THE PIANIST

The Pianist is a serious movie brought out in a tabloid-besotted time, a prestige picture that invigorates a study of character and history that knows irony to be a part of life and not the purpose of art. It is a film that rivals every one of the greatest Holocaust films ever made. Old-fashioned in both visual and narrative style and in its overall restraint, the film clearly benefits from the director's first-hand knowledge of the territory.

Roman Polanski is probably the strongest film about the persecution of the Jews during World War II. The story follows a brilliant pianist, a Polish Jew Wladyslaw Szpilman witnesses the restrictions Nazis place on Jews in the Polish capital, from restricted access to the building of the Warsaw ghetto. As his family is rounded up to be shipped off to the Nazi labor camps, he escapes deportation and eludes capture by living in the ruins of Warsaw. Szpilman is left to fend for himself and he spends the next several years dashing from one abandoned home to another, desperate to avoid capture by German occupation troops.

The Pianist garnered best acting award (Adrien Brody), best direction (Roman Polanski), and best adapted screenplay at the 2003 Academy Awards. 

Is The Pianist is based on the true story?

Yes, it is a true story based on the book and was first published in 1946 as Death of a City, but was banned by Polish Communist officials and went out of print until 1998, when a new edition was issued as The Pianist. Wladyslaw Szpilman, somehow, despite the brutal atrocities that he sees and experiences, the artist not only survives but retains the ability to create beauty through music. 

Besides, I get the feeling that Polanski is expressing through this movie how he deals with such painful scars, haunting memories, and lasting grief. I got some information that Roman Polanski a survivor of the Holocaust who lost many family members and had an experience been a prisoner of the Polish ghetto during World War II.