The Holocaust from Polanski an unforgettable lesson to this nowadays world

Rating: Null/10 (7 November 2002)

Many years have passed since last time that Roman Polanski shotted a film in Eastern Europe and specifically in Poland and its Warsaw.
I remember one of his really first sixties films: A knife in the water or Repulsion where the characters were already psychologically deeply analysed with his matchlessly "Polansky's style" that later on will be spreaded to all cinema audiences with Rosemary's Baby an The Lodger.
This film welcomes him back to his land, his people, his ghetto.
It is rather difficult to express with words the bad feeling of the horror of the Holocaust got it from this masterpiece. The consequences of the Holocaust seen through a Jewish family in Warsaw obliged to move to the "Jewish ghetto" during the German occupation in Poland in the Second World War. The main character is an excellent pianist -Wladislaw- who plays for Warsaw Radio. The images in the ghetto are already seen but never were enoughly metobolized as in this film.
No "Schindler's List" nor The Holocaust -the TV serie- had such a deep impact as this one. Touchful scenes of People treated as flesh in a slaughter, senseless faces without identity and future are flashed in the screen, walking as robots or zombies. Child screams and weeping heard as backnoise that penetrates in your head as well as the bombs that are exploding outside; pricking and cruel images that will not be easily forgotten. Some scenes are particularly touchful as the one of the father that shares for the whole family in six small pieces a sugar tablet and the one where Adrien is hiding himself, seeking desperately for food and water; rarely in a film thirst and hunger were described so perfectly. Also the way how Wladislaw plays piano in front of a general nazi after longer days of fasting is supreme, initially seems to be rather static but then comes music and Wladislaw starts to dream again with it. Also the locations of a destroyed Warsaw give desolation and a strange peaceful message like peace after the battle. Superbly acted by Adrien Brody as The Pianist this is not only a must film is The film of The Holocaust.
Rating: 8/10