Rent The Pianist (2002)

The most intense holocaust - The Pianist review by JD

There have been several holocaust films each with a different message this was the most intensely horrifying and emotional by far. Extremely violent. Some of the acting was a bit thin (not Lipman's nor Finlay's finest) but utterly exhausting.

Never Again - The Pianist review by Steve

Faithful adaptation of a war memoir by Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Jewish classical pianist who hid in the Warsaw ghetto throughout the Nazi occupation of Poland, while his family was murdered in the death camp at Treblinka. It's a harrowing account of a survivor who endured mostly by pure luck while the city was destroyed by the German army.

This is personal for director Roman Polanski, who lived through WWII in similar circumstances after his parents were sent to concentration camps; his pregnant mother died at Auschwitz. Most of the first part of the story is familiar and suffers from a poor script and performances from the British support cast. It mainly restates the vileness of fascism.

The second half is stronger as the pianist appears to grow feral in the ruins of Warsaw, scavenging for food. Ultimately, when he plays Chopin for a German officer, we are assured that this music represents his humanity; it is his own personal resistance. Adrien Brody won a well deserved Oscar in the title role and maybe even eclipses Polanski's film.

His slow degradation is horrifying. While the narrative is dramatically uneven and reworks conventional situations, there is value as a warning from history. It demonstrates what atrocities the citizen is capable of when there is no law; whether it's obeying orders to clear the ghetto with flamethrowers... or trying to set fire to a hostel containing refugees.