A compelling story of a fortunate man

Rating: 10/10 (24 October 2015)

I thought this was a brilliant film. A fantastic adaption of the real life events of a pianist who survived. His survival itself is an interesting story. He is no clever or sharp-minded person who escaped situation, he is shown as just a common guy who feared death and suffered from hunger. He is just shown to have been fortunate on occasions. This itself makes it a compelling drama worthy of admiration.
This was my first film on the atrocities on Jews by Nazis. Some of the scenes were very depressing, the most one of them being where the Nazi Army throws a physically disabled old man from the balcony together with his wheelchair. This stunned and silenced my younger sister, whom I had to help moving on from that scene to watch the rest of the film.
The most heartening and poetic scene for me was the scene where Captain Hosenfeld asks for Szpilman for his own rescue, and even better to see Szpilman being himself willing to help the former. So the ending scene was a cherry on top.