The Pianist

Release date: 2002
Biography Drama
Starring: Adrien Brody, Frank Finlay, and an excellent supporting cast
Director: Roman Polanski
Running Time: 150 minutes you will not soon forget

First the breakdown of the movie and then my soapbox moment for Roman Polanski.

The breakdown:
This is an adaptation of an autobiography of the same name about one man's survival of the Warsaw ghetto during WWII.

Polish Jewish musician Wladyslaw Szpilman is living a normal happy life playing piano until September of 1939, when Poland is invaded.  Szpilman is successful playing piano on the radio and lives with his family of 6 in a nice looking home.  Over time the German Army allows the Jewish population less and less rights.  First they can only have so much money, then they have to wear armbands in public identifying them as Jewish, and ending in November of 1940 when all Jewish people are herded into the terrible Warsaw ghetto to live.  While in the ghetto they are constantly terrified by the SS and threatened daily with starvation, death, and torture.  The family witnesses terrible ends to many people in the ghetto on a daily basis and do all that they can to stay out of harms way.  Soon they are rounded up, as well as most others, and prepared for extermination at a nearby facility, accessible by train.  Szpilman has to watch as his family is taken away on train and he only narrowly survives because a family friend, who is a Jewish Ghetto policeman, shoves him out of the way at the last moment. 

The rest of the movie is Szpilman trying to survive by hiding in homes, the streets, and anywhere he can to make it through another day.  I don't want to spoil most of the movie, because it should really be seen instead of described.  Hollywood itself, couldn't have written a more intense, heartbreaking story if it tried.  The things that this man had to go through for 4 years are nightmarish and unbelievable. 

I can see why this movie received multiple Oscar nominations and won 3.  One for best directing, best adapted screenplay, and best actor (Brody).  I just wonder how Adrien Brody could win an Oscar for this caliber movie and then take a role like he played in Splice.  It's a terrible arc for him.  He needs to be more picky about his movie choices. 

It was an engaging film with great writing, great acting, and a movie that you will not regret seeing.  Watching someone suffer through so much makes me realize how many things I take for granted, and how lucky I am. 

In 1933, there were 9 million European Jewish people.  By 1945, nearly 2 out of every 3 were dead due to the Germans and their allies acting on the Nazi policy "Final Solution."  So, that's almost 6 million people, slaughtered for nothing, for senseless hatred.  The term Genocide didn't even exist until 1944.  If you want to learn more about the Holocaust visit ushmm.org which is the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, also where I got the facts for this post.  

It's a difficult movie to watch, since you know that all of it is true, but it's a story that I think everyone should see.

This is very easy for me to give it 4 1/2 ticket stubs out of 5.   

I can also understand why Polanski was the one to direct it.  He actually has a lot of terrible things in common with Szpilman since both suffered through WWII Poland being persecuted for years.
Polanski had to watch both his parents get ripped away from him on the street after living in the Jewish Ghettos.  His mother perished at the Auschwitz concentration camp while his father survived the Mauthausen-Gusen camp.  Polanski escaped capture by hiding in a small crawl space in a building just off the street, but had to survive on his own until he was 12 and the war was over.  He suffered near-fatal beatings, and was target practice for German soldiers at one point.  He tried hiding in Roman Catholic families that would house him and pretended to be a Catholic church goer, but got called out a lot by suspicious people.  He was reunited with his father after the war and concentration camps were liberated. 

And now, my soapbox moment for Roman Polanski.
So this whole story played out mostly before I was born or worldly aware of things going on.  Polanski, 43 at the time, was arrested in March of 1977 for sexual assault of a 13 year old girl, named Samantha Geimer.
He was facing 6 counts of criminal behavior including rape.  He pled not guilty, but Geimer's attorney worked out a plea bargain where 5 out of 6 counts were dropped and Polanski accepted, pleading guilty to "unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor."
Judge Laurence J. Rittenband sentenced Polanski to 90 days in Chino State Prison for psychiatric evaluation.  On release, only 42 days later, Polanski was expecting the judge to give him probation, but the judge had different ideas.  Allegedly the judge told Polanski's attorney that he might suggest more jail time and possible deportation.  Polanski fled to France on February 1, 1978 and has been living there ever since.  Since he can avoid extradition, he's never faced sentencing in the United States and still has pending charges here.  The victim, Geimer, sued Polanski in 1988, but in 1993 Polanski settled with her for a large sum of money.  I'm guessing if you can't get the courts to get justice for you, money is just as good?  As of 1996, Polanski still owed her $604,416.00 but somewhere after that everything got settled and finalized. 
In September of 2009 Swiss police arrested him at the request of the US and he was kept in jail for 2 months in Zurich (where he just happened to finish a movie he was directing).  Then he was put on house arrest in Gstaad while awaiting the decision of his extradition appeals. 
Finally on July 12, 2010 the Swiss rejected the US requests and declared him a free man and released him. 
Geimer gave a tv interview in March of 2011 where she blames the reporters, media, courts, and the judge for causing way more damage to her and her family than Polanski could ever do.  She says the judge was using Polanski and herself to get as much media exposure for himself as possible, running his courtroom like "a show".

So, I'm a bit on the fence about this.  If you were raped, wouldn't you want justice instead of money?  I mean, Polanski did have 9 films under his belt at the time of this crime so maybe the girl, or girl's family wanted money and lied about the attack.  But, Polanski did plead guilty after the plea bargain was offered so if you were innocent would you ever say you did it when you really didn't?  I know all he pled guilty to was the unlawful sex with a minor, but it leaves the door open for rape.  Unless she was willing at first and then changed her mind in the middle or after it was all over.  I mean, she's 13 at the time.  What 13 year old wants to have sex willingly with an unattractive 43 year old man?  It's not like he was Harrison Ford.  It's also strange that the victim says the media and courts did worse things to her than getting raped.  That's an odd thing to say isn't it?  I really can't imagine too many things worse than getting raped.  I guess there are no other witnesses to this, so it's purely he said/she said as is all rape claims.  I suppose no one will ever know what really happened but the alleged victim and Polanski.  Polanski did have a terrible childhood and then his pregnant wife, Sharon Tate was killed by the Manson family in his house in 1969; so there's a lot of trauma that happened to him to support an unstable mind.  It's an interesting situation to analyze, and one I have no good answer for.