Rating: 
Summary: No New Insights
Review: The Pianist shows the cruelty, the inhuman treatment of the Warsaw Jews by the Nazis during World War II. It delivers what it promises -- the story of a Jewish refugee, forced into hiding as the Nazis methodically isolate and exterminate the Jewish population. The main problem with this film is that, like car chases and graphic violence, the subject has been revisited so often that very few movies break any new ground. We see the refugee, Wladyslaw Szpilman, reduced from cavalier indifference to a desparate effort to survive. A number of people help him, feed him, hide him, including a German officer. Alas, he seems focused only on saving his own skin. We watch with him as Jewish partisans fight the Germans in a lopsided match; we see Polish citizens risking their lives to hide Jewish refugees. Unlike "Schindler's List" or "The Garden of the Finzi Contini's", there seems to be no message beyond "Look what horrible things happened to these people" -- not a startling revelation to most movie-goers. The movie is well-made, though a bit long. Be warned, the 'R' is for a little off-color language and a LOT of graphic violence. I didn't see any good reason for the Academy Award nomination other than as a comeback vehicle for Roman Polanski.
Rating: 
Summary: Passafist Dissects The Pianist using Castaway
Review: Hollywood [Bad]! I have just witnessed a cinematic masterpiece, a film that is about characters and events, that's lyrical and beautiful and all I can think of after it is how much of a tool Tom Hanks is. Why is it that after experiencing Roman Polanski's THE PIANIST I can only think of Robert Zemeckis's CAST AWAY? It's a really an eerie feeling, but go with me for a little while. Maybe my ranting will begin to make sense.THE PIANIST is the powerful and lyrical life story of Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrian Brody, Summer of Sam), a Jew living in Poland during World War II. It follows him from a peaceful life as a piano player on polish radio, to the ghetto's of Warsaw, to hiding in empty apartments, and all the while dreaming of life as it once was. CASTAWAY is the story of Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks, The Money Pit) a FedEx employee that gets trapped on a deserted island and in the end talks to volleyball. How are these two stories similar? They're both about men trying to make through unbelievable circumstances and how they must do it alone. One takes the Hollywood approach, where everything is ambiguously tied up at the end. The other takes a more lyrical approach, where a man returns to what he does best. The Pianist takes the lyrical approach and in the end is more successful a story. Brody is fantastic. For much of the film he's teetering on that thin line between madness and sanity. Nothing more telling than the scene, in which, Szpilman, whom hasn't eaten in days, finds an unopened jar of pickles. In his attempt to open that jar he is confronted by his worst fear, a German guard standing before him. In a Hollywood film, this scene would be about Szpilman breaking free and running away. But in the PIANST it about him longing for that can of pickles. When he picks it up off the floor he holds onto it for dear life. If his life is not taken by the guard he's got to eat so he's not letting go. It's a small moment that is really powerful. I contrast that with Tom Hanks teetering on that thin line as well. He has a friend, he talks to a volleyball. But this relationship is far different. This relationship is about giving the actor something to talk to. The most dramatic moment in this film is when he losses the Volleyball. Problem is the film suggests that the volleyball is a character and not a need, like food. This moment is so huge it spoils what should be a moment of discovery for the character. The moment when he can go on without his crutch, but all the audience cares about is a stupid volleyball. The final moments in THE PIANIST are also small but have strong impact. Moments before the credits roll we see Szpilmann sitting in an open field, wondering what to do next. It then cuts to him doing what he's always done. He's beaten those who have tried to keep him down. It's encouraging but the music doesn't have to swell, and the violins don't have to play. It's a small intimate moment. The scene does not force emotion, but there is much there. It plays with life the way life really is, when the battle is over, we may have changed but we still sometimes go back to what we are good at. He one tha battle and he can play again. CASTAWAY puts the hero right in the middle of a literal crossroads. What should he do next? The camera circles around him, and he walks down a road. But while Both moments are very similar, this moment is over sentimental. It forces emotions and it fails to move you, you don't really care what road he choses. It kind of diminishes his battle. He has nowhere to go and I'm sure none of us want to follow. In film sometimes plot is inconsequential. I would have loved to have been trapped on an island with Wladyslaw Szpilman as much as I didn't care about Chuck Noland on an island, and well he'd probably wind up gassed in a polish concentration camp had he come up in that time. That's what is great about Brody's performance, he is in every scene of this movie, and fills the screen with a character of depth and strength. Hanks fills the screen with a character of no depth and mostly surface strength. It's amazing that I could compare two completely opposite films and explain how one fails and the other one works. But I have found a new film I can call a favorite and another film I can never rent again. One is powerful, the other dull and yet they have two characters that can be very similar. Do yourself a favor and rent THE PIANST, you won't be disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: Best Film of 2002
Review: The New York Times recently published an article that hypothetically asked if there were too many recent documentary and feature films made about the Holocaust. The answer was an obvious no, but it does stand to reason that films about the Holocaust have become a genre that is all their own. And, like any genre, there are good movies and lousy ones. The Holocaust itself is such an emotionally loaded subject that it's difficult to dismiss any material based on it. And that's why there is a perceived glut of Holocaust movies out, because all of them are taken seriously (except maybe "Jakob the Liar"). The Holocaust remains a fascinating subject for the simple reason that it happened. It is, along with slavery, the darkest chapter of recent human history, and it cannot be undone. It cannot be reversed. There is a finality to the events that remains terribly difficult to deal with, and it's what ultimately makes Roman Polanski's The Pianist such a devastating experience. It's curious that Polanski, who is himself a survivor of the Holocaust (he lost all but one member of his immediate family when he was just a boy), would fashion the Pianist as such an unsparing and unsentimental look at what happened to Polish Jews during World War II. Then again, it makes perfect sense. Polanski knows what an unforgiving time that was, and he refuses to sugarcoat it. Not that a movie like Schindler's List wrongfully dabbled in adding extra melodrama to the era, but The Pianist is important because it seems to get the true emotions of its characters just right. You feel like the story happened exactly this way in real life. Polanski also filters the story solely through the point-of-view of Wladislaw Szpilman (played by Adrien Brody, whose portrayal merits adulation beyond the Oscar he has already received). He does not try and make Szpilman's story a microcosm of every Jew's story. Nor does he try and make Szpilman an overly herioc figure. He is simply a normal man who miraculously survives and cannot explain why. The fact that Szpilman survives the Holocaust makes The Pianist riveting as a story, but the idea that he had to do it in such complete and total isolation (the latter portion of the film plays almost like the movie Cast Away) is what makes it doubly powerful. If this is what Szpilman had to endure in order to survive, imagine what others had to go through. And is it a better fate to survive such atrocities rather than perish? Polanski provides no answer, and that's why the film unsettled many who saw it. It would be foolish in discussing The Pianist and its accolades to not acknowledge the controversy surrounding Polanski himself. Regardless of people's opinion of Polanski (and it can range from admiration to disgust, sometimes from the same person), The Pianist stands alone as an important work of art. And, the fact that Hollywood actually gave Polanski an Oscar in absentia for the movie speaks more to its undeniable power than it does any kind of perceived liberal favoritism (though there's plenty of that to go around in the film industry). Polanski clearly saw a parallel between his childhood memories and the story of Szpilman, and it shows all over the movie. It makes The Pianist his own, but not in any kind of self-indulgent manner. Polanski also saw something in Brody that must have reminded him of himself. Brody, who had gone relatively unnoticed despite his wealth of talent, here gives a performance so complete it's hard to imagine that he is in real life just a kid from Brooklyn. Thanks to Brody, some portions of the movie that could come off as contrived (in particular the piano-playing scene in a destroyed Warsaw ghetto), instead feel real and are completely heartbreaking. Other actors are effective here, but Brody is the film, and the job he does is nothing short of amazing. Roger Ebert has said numerous times that no good film is depressing. I disagree with that (you won't be partying after watching Schindler's List). But great, emotionally difficult films like The Pianist are far too rewarding to avoid. It is easily the best film of last year, and perhaps the best dramatized Holocaust film ever made. Art like this makes the words "Never Forget" a whole lot easier to remember.
Rating:
Summary: Highly Recommend
Review: The depiction of how the Jewish were treated brings out empathetic feelings for those who suffered through the experience. It leaves one wondering how such atrocities could have really happened. The strength and determination of the human spirit to survive through such deprivation is awe inspiring. The movie is long but worth it. This true story based movie is excellent.
Rating:
Summary: The most powerful story to finally come out of Hollywood
Review: Like Dracula, World War II is probably one of the most filmed eras. You have Oskar Schindler's saving the Jews in Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List, the bombing of Pearl Harbor in Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor, and the Invasion of Normandy in Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan. Here, Roman Polanski directs a story that takes place throughout World War II through the eyes of a Polish man and his love for the piano. The story begins as Wladyslaw Spilzman, a pianist is living through augmenting worse conditions. He then is forced to hide through the ruins of Warsaw, until his rescue from the ruins by a kind hearted German officer. Through dealing with famine, tragedy and death, he manages to get through it by his wanting to play the piano, even in his mind. In one scene, he imagines playing the piano notes in his head without actually playing for fear of Germans overhearing. In today's era of overblown movies without substance like Legally Blonde or really expensive but good films like Matrix Reloaded, it's about time a film came out of Hollywood with a gripping story and human characters, rather than a big green Shrek reject.
Rating:
Summary: Magnificent Recreation Of An Amazing Personal Journey!
Review: One of the most magical aspects of movie making can be found in the rare occasion when such a dramatization of a best-selling book results in an equally spellbinding film. Of course, the fact that it was Academy Award winning director Roman Polanski chosen to direct the project was a critical choice in bringing this shattering story of a man who found his humanity in classical music even in the midst of the Nazi takeover of Poland during World War Two to the screen. Given Mr. Polanski's personal experience as a Holocaust survivor, he has an exceptionally well-hewn capability to recreate all the sights, sounds, and sensibilities of the times to the movie with loving accuracy. In so doing he has created a modern masterpiece along the lines of such similar treatments of the period as Stephen Spielberg's "Schindler's List". Yet, while Spielberg apparently was striving to paint a broader-brushed treatment of the period and the horrific excesses of the Nazi treatment of the indigenous Jewish population during the war, Polanski concentrates much more exclusively on the personal journey of a solitary human being, in this case a pianist so singularly focused on his art and its centrality to his existence that he is often almost schizophrenic in his ability to ignore or block out all the mayhem, chaos and destruction that surrounds his every move. Against such a backdrop of the momentous events transpiring from the German army's invasion of Poland in September of 1939 through the end of the war is the pianist's story so marvelously told. His survival through the most barbaric of conditions imaginable is a testament both to his good luck and his hardy strength of will to survive for the sake of his blessed classical music. Young actor Adrian Brody, in an Academy Award winning performance, both accurately and amazingly portrays the almost unbelievable events experienced by author/pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman as he makes his tortured way through the brutal gauntlet of the Nazi killing machine bent on the systematic extermination through the combined strategies of enforced work regimes, slow starvation, and murder in the death camps. The protagonist survives through a combination of his own wits as well as through the unexpected and strictly forbidden assistance of others, many of whom literally risked their own safety and lives by reaching out to aid him. Polanski puts a human face on the Germans as well, showing at one point how in the midst of the unspeakable horror many of his colleagues were visiting on the Polish Jews and gypsies, even an officer in the Wehrmacht could be willing to risk his own safety to assist the pianist. The cinematography is remarkable, with a superb depiction of the massive destruction that modern war brings in its wake. The overshots of a totally destroyed Warsaw is a graphic demonstration of such total devastation on a scale so unimaginable that it would be otherwise difficult to grasp either intellectually or emotionally. This is a film that belongs in any serious film fan's library, and one I can heartily recommend for all but the youngest viewers. Enjoy!
Rating: 
Summary: it's an okay movie but definitely not great
Review: the script is too simple and the story is just too common. if the so-called pianist could be picked as a worthwhile mentioning character, then everyboty like you and me could be picked as a person whose stories need to be told. this is just another 2nd world war survivor story, plain and simple albeit bored. the whole movie, to me, is just a guy who's trying very hard to hide from the nazis and throughout the whole movie, he's just trying to get some food to eat on a day to day basis. he's not a great person, or a person with great personality. the guy who got the oscar didn't seem to be entitled getting one, since after i've watched jack nicholson's and nicholas cage's oscar competing movies, adrien brody is simply not on the same altitude yet. well, on the other hand, it's just like watching a grey hound dogs race, the winner usually is not your first pick. by saying that, it only reminds me two other terribly made and acted movies, "lif is beautiful" and "my big fat greek wedding", simply by thinking about why they would be turned out to be the front runners is beyond my comprehension.
Rating:
Summary: For musicians or music lovers
Review: I usually don't watch movies, I usually don't buy movies, I usually don't rent movies, and I'd rather curl up with a book than watch a movie. I'm not much of a movie watcher, but I am a pianist, so I was automatically attracted to the title. And wow! -- I was impressed. The war history and survival story make this movie appealing to the average watcher, and the frequent bloodshed make it exciting, but it was really the music that drew me towards this film. The violence, Nazi guns firing, and gore was horrific, but the deepest part of the movie was when he sat down at the piano and played, for the first time in three years. Musicians can appreciate this movie more.
Rating: 
Summary: POLANSKI EXORCISES HIS DEMONS
Review: If ever a director was born to make a specific film, it's Roman Polanski and THE PIANIST. Winner of numerous international awards including Oscars© for Best Picture and Best Director, "The Pianist" follows the true story of Polish pianist and composer Wladyslaw Szpilman's miraculous escape from the Warsaw Ghetto. Epic in scope with attention to the minutest period details, the film's authenticity resonates long after it ends. Adrien Brody underplays Szpilman and we understand that his desire to again create music helped him survive. Perhaps the poets had it right when they merged Beauty and Truth and Freedom. A significant extra is the documentary "A Story of Survival" in which Polanski reflects on his own horrific childhood in the Warsaw Ghetto. Clearly, every frame of "The Pianist" is filtered through that lens. This is a great film of horror and hope.
Rating:
Summary: Survival Against all Odds
Review: Not only were the depictions of the fall of Poland chilling, they were based on director Polanski's own life. Don't miss the "making of" featurette included on the DVD. Here you will learn about how the film's locations were chosen and the meticulous detail used throughout the film.
Adrien Brody rises to star status, made even more impressive by his physical deterioration and the training he undertook to improve his actual piano playing skills. His performance conveys even more with the use of his body than the words he speaks. And those words are at times poetic.
This film is an inspiration to those living now and for generations to come. It was haunting and unforgettable, yet uplifting. Don't miss it.
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