This was so good, not exactly uplifting but just an amazing story I couldn't take my eyes off of. Directed by Roman Polanski with Adrien Brody giving his Oscar winning (and worthy) performance of Poland's most acclaimed pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman and his horrific unflinching view of life as a Jew in 1939 Warsaw under Nazi occupation. The fact that he survived through this time is miraculous, heartbreaking and no to be forgotten.
Adrien Brody won best actor oscar for his role, his oscar speech is actually really amazing too, you might remember him kissing Halle Berry.
Official IMDB synopsis:
A brilliant pianist, a Polish Jew, witnesses the restrictions Nazis place on Jews in the Polish capital, from restricted access to the building of the Warsaw ghetto. As his family is rounded up to be shipped off to the Nazi labor camps, he escapes deportation and eludes capture by living in the ruins of Warsaw.
This movie has been based on Szpilman's book:
Written immediately after the end of World War II, this morally complex Holocaust memoir is notable for its exact depiction of the grim details of life in Warsaw under the Nazi occupation. "Things you hardly noticed before took on enormous significance: a comfortable, solid armchair, the soothing look of a white-tiled stove," writes Wladyslaw Szpilman, a pianist for Polish radio when the Germans invaded. His mother's insistence on laying the table with clean linen for their midday meal, even as conditions for Jews worsened daily, makes palpable the Holocaust's abstract horror. Arbitrarily removed from the transport that took his family to certain death, Szpilman does not deny the "animal fear" that led him to seize this chance for escape, nor does he cheapen his emotions by belaboring them. Yet his cool prose contains plenty of biting rage, mostly buried in scathing asides (a Jewish doctor spared consignment to "the most wonderful of all gas chambers," for example). Szpilman found compassion in unlikely people, including a German officer who brought food and warm clothing to his hiding place during the war's last days. Extracts from the officer's wartime diary (added to this new edition), with their expressions of outrage at his fellow soldiers' behavior, remind us to be wary of general condemnation of any group. --Wendy Smith
OMG... that's the ugly dude that got to make out with Halle Berry on stage...Lucky SOB.
ReplyDeleteI know right! I actually watched his acceptance speech at the Oscars on Utube I'd forgotten all about his kiss. Its a good speech.
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