Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14391 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-08-18
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.77:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English, German, Russian
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 143 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Based on the extraordinary events of Polish musician Wladyslaw Szpilman's life, The Pianist gave Roman Polanski the chance to revisit and distil his own experiences living as a Polish Jew during World War II. A long-awaited project for the director, this personal angle has resulted in a deeply affecting film that marks a startling return to form for Polanski.

Szpilman (Adrien Brody) is a pianist recording a recital for a local radio station when bombs drop on Warsaw in 1939, just before the Nazi occupation of the city really begins to take hold. As he and his family are slowly stripped of their rights, they endure the humiliation of being forced to live in a walled ghetto, already overcrowded with the entire Jewish population of Warsaw. In a lucky twist, Szpilman is handed the chance to escape, given that he leaves his family in the ghetto to be inevitably shipped off to concentration camps, becoming a fugitive living in terror and isolation.

Taking a classical and measured approach to structure and style, Polanski's elegant film depicts the brutalities and dehumanising experiences that Szpilman endured without making him a hero; he is more of an observer who is tortured by what he helplessly watches. With the film focusing on events entirely from his experiences yet furnished with very little dialogue, Brody gives a subtle yet powerful performance and the end result is devastating. This is as much a standout film for Polanski as it is for his immensely talented leading man.

On the DVD: The Pianist arrives on disc with a surprisingly sparse amount of extras. Only one is really substantial: "A Story of Survival", a 45-minute making of feature which gives a lot of time to Roman Polanski and his own experiences; both of making the film and relating it to his time spent in the Krakow ghetto during World War II. Adrien Brody also features, talking about his preparation for the role and his experiences working with Polanski on such a personal project. Featuring alongside is footage of the real Warsaw ghetto taken by Nazi soldiers and the photographs used as a basis for some of the film's key scenes. Most poignant are the images of the real Szpilman, who died in 2000, still finding pleasure in playing the piano despite his horrendous past. A photo gallery, trailer, posters and filmographies are perfunctory additions. --Laura Bushell

Special Features

• A Story of Survival documentary (40 minutes)
  
• Theatrical trailer
  
• Filmographies on Roman Polanski, Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann
  
• Photo gallery

DVD Technical Information:

• Running Time: 143 minutes
  
• Soundtrack Language: English, Dolby Digital 2.0, Dolby Digital 5.1

Synopsis
Roman Polanski's THE PIANIST is based on the memoirs of the talented pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody), a Polish Jew who miraculously survived World War II. The first half of the film transports viewers to 1939 Poland, and brings it to life clearly and believably. Szpilman is a tall, handsome, winsome man revered for his piano performances on public radio. He lives with his family--an intelligent, loving, and spirited bunch--in an upscale flat in central Warsaw. Bombings have begun to torment the citizens of Warsaw until step by step the Jews are branded and set apart from their neighbors, imprisoned in a ghetto, and slowly exterminated. The story is told through Szpilman's eyes, and thus carries as much confusion and fear as disgust and torment. Polanski paints Warsaw in bleak shades of gray and black, expressing the helplessness of the Jewish people and the cruelty of the Nazis with captivating photography. In the second half of the film, which takes place in the early 1940s, Szpilman is alone, having managed to avoid the trains to the death camps. His struggle to survive, with some help from non-Jews but mostly his own will to thrive, takes place in long, silent, languid stretches filled with the imagined piano music that inspires Szpilman to live. In a climactic scene of immense beauty and spine-tingling tension, Szpilman must actually perform for a German soldier who is inexplicably patrolling the near-deserted and utterly dilapidated Warsaw ghetto. THE PIANIST, in the subtlety of its sublime and heartbreaking tale, is carried by the intensely moving performance of Brody, whose transformation is truly unforgettable.

Customer Reviews

Polanski and Brody Bring Szpilman's Story To Life-Brilliant!
Director Roman Polanski had much personal history to draw on, when he directed "The Pianist." He spent his own childhood in Poland, and escaped from the Krakow Ghetto, although his mother, and other family members, perished in the Holocaust. Polanski makes this his most personal and powerful film to date, and deservingly won the Academy Award Oscar for Best Director.
"The Pianist" is the agonizing story of Polish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman's survival of the Nazi's destruction of Polish Jewry.

The film begins in 1939, with Szpilman playing Chopin on the piano for Radio Warsaw, as the Germans bomb the city, and finally force him to stop playing. History has documented well what happened in Warsaw over the following two years - the Jewish ghetto was constructed and settled, racial laws were written and enforced, people died of starvation, illness, or Nazi murder. Then the "resettlement" roundups began. Szpilman was waiting at the Umshagplatz to be deported to Treblinka, with his family, when fate seemingly intervened, and he was spared. His survival story is a different kind of hell than others that I have seen or read about. Szpilman watches the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, and subsequent destruction, from the outside, looking in. Usually, accounts of the Jewish uprising are from former fighters, or survivors, who were inside the ghetto at the time. I can only wonder if Szpilman longed to join his fellow Jews and fight the Nazis, rather than remain in his solitary apartment overlooking the ghetto, with his own end unknown.

The story is told from a uniquely unsentimental point of view. I felt at times that Szpilman, brilliantly portrayed by Adrien Brody, had distanced himself from all emotion, except for the periods when he played the piano in his imagination, and listened to music in his head. Perhaps this detachment was the mechanism that allowed him to survive emotionally.

The well-written screenplay, by Ronald Harwood, was adapted from Wladyslaw Szpilman's memoirs published in 1946. During some of the movie's most emotional parts, there are amazing camera shots of snow falling, or leaves blowing across an empty street, or the snow covered ghetto ruins that look like the end of the world, with the only sound - Chopin's piano music. These film takes add emotion to the film, compensate for, and contrast well with Szpilman's emotional isolation.

There is a haunting scene, near the film's end, with Szpilman and a German officer, that still moves me to tears when I think about it.

The film is a remarkable in its sensitivity, and portrayal of one man's struggle to survive. I highly recommend it.
JANA

A Life-Changing Film?
The Pianist is one of those films that you watch and for some time afterwards there is an ache as you remember the horror and sadness suffered by those portrayed. This could and should be a life-changing film but we too often forget as the ache wears off. This is a terrible waste. Watch this film and do not let the memories fade - in fact, buy it and watch it frequently. If there is one good way for us to realise what we have in life it is to see such films as this.

Adrien Brody goes way beyond a performance and the film way beyond a movie. It is a masterpiece. I will never forget it.

Frightening portrayal of the power of man against man
Directed by Roman Polanski, The Pianist is very realistic portrait of World War II and the invasion of the Nazi's into Poland. Wladyslaw Szpilman a Jewish pianist, played excellently by Adrien Brody is the central focus point of the film, which follows his movements from the start of the invasion through until after the war.

Many of us are aware of the atrocities committed by the Nazis against the Jews, which the film tries to replicate in order to shock the audience, but while there are definitely some very distressing scenes, it does not have the emotional power of something like Schindler's List. That is not to say however that the film was not shocking, the scenes shot around the Ghetto capture this fear to a great success, through the actions of the Nazis and scenes of desperation among the Jews.

The shock of the early scenes seem to disappear somewhat as the film advances, it starts to shift its approach away from fear toward hope, and we observe the paranoia of the protagonist, in a way similar to Raskolnikov in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, but to a lesser degree. We watch Szpilman transform from a free, prosperous musician into a savage, desperate soul, where there seems to be no hope.

The dialogues, which occur between the characters Szpilman encounters directly and indirectly, play a central role in the film as it encompasses several more aspects and differing opinions and personalities.

The film is certainly memorable, but because it is based on Szpilman's book, there was only one central character, whereas Schlinder's List switched between several very contradictory characters forcing the viewer to make constant relations between them. The Pianist is still an admirable film, capturing a unique journey of one man, with some exceptional cinematography by Polanski.