The Pianist

15 yrs 150 minutes • 2002 • 8.5

Roman Polanski's three-time Oscar-winning The Pianist is based on Jewish radio pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman's autobiographical novel about life in Warsaw's ghetto during the Nazi occupation. But the story also traces Polanski's own childhood experiences from his time in Krakow's ghetto. Szpilman (Adrian Brody) was among the twenty of Warsaw's 500,000 Jews who managed to escape deportation to concentration camps and survived the hell of the ghetto by hiding in abandoned apartments and among the ruins of the city. Finally, he was helped by friends in the resistance movement and, unexpectedly, by a Nazi colonel. Toned down, objectively registering, without sentimentalizing, Polanski tells the story through the eyes of the hidden and increasingly weakened Szpilman. About his horrors and escalating insanity; Nazi humiliation and abuse, suffering, starvation and death, families shattering to never be reunited and people being carried away like cattle to never return.