Starring Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann, Frank Finlay, Maureen Lipman, Emilia Fox, Ed Stoppard, Julia Rayner, Jessica Kate Meyer, Ruth Platt. Directed by Roman Polanski. Featuring the life of Polish pianist and composer Wladyslaw Szpilman, Szpilman was the last person heard on Polish radio in 1939, narrowly escaping German bombing as he played the piano on the air. The Pianist follows his journey from the start of German occupation in late 1939, to his forced journey to the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto in October 1940. We see his escape from the ghetto in early 1943, hiding in apartments with help from former Polish musician friends, just before the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of April 1943, to his hiding in bombed out Warsaw homes after the Warsaw uprising of 1944. Filmed in Poland, it is Polish director Roman Polanski's first film he's made there since in 40 years. Polanski was himself a war survivor, escaping the Cracow ghetto at the age of 7. The Pianist is a moving and powerful story, devoid of histrionics and excessive melodrama, instead told simply and eloquently. The film illustrates the power of music, how dreaming about it helped Szpilman survive as he was couped up and hiding. It shows Szpilman's will to live, how he heartbreakingly watched as his entire family were sent to Treblinka, and spent the rest of the war scrounging for food, begging for help from whomever would provide it. It is also about the courage to stand against evil, where a mild-mannered, gentle musician must go against his nature and fight for his life. It forcefully shows how the Jewish citizens of Warsaw continuously thought all this would blow over, that co-operation with the German occupiers would satisfy them and prevent them from desiring further harm upon the Jews. But not until years later did the Jews, and the Poles, come to the realization that "it is better to die with dignity" than put up with Nazi oppression and meekly be shipped to a concentration camp slaughter, as 300,000 fellow Jews did previous to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Yet it is a credit to the movie that it takes pains to show there are good Germans as well as bad, good Poles as well as bad, and even bad Jews among the good. I'm not sure how much budget Polanski was afforded, but the cinematography in the Jewish ghetto and in Warsaw after the 1944 uprising is breathtaking. And the performances, ranging from the deserving Oscar-nominated Adrien Brody as Szpilman, to Thomas Kretschmann, the decent German family-man officer who helped Szpilman at the close of the war. We learn at the end of the film of the German officer dying in a Russian labour camp a full 7 years after the war, and that German persons also suffered misery and horrors because of the Nazis and World War II. The Pianist is a remarkable, beautifully made movie. Despite the story being about horrific events, the movie is surprising hopeful, not the downer one might expect from such serious subject matter. I highly recommend it. If you would like to respond, please click the E-Mail Press Here To Go To The Review List Page