A nice effort by Polanski but...

Rating: 6/10 (10 July 2003)

***Possible Minor Spoilers*** The Pianist was not as good as it could or should have been. But of course it has a few great features in it like the acting epscially from Adrien Brody, who won an extremely well deserved Oscar for his role as the Jewish pianist, Wladslaw Spzilman, the photography, and editing. But ultimately it was very mediocre. The story of the film is very unoriginal, many of the characters seem to really have no depth making them just seem flat and lifeless, and it sheds no light on the Holocaust subject and whatever elements of that subject that were covered in this film was already covered in the past by other films already. The only thing that was actually original in this film was showing the Nazi officer who helps Spzilman in the end. And as Polanski goes, his direction in this film was very uneven and by the end he didn't really have much of an explanation to his movie, I think if he wanted to make a Holocaust movie, he should have done his story growing up in the Krakow ghetto or something similar to that since he was there and witnessed everything that happened there while as Warsaw goes, I don't think really knew what happened there considering how the uprising sequences in this movie seem somewhat uninteresting. In conclusion, I can't help but give credit to Polanski (seeing him win the Best Director oscar was nice), but Schindler's List really steps all over The Pianist in every single aspect. I give The Pianist 5 out of 10 stars.