A movie that is based on the true story of a pianist's, Wladyslaw Szpilman, surivival during the Nazi invasion of Poland. The pianist played by Adrien Brody, takes the audience into the Warsaw ghettos to show the hardship endured by Jews. The movie flashes forward through different time frames to cover the various types of hardships such as segregation of Jews that were forced to wear armbands, walled-off ghetto, "deportation", and the random execution of Jews. Unlike other Holocaust movies that depicts mainly on the brutality of Jews in death camps, The Pianist focuses mainly on Szpilman's escape from the ghetto and how he manages to survive past the war.
The movie is a riveting reenactment of the Holocaust because it left nothing to the imagination. In most movies, you would see a Nazi holding a gun and you'd hear a band and assume whoever the Nazi was shooting would be dead without actually being shown so. This movie shows everything -from the flowing blood of a bullet entry on a head to the black and rotting corpses lying on the street. The scene that was particularly gripping was when they showed how small Adrien Brody was amongst the vast city ruins that appear endless. One of the main downfalls of this movie is its failure to develop the main character. The lack of background knowledge of the character causes the audience to feel no less sympathy for him than the other Jews.
One scene that I think is particularly funny is near the end when Adrien Brody is hiding one of those bomb wrecked houses and he hears the Russian military tanks broadcasting victory music. In Adrien Brody's delight that the war is over he rushes out of the house to greet the Russians entering the area. Little did he remember that he's still wearing the Nazi overcoat that the Nazi General had given him. As you would have guessed, the Russian soldiers started shooting at him and he runs back into the house. After the soldiers held fire, Adrien Brody comes out of the house with two hands in the air shouting that he's Polish. The funny part is one of the Russian soliders looks at him and assures the others that "he looks Polish alright". WHAT?! How can you tell someone is Polish purely by looks? That part is a bit weak in reasoning.
Above all the movie's flaws, the overall impression of the movie is remarkable. This movie provides a different prospective towards the Holocaust and is definitely worth seeing. Hope you will see it too. ^_^