Movie Reviews

Roman Polanski's The Pianist is brilliant in the way it shows us the entire progression of World War Two and its effect on Poland by allowing us to view it all from the perspective of the real-life Jewish pianist named Wladyslaw Szpilman, who desperately tries to survive the onslaught of the holocaust. We follow him from his relatively happy moments with his family in 1939 (the Germans have started bombing his hometown of Warsaw, but with the news that Britain and France have declared war against Hitler, it is believed that the conflict will be a very short one) to the creation of the Warsaw ghetto (in which his ability to perform hard-labour spares him from being sent to the concentration camps), to his eventual escape and years spent in hiding (and at the mercy of non-Jewish Polish friends to provide him with food and housing), and finally to the Polish uprising againt the Nazis and the liberation by the Russians at the end of the war (when all that's left of the entire city of Warsaw are the burnt and crumbling remains of empty buildings).

Much like Schindler's List, this film takes a very harsh and realistic look at the atrocities commited by the Nazis agains the Jews -- some of it is a little difficult to watch. Because of the almost unrelenting ugliness of what we see throughout most of the film, there's a scene near the end that is made all the more beautiful and powerful -- it's a wonderful moment of 'creation' in light of all of the horrible destruction that precedes it, but I won't give it away here.