Winner of the prestigious Golden Palm award at the 2002 Cannes film festival, The Pianist is the film that Roman Polanski was born to direct. A childhood survivor of Nazi-occupied Poland, Polanski was uniquely suited to tell the story of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish Jew and concert pianist (played by Adrien Brody) who witnessed the Nazi invasion of Warsaw, miraculously eluded the Nazi death camps, and survived throughout World War II by hiding among the ruins of the Warsaw ghetto. Unlike any previous dramatization of the Nazi holocaust, The Pianist steadfastly maintains its protagonist's singular point of view, allowing Polanski to create an intimate odyssey on an epic wartime scale, drawing a direct parallel between Szpilman's tenacious, primitive existence and the wholesale destruction of the city he refuses to abandon. Uncompromising in its physical and emotional authenticity, The Pianist strikes an ultimate note of hope and soulful purity. As with Schindler's List, it's one of the greatest films ever made about humanity's darkest chapter. --Jeff Shannon
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The winner of the top prize, the coveted Palme d’Or (Best Picture) award, at the 2002 Cannes International Film Festival, THE PIANIST is the latest film from one of the world’s true visionary filmmakers: Roman Polanski. The film is Polanski’s most personal statement, the one he has waited four decades to make, a testament to the belief that the triumph of the human spirit is wedded to the transforming power of art.
THE PIANIST was adapted by U.K. playwright/screenwriter Ronald Harwood ("The Dresser") from the autobiography of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish Jew who detailed his survival during World War II. A celebrated composer and pianist, he played the last live music heard over Polish radio airwaves before Nazi artillery hit. During the brutal occupation, he eluded deportation and remained in the devastated Warsaw Ghetto. There, he struggled to stay alive even when cast away from those he loved. He would eventually reclaim his artistic gifts, and confront his fears, with aid from the unlikeliest source – a German officer who helped him hide in the final days of the war.
Adrien Brody ("Summer of Sam," "The Thin Red Line") portrays Mr. Szpilman. The supporting cast includes Thomas Kretschmann ("Blade II"), Frank Finlay ("The Four Musketeers"), Maureen Lipman ("Educating Rita"), Emilia Fox (the "David Copperfield" mini-series), Ed Stoppard ("The Little Vampire"), Julia Rayner ("Topsy-Turvy"), and newcomer Jessica Kate Meyer.
Roman Polanski himself escaped the Cracow Ghetto, at the age of 7, through a hole in a barbed-wire fence. THE PIANIST marks the first time that he has made a movie in Poland in 40 years.
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Roman Polanski's THE PIANIST is based on the memoirs of the talented pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrian Brody), a Polish Jew, who miraculously survived World War II. The first half of the film transports viewers to 1939 Poland, and brings it to life clearly and believably. Szpilman is a tall, handsome, winsome man who is revered for his piano performances on public radio. He lives with his family--an intelligent, loving, and spirited bunch--in an upscale flat in central Warsaw. Bombings have begun to torment the citizens of Warsaw, and step by step, the Nazis infiltrate, the Jews are branded and set apart from their neighbors, imprisoned in a ghetto, and slowly exterminated. The story is told through Szpilman's eyes, and thus carries as much confusion and fear as disgust and torment. Polanski paints Warsaw in bleak shades of gray and black, expressing the helplessness of the Jewish people and the cruelty of the Nazis with captivating photography. In the second half of the film, which takes place in the early 1940s, Szpilman is alone, having managed to avoid the trains to the death camps. His struggle to survive, with some help from non-Jews but mostly his own will to thrive, takes place in long, silent, languid stretches filled with the imagined piano music that inspires Szpilman to live. In a climactic scene of immense beauty and spine-tingling tension, Szpilman must actually perform for a German soldier who is inexplicably patrolling the near-deserted and utterly dilapidated Warsaw ghetto. THE PIANIST, in the subtlety of its sublime and heartbreaking tale, is carried by the intensely moving performance of Brody, whose transformation is truly unforgettable.
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"The best picture of the year." -Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune
Nominated for 7 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and winner of 3, The Pianist stars Oscar winner Adrien Brody in the true-life story of brilliant pianist and composer Wladyslaw Szpilman, the most acclaimed young musician of his time until his promising career was interrupted by the onset of World War II. This powerful, ultimately triumphant film follows Szpilman's heroic and inspirational journey of survival with the unlikely help from a sympathetic German officer. A truly unforgettable epic, testifying to both the power of hope and the resiliency of the human spirit, The Pianist is a miraculous tale of survival masterfully brought to life by visionary filmmaker Roman Polanski in his most personal movie ever.
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A brilliant pianist, a Polish Jew, witnesses the restrictions Nazis place on Jews in the Polish capital, from restricted access to the building of the Warsaw ghetto. As his family is rounded up to be shipped off to the Nazi labor camps, he escapes deportation and eludes capture by living in the ruins of Warsaw.
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Based on the extraordinary events of Polish musician Wladyslaw Szpilman's life, The Pianist gave Roman Polanski the chance to revisit and distil his own experiences living as a Polish Jew during World War II. A long-awaited project for the director, this personal angle has resulted in a deeply affecting film that marks a startling return to form for Polanski.
Szpilman (Adrien Brody) is a pianist recording a recital for a local radio station when bombs drop on Warsaw in 1939, just before the Nazi occupation of the city really begins to take hold. As he and his family are slowly stripped of their rights, they endure the humiliation of being forced to live in a walled ghetto, already overcrowded with the entire Jewish population of Warsaw. In a lucky twist, Szpilman is handed the chance to escape, given that he leaves his family in the ghetto to be inevitably shipped off to concentration camps, becoming a fugitive living in terror and isolation.
Taking a classical and measured approach to structure and style, Polanski's elegant film depicts the brutalities and dehumanising experiences that Szpilman endured without making him a hero; he is more of an observer who is tortured by what he helplessly watches. With the film focusing on events entirely from his experiences yet furnished with very little dialogue, Brody gives a subtle yet powerful performance and the end result is devastating. This is as much a standout film for Polanski as it is for his immensely talented leading man.
On the DVD:The Pianist arrives on disc with a surprisingly sparse amount of extras. Only one is really substantial: "A Story of Survival", a 45-minute making of feature which gives a lot of time to Roman Polanski and his own experiences; both of making the film and relating it to his time spent in the Krakow ghetto during World War II. Adrien Brody also features, talking about his preparation for the role and his experiences working with Polanski on such a personal project. Featuring alongside is footage of the real Warsaw ghetto taken by Nazi soldiers and the photographs used as a basis for some of the film's key scenes. Most poignant are the images of the real Szpilman, who died in 2000, still finding pleasure in playing the piano despite his horrendous past. A photo gallery, trailer, posters and filmographies are perfunctory additions. --Laura Bushell
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