The true survival tale of Wladyslaw Szpilman is the most basic, most elemental, most elementary Holocaust film since Schindler's List, right down to a recitation of the "If you prick us" speech from The Merchant of Venice. Episodic, anecdotal, rich in detail as well as in brutality, absurdity, degradation, and horror, it covers the arrival of Naziism in Poland, the establishment of the Warsaw ghetto, the embarkation of the trains to the camps, the uprising and its quelling, and the eventual collapse into chaos, all from the point of view of the Jewish protagonist (Adrien Brody), who, after the roundup of his family and his retreat into hiding, enjoys a ringside seat on some of these events from an upper-story "safe house," before he is rooted out in a frighteningly staged assault on the apartment building. It has been well chronicled how the Polish-born director, Roman Polanski, was himself cut off from his family under similar circumstances in his boyhood; and the commitment he brings to the subject is plain to see. One respectfully wants to suggest, however, that it is only through our cultural puritanism that this will be seen as a finer job of filmmaking than The Ninth Gate (to name the director's most recent), and that his inerasable early experiences have no doubt informed all of Polanski's best work, albeit less literally. Or in other words, more artfully. With Thomas Kretschmann, Emilia Fox, Frank Finlay. (2002) — Duncan Shepherd
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