Rating: R
Genre:
Drama
Theatrical Release: 12/27/2002(USA
Release Date: 01/08/2008
SubTitles: English/French
Dubbed: English/French
Sound: DD2
Run Time: 150 Minutes
Flags: Violence, Adult Situations, Not For Children, Adult Language, Watch With Your Teen
Distributor/Studio: Universal Studios
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 Lipman and
Frank Finlay), his sisters
Halina and
Regina (
Jessica Kate Meyer and
Julia Rayner), and his brother,
Henryk (
Ed Stoppard). While
Wladyslaw and his family are aware of the looming presence of German forces and
Hitler's designs on Poland, they're convinced that the Nazis are a menace which will pass, and that England and France will step forward to aid Poland in the event of a real crisis.
Wladyslaw's naïveté is shattered when a German bomb rips through a radio studio while he performs a recital for broadcast. During the early stages of the Nazi occupation, as a respected artist, he still imagines himself above the danger, using his pull to obtain employment papers for his father and landing a supposedly safe job playing piano in a restaurant. But as the German grip tightens upon Poland,
Wladyslaw and his family are selected for deportation to a Nazi concentration camp. Refusing to face a certain death,
Wladyslaw goes into hiding in a comfortable apartment provided by a friend. However, when his benefactor goes missing,
Wladyslaw 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 was based on the memoir of the same name by the real-life
Wladyslaw Szpilman; the book 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.
~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
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