a powerful, harrowing film depicting one of the darkest eras in history composed of the memories of two men who experienced it first-hand

Rating: 9/10 (27 September 2009)

"The Pianist" is a movie of the most appropriate kind. It tells a dark, harrowing true story, coming from the minds and memories of two people who experienced it first-hand. The movie is based on the autobiography of Wladyslaw Spzilman and was directed by Roman Polanski, who both escaped from the Jewish ghettos in Poland and went into hiding until the Second World War had ended. "The Pianist" is a composition composed of their memories and experiences and what results is a truly terrific, highly-detailed depiction of one of the darkest moments in human history.
The movie depicts the life of Wladyslaw Spzilman (Adrien Brody), a Polish pianist who like all other Jews in Nazi-controlled Europe was forced into a ghetto during World War Two. After being separated from his family, Spzilman climbed over the wall and went into hiding with and sometimes without help from German sympathizers.
Director Polanski, who lost his mother to the Holocaust, obviously not only used his own memories of the ghetto and the war, but collected enormous research in preparation for filming, because "The Pianist" depicts some truly harrowing situations such as this moment where a German officer, out of boredom, orders about twenty Jewish prisoners to line up. At random, he selects about half of them, orders them to lie flat on their stomachs, and then one by one walks by, shooting them in the head along the way and then letting the others go on. Like in Steven Spielberg's masterpiece, "Schindler's List" (1933), "The Pianist" does a tremendously great job at depicting the evil of the Nazis and the joy of their murders and torture.
But also like "Schindler's List", Polanski does not simply display all of Nazi-controlled Europe as evil and prejudiced and murderous. Because like in real life, there were a great many people who did not look upon the Jewish people as less than human and delved into danger, risking their own lives and security to help them. The basic message is that prejudice and hatred exists, but it must be controlled and not be allowed to take over.
Adrien Brody, who is seldom off-camera won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Spzilman and that's an absolutely commendable reward. Brody maintains the illusion that he's the real Wladyslaw Spzilman, never succumbing to the tendencies to go over the top with his performance or underplay his hand. He does not become too heroic or too somber. Brody personifies the terrible feeling of loss, but also the dwindling flame of hope and the will to keep going.
Now there are some flaws to the movie. Roman Polanski does sometime go a little over the edge with his directing. Sometimes his montages of the ghetto and the city go on for a little too long and there is one sequence in particular where Spzilman plays Frederic Chopin's Ballade No. 1 in its almost full form. And while the music is beautiful, we must remember, this is a film we're watching, not a concert. And the movie does run for about twenty minutes too long, but other than that, this is a more than recommendable Holocaust movie. And again, its true power comes from the fact that it composed of the memories of two men who went through similar experiences and were fortunate enough just to survive the war, although the real Spzilman had to live out the rest of his life without what he'd lost and Polanski continues to do so today. And that is true not just of them, but of millions.