The Pianist (2002) movie poster

The Pianist (2002)

"Music was his passion. Survival was his masterpiece."
ThumbScore
👍 94%Google users liked it ⓘ
Critics Score
🎬 90%
DramaWar

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Director
Runtime
2h 30m
Rated
R
Country
France, Germany, Poland
Language
English
TMDB Rating
8.4/10 (9,980 votes)
Rotten Tomatoes
95%
Metacritic
85

Cast

Adrien Brody as Władysław 'Władek' Szpilman · 69% avg
Thomas Kretschmann as Captain Wilm Hosenfeld · 71% avg
Frank Finlay as Father · 77% avg
Maureen Lipman as Mother
Emilia Fox as Dorota · 77% avg
Ed Stoppard as Henryk Szpilman
Julia Rayner as Regina Szpilman
Jessica Kate Meyer as Halina Szpilman

Is The Pianist good?

Yes. 94% of real audiences liked it, by Google's archived audience score. Critics agree, scoring it 90%.

Where it ranks on ThumbScore

Rank in its genre
#14 / 3335 · Drama
Rank in its year
#1 / 149 · 2002
Rank among its director's films
#1 / 16 · Roman Polanski

By audience score, among films with 500 or more votes.

Overview

The true story of pianist Władysław Szpilman's experiences in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation. When the Jews of the city find themselves forced into a ghetto, Szpilman finds work playing in a café; and when his family is deported in 1942, he stays behind, works for a while as a laborer, and eventually goes into hiding in the ruins of the war-torn city. Wikipedia ↗

About the Film

The Pianist is a 2002 biographical war drama directed by Roman Polanski, based on the autobiography of Władysław Szpilman. Adrien Brody stars as Szpilman, a Polish-Jewish pianist in Warsaw who witnesses the systematic destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II. As his family is deported to the Treblinka extermination camp, Szpilman escapes and spends years hiding in the ruins of Warsaw, surviving through the help of sympathizers and his own desperate resourcefulness, moving between abandoned apartments and bombed-out buildings while the city is methodically destroyed around him.

Adrien Brody's performance required extreme physical and emotional commitment — he lost 30 pounds, sold his apartment, gave away his car, and disconnected his phones to achieve the isolation and deprivation his character experienced. His portrayal of Szpilman's gradual reduction from a cultured, vibrant artist to a skeletal, barely human survivor was one of the most devastating performances in war film history, earning him the Academy Award for Best Actor at age 29, the youngest winner in the category at that time. Roman Polanski, himself a Holocaust survivor who escaped the Kraków Ghetto as a child, brought a personal understanding of the material that gave the film an unflinching authenticity.

The Pianist won three Academy Awards including Best Director and earned $120 million worldwide.

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What Reddit Thinks

r/MovieDetails
⬆ 12,899💬 114 comments
In The Pianist (2002), the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising scene almost exactly replicates the infamous photo taken in 1943.
Top comment: "That movie still gives me chills."
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