First, this is not my first time seeing Roman Polanski’s The Pianist. It is a very well done film. However, does the film really need to be two and a half hours long? Granted, I know that Polanski knows just a little more about filmmaking than I do, but there were a few time in the film where I felt that there was no progression. One example is when he is hiding in the Warsaw ghetto and is locked in a room. Yes, it was good to see the physical struggle of lack of nutrition that Szpilman was going through. However, that was already evident in the starvation others were suffering. Namely, his brother.
In terms of the first and third person viewpoints, there is a sense of bias attached to many first person narratives. In Szpilman’s autobiography and supported by Polanski’s film, a first person bias was not evident. Rather, Szpilman portrayed a feeling of truth and reality to the reader. Dr. McCay indicated in her notes sheet how in the film, the audience was not truly brought into the situation. The example she stated and a defining event in my own reading of the autobiography was the ignorance or the lack of generosity rich Jews showed to children. In the film, Szpilman’s borderline interrogated a little boy as to what he was doing with the money he made from selling snacks in the ghetto. This two-minute encounter in a film that is one hundred and fifty minutes takes away from the first-person narrative. Meaning, this sort of injustice within the ghetto was much more evident in the autobiography.
Lastly, I had an issue/observation regarding the names of individuals in the film. Polanski of course did this on purpose. We are only given the first names of characters in the film as opposed to the autobiography. Also, the only time in the film when we are given a last name is when Wilm asks Szpilman his name. At the conclusion of the film, the audience is reintroduced to Wilm as a prisoner of war. He wants to send his remarks to Szpilman, but can not remember his name. When the messenger asks for Wilm’s name, the Russians hush him. Thus, the complete message was not sent to Szpilman. However, the memory of Wilm still lives on thanks to Szpilman’s autobiography.
Although a first person narrative can in many times be biased, a third person film is much more biased. When telling a story over again, key moments and the personal thoughts (such as the rich jews’ ignorance of the suffering) are not so much manifested in film so that the audience listens to the director’s message.
