The Pianist

The Pianist is the story of the Jewish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody) and his family as times get worse in Warsaw in Nazi occupied Poland during World War II. The movie shows the worse and worse conditions Wladyslaw and his family have to live in. Eventually they are all packed up and moved into the overpacked ghettos. Their friends begin dieing and the family gets separated into different concentration/death/work camps. Wladyslaw manages to escape and spends the greater part of the war in hiding in different safe houses provided by the resistance. Near the end of the war he takes up residence in an attic of an old abandoned bombed out house. He is given food and protection by an unlikely German Captain Wilm Hosenfield (Thomas Kretschmann).

This movie was pretty good but not as good as other Jewish World War II movies I've seen such as Life is Beautiful and Schindler's List. The movie was very artfully done with great cinematography and music, but the plot seemed to have something lacking. It wasn't as moving and interesting to me as Life is Beautiful. The movie seemed long and drawn out to me as well. The whole movie seemed to be one long anti-climax. What saves the movie is the subject matter and the artful approach. So overall not that great of a movie, but it was ok.

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The Pianist at IMDB
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