Definitively an inspiring epic...

Rating: 10/10 (6 September 2005)

'The Pianist' is definitively an inspiring epic that celebrates the tenacity and fortitude of the human spirit... It is a remarkable tale of human survival sensitively brought to life by Polanski... The film carries us to the horrible reign of terror, where condemned people wearing the emblem of humiliation and oppression, are deprived of their rights, their human values and dignity, before being shipped to 'labor camps.'
In Polanski's movie all the conventional elements of the drama are at peaks of excellence:
Family union: When a father has to bargain to buy a single piece of caramel and divide it in six pieces to share it with each member of his family...
Starvation: When a ghetto inhabitant assaults a helpless woman for a bowl of soup...
Confusion: When a distraught woman wails on a platform because she smothered the cries of her baby with her hand...
Love: When a young musician turns to his younger sister and utters with sad regret, "I wish I knew you better."
Survival: When one man observes the war through his hide-outs around the city...
Cruelty: When an old man in a wheelchair is thrown off the balcony by the Nazis because he failed to stand upon their entrance...
Fear: When a talented musician sits down at the old piano, and pretends to play his music, keeping his fingers flowing with control above the vertical ivories...
Discrimination: When bored Nazi guards entertain themselves by forcing grotesquely mismatched old and sick couples to dance to a Jewish street band by the ghetto gate...
Horror: When condemned Jewish workers lie face-down in the street, while one SS guard walks down the line, shooting without remorse each one in the back of the head...
Isolation: When a fugitive emerges from his harrowing hiding place and walks through a field of deserted ruins exactly like the last man alive on Polish soil..
Adrien Brody gives an absolutely moving performance (based on descriptive facial expressions) as the Polish composer and pianist who stays alive as a Jew, and remains true to his ideals... Brody captures the character's desperation, his anger and grief, his willpower and perseverance, his passion and love of music... Polanski gives us the chance to better know his shock and disbelief, his ordeal and tragedy, his hope for fairness and humanity...
Nominated for seven Academy Awards, this captivating drama went on to win three Oscars, including Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay... Once Brody took the stage to accept his Oscar, he was so overwhelmed with happiness, that he swept the gorgeous Academy Award-winning Halle Berry off her feet with a long, steamy kiss...