Sunday, 24 February 2013

The Pianist (2002)


☆ ☆ ☆ 


The Pianist (2002) -- R. Polanski

Adrian Brody gives a stunning and remarkably "internal" performance (because for half the movie he has no one to talk to) as a survivor of the Holocaust in Polanski's haunting remembrance of his youth (in the guise of telling Wladyslaw Szpilman's story).  The Nazis roll into Poland and from then on the movie is one relentless and harrowing slide into darkness.  This is gut-wrenching stuff made all the more so because it is based on true events-- the world really was that evil 70 years ago.  And, yes, humankind is still capable of perpetrating such evil even today.  I think I can hear deeper emotions in the playing of the piano just knowing the pianist's life story.  But can you hear them if you don't know?


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