Based on a true story, The Pianist recounts the experiences of Wladislaw Szpilman, a brilliant Jewish concert musician in Poland during World War II.

Rating: 10/10 (19 November 2002)

Based on a true story, The Pianist recounts the experiences of Wladislaw Szpilman, a brilliant Jewish concert musician in Poland during World War II. Szpilman's extraordinary story of persecution, family tragedy and, ultimately, survival is brilliantly rendered in what is arguably one of Roman Polanski's greatest achievements as a film-maker. The Pianist does not flinch from re-creating the appalling horror of what happened to Polish Jews in the Warsaw ghetto, or avoid their eventual fate in the Nazi concentration camps. Nevertheless, this is not a dramatised documentary or a grim history lesson, instead The Pianist focuses very much on Szpilman's personal journey and what we see and feel is through his eyes. More by luck than good judgement, he becomes a fugitive and escapee in occupied Warsaw, where his terror and isolation are only offset by the help of friends and his memory and belief in the music he has performed. Adrien Brody (Bread and Roses, Summer of Sam) has already received considerable critical acclaim for his mesmerising performance as Szpilman and he is ably abetted by an impressive ensemble cast. British writer, Ronald Harwood, provides a sensitive and measured script; Pawel Edelman's photography provides luminous, unsentimental images and, of course, there is the music which is a major character within the film, setting tones and atmosphere. Above all, though, this is a Roman Polanski film and, considering his own World War II experiences in the Krakow and Warsaw ghettos, this may be his most personal and heartfelt film. Certainly, The Pianist is one of Polanski's most perfectly realised movies and, deservedly, won the Palme d'Or at this year's Cannes Film Festival.