Different than what I expected: Spoilers

Rating: 9/10 (29 January 2007)

Reviews of "The Pianist" had led me to expect that Adrien Brody's real life character, Wladyslav Szpilman, had survived the Holocaust because the Nazis valued him as an entertainer. Strictly speaking, that is true in the sense that one particular high-ranking Nazi hears him play near the very end of the film and does not betray him. However, the film is mainly about the Szpilman's survival within the Warsaw ghetto, his escape from the ghetto while the dispatch of Jews to the death camps is underway, his existence in hiding with the help of a Polish couple, the destruction of much of Warsaw by the Nazis during the uprising and, penultimately, his retreat back to the ghetto to hide until the Russians arrive. In short, 99 percent of the film has absolutely nothing to do with Nazi patronage and the 1 percent is the mercy extended to him because of his talent by a single Nazi commander. It is nonetheless a brilliant film, and Adrien Brody certainly deserves all the praise he received for his role as Szpilman. However, because of his unsavory reputation in the U.S., Roman Polanski received insufficient attention as the director of this film. Polanski's achievement is at least equal to Brody's and I believe that he would have received an Oscar if he weren't persona non grata in the U.S. and in Hollywood.