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Opinion

What really happened?

By Roger Pulvers


歴史の証人

すべてが終わったとき、 この大規模破壊を生き延びた証人が 真実を語ってくれることを期待したい。

A remarkable autobiographical book was written in Poland in 1945. It described the gruesome wartime experiences of the pianist and composer Wladyslaw Szpilman. It has taken more than half a century for this document of survival to reach the screen.

Roman Polanski's brilliant film, "The Pianist," winner of three Academy Awards, is a document of today's world as well as that of the past: It teaches us that colonial aggression - be its goals territorial, ideological or commercial - is no more than an excuse for murder.

Wladyslaw Szpilman's story is a truly heroic one, and his survival may have depended on equal amounts of chance and assistance. Yet one comes away from this story with a deep sense of respect for the resilience of Szpilman's spirit, his undampened optimism and his determination to remain normal despite the dread of everyday routine under the Nazi occupation, as portrayed in the scenes where he works as a restaurant pianist playing light cabaret tunes.

Polanski's trials during the war were not dissimilar: the loss of immediate family to the hell of the camps, the stumbling from one temporary haven to another, the terror of uncertainty.

Both Polanski and Szpilman come back after the war to become creators of their country's postwar culture. Szpilman, in particular, resumed his piano playing on Polish radio not as if the war had never happened, but precisely to prove that its scars could be borne.

"The Pianist" paints the most realistic picture of the life of Warsaw's Jews that I have ever seen in a film. Poland is renowned for its masterpieces in the genre of war films, and now this one joins the company of "Ashes and Diamonds," "Canal," "How to be Loved," "Eroica," and "First Day of Freedom," all of which, for me, were an education in the grim reality of war and occupation.

It would be asking too much, I know, for the planners of today's wars to sit down and watch these films. It might even give them pangs of conscience over their actions, assuming, that is, they still possess a conscience.

Polanski's film is filled with images of bitter irony - for example, crowds of cowering Jews waiting to cross from one section of the ghetto to the other, under the cruel and the watchful eye of the Nazi police. On the corner there is a cafe with a sign over its door that reads, "Bar dla Wszystkich." This, in Polish, means "Bar for Everyone."

But the most startling image of the film must be that of the emaciated Szpilman climbing over a wall into a decimated city. Warsaw itself was 96 percent destroyed during its occupation. This is a figure that is hard to grasp. Polanski's film brings it home to us through the eyes of one of its bravest survivors.

As I write this, there are those who are perpetrating a similar havoc on a city, attempting to justify their immorality with fine phrases and pointed images. We may not be able to stop them. But we can hope that there will be many Szpilmans left when it is over to tell the world what really happened.



Shukan ST: April 18, 2003

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