Average Rating: 8.2/10
Reviews Counted: 178
Fresh: 170 | Rotten: 8
Well-acted and dramatically moving, The Pianist is Polanski's best work in years.
Average Rating: 8.1/10
Critic Reviews: 35
Fresh: 33 | Rotten: 2
Well-acted and dramatically moving, The Pianist is Polanski's best work in years.
liked it
Average Rating: 4/5
User Ratings: 218,555
Filmmaker Roman Polanski, who as a boy growing up in Poland watched while the Nazis devastated his country during World War II, directed this downbeat drama based on the true story of a privileged musician who spent five years struggling against the Nazi occupation of Warsaw. Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody) is a gifted classical pianist born to a wealthy Jewish family in Poland. The Szpilmans have a large and comfortable flat in Warsaw which Wladyslaw shares with his mother and father (Maureen
Dec 27, 2002 Limited
May 27, 2003
$32.5M
Focus Features
All Critics (184) | Top Critics (36) | Fresh (175) | Rotten (8) | DVD (26)
Brody is a sublimely haunting presence at the heart of The Pianist.
It's Roman Polanski's strongest and most personally felt movie.
In going home to tell Szpilman's story Polanski seems reborn: once again he's become a filmmaker who matters.
We admire this film for its harsh objectivity and refusal to seek our tears, our sympathies.
This material means something to Polanski and, because of this, he brings personal details that might have evaded another filmmaker.
A portrait of hell so shattering it's impossible to shake.
True story of a Jewish pianist; OK for older kids.
Roman Polanski's "The Pianist" is the director's finest achievement, and elevates Adrien Brody (Oscar win for Best Actor 2002) to eminence in his representation of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish Jew who survived the Nazi occupation of Warsaw.
A film that rivals every one of the greatest Holocaust films ever made...
While the film itself may not live up to the advance hype, Brody exceeds expectations.
Une belle réussite fait menant à une réflexion honnête sur un sujet face auquel on aurait pu croire que tout aavait déjà été dit.
[I]t takes six or seven people to keep one half-dead Jew alive.... Wladyslaw's situation is extraordinary but what's happening on screen doesn't really feel so extraordinary. There's almost no emphasis, no point of view.
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.
We have been to these ghettos before, seen the skeletons (both alive and dead), smelled the burning. It's not a movie at all for us, is it?
By comparison, Schindler's List is Pretentious Hollywood crap.
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.
I get the feeling that Polanski is expressing through this movie how he deals with such painful scars, haunting memories, and lasting grief.
Polanski, like so many performers and artists' managers of the present day, makes the classic mistake of not trusting the art.
As a result of the attention to detail and commitment of Polanski and Brody, this is a harrowing, realistic story of what it was like to live in the Warsaw Ghetto and under Nazi occupation.
As someone whose Holocaust memories are burned into his psyche, Polanski finds the no-frills truth in this devastated landscape.
The Pianist is a terrific film. The film is one of the better films starring Adrien Brody. Director Roman Polanski directs a terrific film about a Jewish pianist who tries to survive the Holocaust by playing the piano. I think that this Adrian Brody's best film, and he gives a strong performance. This is a powerful
January 24, 2012
Super Reviewer
| 35% | The Hangover Part II |
| 25% | Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Par... |
| 81% | Kung Fu Panda 2 |
| 44% | Cowboys & Aliens |
| 83% | Rise of the Planet of the Apes |
| 25% | Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Par... |
| 88% | Lady and the Tramp |
| 69% | A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas |
| 21% | Fireflies in the Garden |
| 45% | The Rebound |
What are his 10 best movies ever?
See the all-new action-packed trailer!
Five new Marvelous pictures
Unconventional Superheroes