Friday, March 23, 2007
SZPILMAN
Today's NYTimes Best 1176 Film was Roman Polansky's
I imagine this to be a near perfect film. I am not sure because I was so engaged in it that I had little time to step back and see the structure and techniques of it all.
Adrian Brody plays the part that was made for him.
Polansky tells his own story through the biography of the real pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman. As a boy he experienced nearly the same escape from the concentration camps and lived through the war in Warsaw.
We know the end of the story. After all, Szpilman wrote a book and lived to be 88. And it does not matter.
Szpilman's trials and tribulations are told against the historic backdrop of Poland's occupation and annihilation of its Jews and nothing prepares us for the horror of it all.
Polansky films the events against bright light and beautiful weather as well as 'normal life' going on all around the occupation and expulsions.
The final chapter of the story stretches credibility but the acting holds it together as well, obviously, as Polansky's restraining hand.
This is a 5 out of Netflix5 for sure.
Labels: best films
