The Pianist is an unbelievable true story about the will to survive and the power of music.

Adrien Brody stars as Wladyslaw Szpilman, a brilliant Jewish classical pianist living in Warsaw, Poland during World War II. When the Nazis invade, Szpilman and his family are kicked out of their nice, middle-class home, and sent to live in the cramped, squalid conditions of the Jewish Ghetto.

There, behind the walls, just gathering enough food to live is a full-time occupation. But, Wladyslaw still finds time to play piano. That changes when his family is put on a train headed for a concentration camp. As his loved ones are rounded-up, Szpilman is pulled to safety by a friendly guard. He later escapes and goes into hiding outside the ghetto.

He's aided by members of the Polish resistance who move him from one small apartment to another. At each place, he can't go out for fear someone would see him. And, even worse for a musician -- he can't make a sound.

From his window, he can see the horror that is going on around him, but all he can do is watch. He avoids death, by becoming dead to the world. He can't talk to anyone, can't walk the streets, and can't play piano. All he can do is sit quietly in a room, waiting for someone to bring him food. And the whole time, he must live with the constant fear that at any moment the Nazis could knock on his door. The only thing that keeps him going, are the piano concertos he runs through in his head, over-and-over.

Wladyslaw's cat-and-mouse game with the Gestapo climaxes in an incredible moment when he is forced to give the performance of his life. I won't give anything else away, but if there was an Academy Award for Best Scene -- it would get my vote.

Brody is magnificent, moving convincingly from a suave musician who's on top of the world, to a gaunt, trembling skeleton of a man looking for a scrap of food and a safe corner to hide. By the end, he looks almost as light as a feather. That's appropriate since his character seems to be like a feather -- blown here and there, surviving only because of the twisting winds of fate.

Wladyslaw is not a fighter, and in fact, most of the Jews in film do not stand-up to the Nazis. In this respect, the film reminds us that hindsight is 20-20. The Jews don't resist, because they cannot imagine what's coming. They cannot conceive of a genocide.

Director Roman Polanski, himself a Holocaust survivor, gives us a film that is both subtle and powerful. He seems to say that you don't survive because you're brave or heroic. You survive because you have no other choice -- and you need a lot of luck, too.
(c) Copyright 2003