"The Pianist" more than compensates for that chaotic, unintended farce. Polanski has let the world know loud (and I do mean that literally and figuratively) and clear that he still possesses the artistic goods.

This is his first film since "Knife in the Water" to be set in his native Poland. His feeling for his native land rings forth in every frame. From the music of Chopin, to the scenes of the Warsaw trains on their way to Treblinka, packed to the absolute extreme with their human cargo, Polanski lets us experience, practically first hand, what it meant in the late 30s, early 40s, to be a Jew in Warsaw. It was precisely the wrong thing to be at precisely the wrong time in human history.

Whereas the other great Holocost movie of recent years "Schindler's List" relies so heavily on visual representation (though it does have a moving soundtrack), Polanski combines brutal images with high decibal sound to stun and startle us into a deeper, more visceral understanding of what the title character, Wladyslaw Szpilman, experienced as a young artist in WWII Poland. During one scene, a bomb explodes so loudly that I actually thought for a few seconds that my hearing had been damaged, as a ringing noise on the soundtrack synchronizes with Szpilman's gesture as he winces and cups his ear with his hand . That's about as visceral as I want to go in a cinema experience. It's also one aspect that wont be as effective at home, unless one is blessed with a state of the art sound system.

While this film is exceedingly stark, grim and shocking (you will understand from where the term "shock troops" derives), it also contains moments of great beauty and humanity. Even in moments of the most extreme deprivation and isolation, a human hand comes to Szpilman's assistance and helps him survive.

Oscar awards were certainly deserved for both Polanski and Adrian Brody (Best Actor). It is essentially their film. Though the supporting roles are well played, Brody is in every scene of the film, so it is his to carry. It is a bravura performance. He never overacts or overreacts. He subtly displays the gradual despair and increasing horror as Warsaw crumbles around him.

No matter how one feels about Polanski, personally, "The Pianist" proves that he remains among the top ten directors of his generation. This love letter to his native land is tinged with tears, a combination which renders it amazingly effective.


Better Than Schindler's List   June 14, 2003
 61 out of 74 found this review helpful

There have been many films over the years dealing with the Holocaust and the atrocities in Europe during the Second World War. The best known of course is, Schindler's List. While Schindler's List will be the film by which all other films about this dark period of history will be judged, it has met its match in The Pianist. While Schindler gave us the viewers the story of one very flawed man who saved many lives in the guise of Jewish Labor, The Pianist is far different. The story of one man who managed to survive Warsaw during the Occupation and was ultimately the reciepant of some kindness from the most unlikely person,a German solider. The difference between the two films is that while Schindler's took a rather aneseptic and 'Hollywood' view of the flawed man Oskar Schindler, The Pianist drew on the real life experiences of its director to make the film much more personal. It not only becomes personal to the director himself, but to the viewer. Polanski himself was a boy during the Occupation, injected small things that he remembered during the Occuapation into the film. Little things like someone telling Spzilman not to run as he is pulled from the lines of people, including his family, being forced into cattle cars on their way to a certain death.It is things like this that bring the viewer closer to the characters and even to the director. Adrien Brody gave the performance of his life in this film. It deserved every Oscar it got and it is a true masterpiece to be treasured.


Brilliant and ultimately redemptive   January 8, 2004
 51 out of 71 found this review helpful

It's hard to watch this film and not think of the situation in the Middle East today. What is worse, being stuffed into cattle cars and sent to death camps or being blown up by suicide bombers (or bulldozed by machines of steel)? For me the answer to this strangely relevant question is the former. I know that the old Jewish Defense League that I recall from my college days, whose slogan was something like, "Never Again," would agree and so would most of the population of Israel. I think the terrorist Islamic groups ought to be required to view this film and/or some others like it on what happened to the Jews in Europe during the time of the Nazis so that they might have a better appreciation of why they will never be able to overrun Israel and why the United States continues to support Israel even while questioning some of Sharon's policies.

Director Roman Polanski tells the familiar horror tale, this time with a concentration on the Jews of Warsaw and in particular on the famed pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman. (The screenplay by Ronald Hardwood is based on Szpilman's memoir). Polanski spares us none of the brutality or the sadomasochism that is an inevitable interpretation of the events. He has the Jews meekly acquiesce to the increasingly horrific Nazi demands, and then has them just lie down when told to and accept a bullet through the skull.

(Actually the vast majority of the Jews were not shot, of course, since the bullets were too costly and needed elsewhere. Indeed, as long as I am doing an aside, the stupidity of the Nazis in wasting their resources in genocide contributed to their losing the war. Small irony. But of course that was a war they could not win anyway. If by some magic they could have gotten the Jews--especially Jewish physicists--to work for them, that would have been their only chance, which once again demonstrates the self-destructive nature of Hitler and his followers.)

Polanski shows us the Jews who collaborated with the Nazis and he even has a Jewish boy in the compound as they await the cattle cars selling candy at inflated prices, and then later a Nazi who talks to his Jewish workers about trading goods and says, rubbing his fingers together, "That's what you're good at, isn't it?"

It is interesting to compare The Pianist with Vittoria De Sica's The Garden of the Finzi-Continis (1971), an entirely different sort of film, but one with a similar theme and some similar scenes as the Jews, this time Italian Jews, are loaded into the cattle cars. The experience in these films is always the same for me in at least one respect. I want so much to shout: "Do something! Don't let it happen! Charge them with the sheer mass of your bodies, if nothing else. Better to die fighting than to die like cattle." But of course I was not there. We think we know what we would do, but unless we are confronted with the actual situation, we don't know. And of course we have hindsight.

At one point, Szpilman and his brother are talking as they eat their thin soup and their bread. The brother tells him that the cattle cars are going to Treblinka but they return empty and that there are no cars containing food that go that way. He concludes, "They are exterminating us."

Polanski's point is that the Nazis were able to actually commit their ghastly mass murders (and the German populace to excuse them) because they had come to believe that Jews were not human and that they were only killing vermin. The Jews had been demonized, which is the first step toward genocide. We declare that our enemies are not human, and that allows us to kill them with moral impunity. I had a new thought while I watched this time, thinking: a respect for animals and a belief in animal rights might serve as a moral buffer so that when one group of people hate each other and begin to turn the other into animals, they will still have a step to go before they can begin the mass murders.

It is in the second half when Szpilman goes into hiding that Polanski's film distinguishes itself. Here the focus is entirely on Szpilman and his need to survive. The cinematography of the Warsaw streets, the apartments he lives in, the snow, the gray buildings, the people below in the streets, the hunger, the music that he hears in his mind but cannot play, the burned-out buildings, and then the scene in which the German officer says, "Play something" and he does. It is here that the film becomes magical and a testament to the best that is in humans. Note that the pianist has become in his beard and his persecution a Christ-like figure who never raised a hand against anyone. He is the Christ who turned the other cheek. And note that it is his ethereal talent as a great musician that saves him. This is Polanski's message and the reason he made the film. The best that is in humans can rise above the brute that is in humans.

See this for Adrien Brody, who gave it everything he had, and then some. His performance will haunt you. Polanski's clear, Hollywood-like, almost Spielbergian direction, tells the story a bit too brightly at times, and a bit too simplistically at others, but he has planned well so that in the end we see that he has told it brilliantly. For those who have never actually had the details of the Holocaust acted out for them, this will be quite an eye-opener and a chilling, depressing and deeply disturbing experience. And see it because we need to be reminded of what can happen when we give way to hate and prejudice.


Mesmerizing,Incredible,Must See   February 11, 2003
 45 out of 49 found this review helpful

I have a PhD in history and have been a student of WW2 for a number of years. This film was so gripping that NO ONE moved from their seats. There was NO TALKING, NO COUGHING. The theatre was absolutely silent and at the end NO ONE got up to leave.
This is because this film is so incredibly well done that you cannot help but become personally involved. It is a true story as well. I urge everyone who wants to see what life under the 3rd Reich was like in their Eastern Conquests to see this. Not only are Jews murdered indiscriminately, it also shows the effects on Poles and the scenes of a destroyed Warsaw stop you in your tracks.
When you leave this film, you will know you have seen one of the finest films EVER made, Polanski's masterpiece. It tells of events that are changed from words into visual scenes, and individual people. The effect is awesome. Please go see it.


The Real Thing   October 3, 2002
 36 out of 38 found this review helpful

Almost a documentary.

This movie is true to the life story of Szpilman, the pianist, and almost to the letter follows the book Szpilman wrote. The only major licencia poetica I noticed is the placement of Szpilman's hideout in the routinely destroyed and totally deserted city - a result of the two uprisings: in 1943 and most definitely that of 1944 - at the very same building that the good natured German officer selected for army offices.

Polanski wanted the true and most dramatic story to speak for itself and on purpose gave up on these well known movie tricks that make less powerful stories squeeze our tears so generously in the movie theaters. To be honest - this is a pity. A real story AND a popular touch make for the most effective works. But perhaps I understand Polanski's reasons for this and I certainly respect them. You just do not want any semblance between depiction of tragedy of such proportions and the regular every year productions. And also - Polanski was part of the drama of 1939-1945, living not further than two hundred miles from the place where the Pianist lived and survived, too.

"The Pianist" has a feel of a documentary. The movie structure - a series of glimpses of Szpilman's life, each of them grabing your total attention, because each of them is almost more than an average human being experience in a whole life, at least as most of us know life today. A word said, the timing of entering a staircase, a positioning taken in a row of forced laborers is a decision - or - a circumstance of life and death consequences.

Being from that country I will not dodge the sensitive issue. There are many bad people and some good people in this true story. There are many good Jews, and some bad Jews. There are many good Poles, and many bad Poles. There are many bad Germans and one good German. The last one stands out. Courtesy of that "national background" his decent acts - not killing Szpilman (a heroism in pure form it is not), and giving him food and a coat stand out.

I watched this movie at 9:15 a.m. in a cinema filled with youngsters sent by the schools. The silence in the room, all over those 130 minutes or so, was stunning.