Los Angeles where he won the Oscar for Best Director, due to an outstanding arrest warrant for a sexual abuse case. The award was accepted on his behalf by Harrison Ford, who presented it to Polanski five months later at the Deauville Film Festival.

Adrien Brody and Marion Cotillard are the only actors to win both a César and an Oscar for the same performance. Brody won both awards in 2003 for 'The Pianist' and Cotillard won in 2008 for Kaldirim serçesi (2007). Brody is also the only american actor to win a César.

Roman Polanski provides the voice of the man waiting to cross the street who complains about a Gentile street running through the ghetto.

Ronald Harwood was assigned the role of writing the screenplay, largely on the strength of his play "Taking Sides". Roman Polanski saw the play when it was produced in Paris in 2000. As the play is about music and Nazis, he figured Harwood would be a great fit for the project.

The first film Roman Polanski has shot in his native Poland since Sudaki Biçak (1962).

A nuance for those who don't speak German: In general, the German officers use the informal version of "you" ("du," etc.) when talking to the Jews, which reflects their views (you wouldn't talk to adult strangers that way); however, Hosenfeld (the officer who discovers Wladyslaw Szpilman in hiding) always uses the proper formal form ("Sie," etc.) because of the way he personally feels.

Wilhelm "Wilm" Hosenfeld, the kindhearted German officer who was jailed by the Russians on trumped up charges and died in prison, was awarded Righteous Among The Nations status by the State of Israel. for his sheltering of Jews who otherwise would have been sent to the death camps.

“Why dont we attack them? There’s half a million of us here..!"