Brilliant and yet sad......

Rating: 10/10 (22 March 2003)

I went see The Pianist tonight feeling a bit curious and expecting the usual Saving Private Ryan spread. Man, I was wrong. This Roman Polanski directed film effectively conveys the horrors of The Holocaust that the Polish Jews have to endure during the German Occupation in Warsaw, Poland WW2. Jews; young and old, are shot for no reason, abused, and ridiculed. Caught in the middle of this nightmare was Wladyslaw Szpilman (brilliantly potrayed by Adrian Brody) a young and talented pianist and his Jewish family. They, like other Jews, were forced into small ghettoes and are sealed off from other parts of the city. There, they live their lives in poverty, waiting to be deported to concentration camps. In a heart wrenching scene, he was separated from his family and was forced to survive on his own in the ghettoes of Warsaw. From that point of the movie, it started to run a little slow. Even so, Adrian's performance shows him constantly hiding in the shadows, waiting, watching, fearing whether the next day would be his last. He doesn't talk much in this part of the film but the facial expression and body language tells it all. The other actors that supported Szpilman like his family also convey the sense of looming fear and dread that is also present in the other Jews in the film. This really and I mean realistically, gives us the impression that the Holocaust is much more than just the slaughtering of 3 million Jews (FACT;from the start and end of WW2).
Some points of the movie are interspersed with haunting piano solos. Being a music appreciator especially piano acoustics, the music from the film further conveys the suffering endured by our pianist. There is one piano solo that still resonates in my eardrums, but you will have to find out for yourselves.
Roman Polanski's beautiful cinematics truly captures the emotions and horrors of the war. A noted scene would be when Szpilman walks through the battered city ruins of Warsaw, a look at this scene reminds me of the blown buildings of Hiroshima after the first A-Bomb was dropped.
One of the best films of the year, its going to be in my DVD collection later this year. Its a shame if the Academy does not recognize the talents of Adrian Brody and instead giving it to others like Daniel Day Lewis for Gangs of New York. Still, its very tacky to give it to actors who potray psychopaths. 9/10