The Pianist-7/10 is the powerful true story of holocaust survivor and talented piano player Wladislaw Szpilman...

Rating: 8/10 (14 March 2003)

Possible Spoilers
The Pianist is the powerful true story of holocaust survivor and talented piano player Wladislaw Szpilman, who escaped certain death in the extermination camps and outlasted the war hiding out from the Nazi's in Warsaw, Poland. A story that is obviously very personal to controversial filmmaker Roman Polanski and is handled with great thought and care. Adrien Brody is very good as the title character, a member of the upper-class living in Poland with his family which include his mother and father, his brother and two sisters. He makes a living and a name for himself playing the piano for a radio station until the beginning of World War II when Germany invaded Poland and stormed into its capital city. As a Jew, Wladislaw and his family are rounded up like dogs with some 500,000 other Polish Jews and ushered into a concentrated part of the city until they are sent off to "labor" camps. This film is about what people do to survive and what lengths people are willing to go to make sure of that survival. People are completely stripped of their dignity and pride and are forced to turn on each other. I thought the first hour of this film was great, with its often shocking brutality of the German's, the utter despair of the Jews and the togetherness of Szpilman's family. After he gets separated from his family(rather by a little luck I might add) and forced to survive on his own I felt the film lost a lot of where its heart lie. The rest of the film is Szpilman moving from hiding place to burnt out hiding place avoiding detection by the Nazi's and Non-Polish Jews always scrounging for food and water. It does become very redundant and tiresome and some could consider it boring. Even as his fellow Jews do try and fight back Szpilman still hides in the shadows. As somebody mentioned earlier it does come off as very cowardly and I have no problem in pointing that out. As I said this is a film about what people do to survive, but still Szpilman's unwillingness to take any real action makes us feel less sympathy for him...and this is a character that we should care about. Overall, The Pianist is a good film about Holocaust survivor Wladislaw Szpilman but not a great one. A good, thoughtful story by director Roman Polanski featuring a good performance by Adrien Brody but ultimately really doesn't deliver the power and lasting impression a story like this should.