Thank you Hollywood for staying out of it

Rating: Null/10 (12 March 2003)

Hollywood will never know what a favor it has done to Polanski by making him persona non grata. The Pianist can best be commented on by what it is not---it is not a Hollywood movie, that is, it does not have starving people having romantic box office sex. It does not, in spite of horrifying atrocities, portray all Nazis or Poles as evil, it does not portray all Jews as heylik. The Americans don't come in at the end handing out chewing gum and chocolates. It doesn't give a damn about the irrelevancy of someone having sex with a 13 year old. That's because it is not a Hollywood movie. It is right up there with Eisenstein and Bondarchuk and Kurosawa and Wajda.