Incredible survival story, and incredible demonstration of the power of cinema.

Rating: 8/10 (2 April 2004)

No other medium in the world has the power to illustrate for us what life would have been like in certain periods of the past but the cinema. One of the most important periods to not let go forgotton is the massacre and repression of Jews in Germany and occupied europe. If war and racism led to people to be killed like dogs and worse, simply for belonging to a certain group, then everyone should know about it, in my opinion, to keep history from repeating itself, and to make sure they didn't die for nothing. Don't turn your back on it - stare this movie in the face and look at what racism and intolerance can lead humans to do to other humans.
Scene after scene of such penetrating truth and honesty encapsulate in cinematic episodes the horrors committed by the Nazis, the state of desperation of the Jews and many other aspects of this horrible ordeal, based on the personal memoirs of the main character, famed Polish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman.
It was based on the memoirs of Szpilman, which means we know he survives the war, and it was marketed with this in mind, as a survival story. And this, of course, is the main attraction to this movie: not to put oneself through experiencing the horrors of war, which i nevertheless believe is important, but of finding out how in heck a Jew living in Nazi occupied Poland could have survived, and as such it is a remarkable story of hope and courage against unbelievable odds. And not one calculated by a Hollywood studio to manipulate you - this stuff really happened, and to the character portrayed in this movie by Adrian Brody. Some of it also happened to Roman Polanski himself, which made this a very personal project for him.
As i mentioned at the beginning, this movie demonstrates the power of cinema, and one of its central themes is the power of the arts, particularly music, to affect people, to make them feel.