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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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