Schindler's List is a great film but Steven Spielberg still couldn't resist making a heroic, if flawed, figure out of the German businessman played by Liam Neeson.

In The Pianist, however, there are no heroes. There's just a harsher, more harrowing and brutally honest unravelling of the human spirit in a Warsaw ghetto during the Second World War.

It's a film of gripping intensity which follows a soul on the brink of collapse and explores the horrors of the Nazi regime in cold, unrelenting fashion.

It's directed by Roman Polanski, still wanted in America on alleged sex charges, and so having to make all his films in Europe now.

He fled Nazi-occupied Poland as a kid and his mother was killed in the labour camps.

And because of his scarred family background, the genuine distress of seeing all this anguish played out is almost too much to bear.

The difference between The Pianist, which is based on a true story, and other Holocaust titles is that this film cuts all the flab from the Hollywood factory for a lean and haunting epic that puts you right at the heart of the struggle.

Anyone who has ever been involved in any horrific ordeal, accident or injury knows there is no fanfare, blasting music or clean visuals to gloss it up.

Instead you get a horrible sense of foreboding, a gathering calm and cold realisation that something is happening to you and there's nothing your rational mind or instant actions can do about it.

That's where The Pianist is most effective. In stripping away all the unnecessary varnish, it slowly leads you into the worst of humanity; where uniforms and boots rule and the weak become masses of flesh clinging onto existence.

Adrien Brody plays Szpilman, a Jewish pianist from a middle-class family in Warsaw who realises the Nazis are on the rampage.

He realises the Nazis are rounding up the Jews and will probably come round for him and his family.

But when they do, Szpilman escapes into the Warsaw ghetto and tries to survive while the city slowly collapses around his ears.

Meanwhile, his family is taken away to the labour camps and is subjected to unspeakable cruelty.

Adrien Brody gives a career-defining performance as the pianist whose comfort is ripped up into a monstrous bid for survival. His home, friends and family become distant memories as he stumbles across the ruins of Warsaw feeding on scraps, dodging bullets and trying to keep his sanity.

But the soothing rhythms are still in his head despite his mind decaying and spirit waning. He can still play if he ever sees a piano again.

Polanski lets the whole horror unfold with restraint but, be warned, there are some truly gut-wrenching moments, particularly when the Nazis play their games of random slaughter.

The script reflects the period in fine detail but there are large periods where dialogue isn't even needed, the image says everything.

The Pianist shows with painful clarity how the boundaries of human suffering can be reached, stabilised and eventually overcome. It's a powerful, one-man scramble against the tide of hate and prejudice. This Pole may have been apart, but he kept his notes together.

Nasser Hashmi

January 28, 2003 11:00