A decent, but unspectacular Holocaust movie

Rating: 4/10 (25 August 2006)

The Pianist is a by the numbers movie about the life and times of a pianist trying to live through the Nazi occupation of Warsaw. A beautiful musical score predictably results. The pianist himself is an altogether unsympathetic character - we want him to live because we don't want to be cruel, but otherwise we wouldn't have any particular attraction to this man. The movie itself is strictly, for the most part, paint by numbers. Nazis are bad, Jews are innocent yet determined survivors. Well, more to the point, Nazis are bad, though deep down inside they appreciate fine culture and some of them have good hearts. The Soviets, on the other hand, are uniformly bad and stupid, it seems.
The lessons of the Holocaust must never be forgotten. However, the pivotal lessons of the Holocaust are not "Nazis are bad Jews are innocent yet determined survivors." Those sort of lessons are historical details along the lines of "The Magna Carta was signed in 1066." The real lessons of the Holocaust center around what happens when we stop looking at each other as human beings and start looking at each other as cartoons or stereotypes. This is a by the numbers movie specifically because it does what most movies do - it starts with existing cartoon/stereotype views and builds characters around them to tell a story. A better movie would have begun in that place, but then used the power and magic of film to challenge our preconceptions and our stereotypes to truly convey and reinforce a message of hope for humanity.
Your life will not be any poorer if you never see this movie, but you won't feel that you wasted your time, either, if you do. Certainly doesn't belong in the IMDb Top 250.