Rating: 
Summary: power and inspiration
Review: this awesome story of one mans story is not to be missed! very inspiring, with an equally amazing musical score by Fredric Chopin to accompany the dramatic story line. beware of graphic violence, but it is definatly nessicary and worth seeing, even if it is very painful. it exemplifies the awesome power of this mans survival! A MUST SEE!
Rating:
Summary: This is a different view of the Holocaust
Review: Roman Polanski is my favorite director even though this is not my personal favorite or even his best film, which I would argue is Rosemary's Baby. Still, leave it to Polanski to skillfully, unsentimentally and existentially address the eternal horror and dehumanization of our last 'great' war. In this film, there are no easy tears or endless laments of 'why us?'--instead, you see the hideous facts of life, ugliness in many forms, and hear self-doubt and recrimination among the persecuted. The fact that the Jews are being persecuted seems coincidental--instead of trying to overemphasize their Jewishness, you begin to think it could have been anyone. That was certainly true of Stalin, an equal opportunity butcher. There is a curious angle on apartment life and touches of macabre humor in The Pianist, but this is largely unlike any other Polanski film. The brutality in this film is strangely casual and impersonal. What shocked me the most was the massive devastation of Warsaw, and the degree to which war changes all things. The nonchalant way the protagonist strolls by bloody corpses, or the soldiers take a lunch break after stacking corpses and setting them on fire in the street, underscores the resilience of humans in a darker aspect--it suggests that we can become accustomed to just about anything over time, which is horribly true. This film is intelligent and unusual in ways like that. I wish WWII was an isolated case of depravity, but humans are as nasty as they've ever been. However, the political might and enormous scale of Third Reich atrocities stand out. I'm glad to see the issue freshly addressed from a more personal perspective.
Rating:
Summary: a masterpiece
Review: This movie is as good as "Schindler's List". It shows what life was like outside the camps. Deserves all the oscars it won. A perfect, powerful film in my opinion. Adrien Brody's performance was excellent. This is as good at it getsThis refers to the theatrical version
Rating: 
Summary: One Of The Best
Review: By "one of the best", i mean an astonishing movie. I myself am very picky about movies, and had extremely high expectations for this one. Amazingly, it met, and went beyond my expectations. In my opinion, it is one of the greatest films ever made. The acting, directing, and nearly everything else about the movie was flawless. It is excellent.
Rating: 
Summary: A Handsome Adrien Brody did his best but...
Review: ... yaaawwwn... how much more Holocaust brutality "stock footage" must we be subjected to before we become totally desensitized to it? This subject has become its own genre. It's sad that this horrible moment in history has been reduced to cliche and used as "Oscar-Bait" by Hollywood. We seem to get at least one main stream or indy flick a year dedicated to this... and AMAZINGLY, most all get an Oscar nomination(s) of some kind.
I'm giving this film 3 stars for three reasons (1) Brody, he wears that haunting look exceedingly well (2)Cinematography and (3) Polanski gets a point for DARING by following a passive character whose sole purpose in the film is self-preservation. I suppose he was destined to make this film due to his own personal history, but an Oscar nomination? It's interesting that he decided against one that was autobiographical. At any rate despite Brody's best effort (and a good one at that), I felt less inspired and more manipulated. True story or not, I struggled to stay awake in this one. I managed to do so for most of the film by counting the number of wanton, random and impersonal atrocities used liberally by Polanski in getting his point across. I lost count around 30...
Rating:
Summary: These ruins weren't a Ghetto!
Review: It's very funny for a Polish citizen to read about the ruins where Szpilman was hiding (eg. "among the ruins of the Warsaw ghetto"). It prooves that many people haven't seen this picture with enough attention.
Szpilman has been hiding on the so called "aryan" side of the wall since his escape from the Ghetto.
He has been watching the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto (April 19 May 18, 1943) from the window of an "aryan" house. During the Warsaw uprising (August 1 - October 5, 1944, about 200 000 Polish victims) he has been hiding at an "aryan" apartment, then in ruins of a hospital occupied prevoiusly by the Wehrmaht, and finally in a house where he has met the "good" German officer.
The sea of ruins you can see on the screen while he is going down the ruined street - it was just Warsaw, not its part - the Ghetto. In fact, the Ghetto has been destroyed yet in 1943.
Warsaw as the capital city of Poland was destroyed in 95% in result of the WWII. In my opinion the movie is a masterpiece. Polanski didn't even try to make this picture more sophisticated or studied. He has tried to show the Szpilman's story (and, somehow, his own) as accurately and exactly as possible, without any fireworks. And he was right - this movie looks almost like a documentary. And that is why its power and impact is even bigger.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best movies of my life
Review: I see dozens of movies each year. I have studied about and read hundreds of books on World War II and seen many of the movies and mini-series on it.
Yet I never felt closer to the horror, the reality and the mundane day-to-day living of it than through this film.
Roman Polanski lived as a child in a Jewish Ghetto in Poland. His experience informs each moment of this film and takes the viewer right into the streets and the alleys of late 1930's, early1940's Poland.
The film begins with the young pianist, portrayed memorably by Adrien Brody, playing for the Polish radio. The studio ends up being bombed-but it is more of a "ok, here are the bombs, let's move on," than an overally dramatic reaction. That's the beauty of this movie: surreal horror is incorporated into everyday lives.
The film then traces the descent of Brody and his family from their beautiful aparment in the city, into a smaller one in the ghetto, into the waiting area for a concentration camp. They are not saints-they fight, they snip at small things, they roll their eyes at an annoying woman in the waiting area (until they hear her tragedy)-and such humanity makes the horror so much more real.
Through a series of improbable twists (but as has been noted, those who survived did so only because of improbable twists), Brody's character escapes the train to the concentration camp and ends up going underground in the city. I won't say more to ruin anything.
I would highly recommend this movie to individuals who appreciate serious, intelligent moviemaking on profound themes. I would not recommend this movie to individuals who need a lot of action or melodrama or levity. This movie achieves a soul searing impact not through hand-wringing dramatic scenes but through subtle and at times silent small moments.
Rating:
Summary: Words Cannot Describe...
Review: The saying goes that "A picture is worth a thousand words"...if that is the case, than this film is worth millions of them. Very few films have the ability to make the viewer cry, feel pain, or joy. This one will take you through them all. At the close of this film you will feel as though you have lived through everything that Szpilman lived through, as well as those who were not so fortunate. You will feel weary at the end...you will feel like you have triumphed over something. You will feel a duty to live your life to the fullest and to allow others to live their lives as well. You will learn a lesson that we all should learn. The human spirit cannot be broken so long as there is something it can hope for. Brody is exquisite as Szpilman, taking on the burden forced on the musician by the oppressing Nazi invaders. You can look in his eyes and see the pain that Szpilman must have felt. You can also see his strength. You will not regret seeing this film. It's simply not possible.
Rating:
Summary: An extrmely sad, yet AMAZING film
Review: I just saw the pianist a couple of weeks ago. I saw it because i was really interested in knowing how Adrien Brody's performance could have been any better than Daniel Day-Lewis's perfomance in Gangs of New York. WHen i saw this film, i was shocked at the beginning. No film i had ever seen about the holocaust had touched me so much, and make me realize the atrocious things the jews passed through. Adrien Brody's perfomance was spectacular!! He deserved 110% the oscar he won. The directing oscar was very well deserved too. This film shows how extreme and devastating the holoucast was. I've always cosidered the holoucast the most horrible and unhuman things in history... and this film made me realiza that i was right. Few films have touched me in such a deep way, so i hope you all see it. Even though is a really tough film to see, i recomend it to everyone. I can't way until it comes out!! It is one of the best movies ever made!!
Rating:
Summary: Superb!
Review: I loved this film and thought it was outstanding, however, I cried buckets of tears from beginning to end. It is a true story and a shocking reminder of the horrors of World War II. Brilliantly directed and authentic and nominated for several Oscars. Adrien Brody deservingly won for Best Actor.
|
