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Review

There's a moment a third of the way through The Pianist, Polanski's devastating story of survival, in which Wladyslaw Szpilman, a pianist for Polish radio, runs through the ravaged streets of the Warsaw Ghetto having just escaped a train ride to certain death. It is an indelible picture of solitude, of one man's tortured conscience, of a heartbreaking, interrupted farewell. To this scene, as he does to all those before and after it, director Polanski brings an emotional power as to make the heart ache as he captures moments of his own childhood in Nazi-occupied Poland to tell the true story of another afflicted survivor. Academy Award winner Brody is terrific as Szpilman, who slowly watches his family and fellow Jewish neighbors suffer indignity upon indignity under Nazi rule. As one by one those around him are sent to the death camps, Szpilman must summon all his courage in order to survive. Though The Pianist doesn’t back away from showing the myriad of hateful Nazi acts, the film's focus is on what acts Szpilman must do and endure to live. This is not a story of a heroic underground fighter, but of a witness to actrocity, a hero by merit of his own survival who more than likely has more in common with the rest of us, no matter what we tell ourselves we would have done under the circumstances. The Pianist is Polanski's best film in decades, and through craft and cunning and awakened demons of his own, he has composed a singular testament to the struggle of not just one man, but all men. Oscars for Best Actor, Director and Screenplay.