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All-Reviews.com Movie/Video Review
The Pianist
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  out of 4
| *Also starring: | Emilia Fox, Maureen Lipman, Ed Stoppard, Frank Finlay |
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Review by Susan Granger
3½ stars out of 4
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Based on celebrated composer/pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman's 1946 memoir,
"Death of a City," this epic Holocaust-survivor story revolves around the plight
of a talented musician who was playing piano on Polish state radio when Hitler's
Luftwaffe attacked Warsaw in September, 1939. At first unbelieving, Wladyslaw
(Adrien Brody) and his family struggle to maintain some semblance of a
lifestyle within the cruel, humiliating restrictions imposed on the half-million
Jews who were herded into the walled Ghetto. However, it soon becomes apparent
that they're doomed to slaughter on the streets or in the death camp. Only
Wladyslaw manages to escape the brutal, mandatory deportation. Aided by
admirers, he's sheltered from capture by a series of sympathizers and Resistance
fighters who hide him in attics or cellars until he's forced to fend for himself
- once, by pretending to be a corpse. In one subtle yet astonishing sequence,
he's discovered by a Nazi officer who, miraculously, decides not to turn him in,
choosing, instead, to listen - transfixed - as he plays a concerto. Director
Roman Polanski (who as a child escaped from the Ghetto by crawling through a
hole in a barbed-wire fence), screenwriter Ronald Harwood, cinematographer Pawel
Edelman and production designer Allan Starski (Oscar-winner for "Schindler's
List") impeccably re-create the atrocities of that sad, horrifying era of
20th-century history. As for Wladyslaw Szpilman, he died at 88 in 2000. Although
not on a level with "Schindler's List," on the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10,
"The Pianist" is a haunting 9. For those who enjoy trivia: the little girl
carrying the empty bird cage in a crowd scene is Polanski's 11 year-old daughter
Morgan; it's a poignant moment comparable to Steven Spielberg's "the girl with
the red dress."
Copyright © 2002 Susan Granger
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