rating:
(out of
4 stars)France, Germany, United Kingdom, Poland; 2002
Directed by Roman Polanski; produced by Roman Polanski, Robert Benmussa, Alain Sarde; screenplay by Ronald Harwood
Starring Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann, Frank Finlay, Maureen Lipman, Emilia Fox, Ed Stoppard
Below you will find a temporary review for this film. The real (better, more complete) review will be online very soon.
Roman Polanski brings us a beautiful movie set in the Warsaw ghetto in World
War II. Beautiful it is, but sad and disturbing it is too. Most of us heard
of the terrible things that happened in the ghetto, now some of those little
big things are shown.
We see what Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody) sees. He is the pianist and he
plays his piano for the Warsaw radio. Then the bombs start to fall. The war
begins and after a while the ghetto becomes reality. All the jews must go to
that ghetto, a brick wall around it. From that moment we see the things that
jews had to face in that time; it was terrible.
The movie is not about those things. It is about the survival of a man. The
horrific events are images, seperate parts, in the story. Szpilman survives
the ghetto, and then he goes from place to place to hide, always sick,
always afraid.
I watched this movie and I couldn't believe some of the things I saw. You
sometimes heard people in the theatre say something because they couldn't
believe it either. The movie had a huge impact on me. The way Polanski
handles some scenes is more than great, it is perfect. Adrien Brody finds
the perfect way to play Szpilman. He is not a hero, just a survivor, mostly
by luck. The cinematography is beautiful as well, a lot of point-of-view
shots. We see exactly what Szpilman sees. And then there is the music.
Beautiful. The scenes where a piano is played are perfect in their places.
Just see this movie, may be even better than Schindler's List, it is
definitely something you should have seen.