Gut-wrenching, grim, magnificent

Rating: Null/10 (14 April 2004)

This film is without a doubt one of the most gut-wrenching, difficult films I've ever seen, yet it is also one of the most inspiring because it doesn't try to be any of the foregoing. By simply telling the horrific tale of Szpilman's epic journey through the dark night of the Second World War and the Holocaust, with no attempt to editorialize or moralize on the story Polanski achieves, I think, almost a greater triumph than Spielberg did in Schindler's List. By focusing on one individual, the viewer is allowed to draw his/her own conclusions about what is happening. While everyone who sees this film will have their own "most important"shot, for me it came when Szpilman climbs over the wall behind the house and we see Warsaw, or what is left of it. The devastation is immense, the emotional impact overwhelming. I do not mean to trivialize Schindler's List as I feel it too is a masterpiece; the two together go about as far as is possible in allowing us at the end of the century to participate emotionally and intellectually in a period most of us did not experience. They stand as a testament to why we must never, ever, let this sort of tyranny exist in the world.