| 100 |
Washington Post
Polanski, himself a survivor of Nazi-occupied Poland, has created a near-masterpiece.
|
| 100 |
Boston Globe
There are three Poles in The Pianist -- Szpilman, Polanski, and Frederic Chopin. Of the three, fittingly, Chopin speaks the loudest.
|
| 100 |
Baltimore Sun
Roman Polanski's new movie may be the greatest historical film centered on an enigmatic character since Lawrence of Arabia.
|
| 100 |
Salon.com
The director seems to be saying that, for survivors, art may be a way back to our finer selves -- extraordinary.
|
| 100 |
Slate
The best film of 2002.
|
| 100 |
Chicago Tribune
A great movie on a powerful, essential subject -- the Holocaust years in Poland -- directed with such artistry and skill that, as we watch, the barriers of the screen seem to melt away.
|
| 100 |
San Francisco Chronicle
One of the great Holocaust films.
|
| 100 |
Washington Post
A beautiful story, told in measured cadences by a master of old-timey narrative compression and expression.
|
| 91 |
Portland Oregonian
It's no wonder that Polanski, himself an artist who has survived a series of nightmares, should tell it so naturally and powerfully.
|
| 91 |
Entertainment Weekly
The result is a movie, and Cannes Palme d'Or winner, of riveting power and sadness, a great match of film and filmmaker -- and star, too.
|
| 90 |
Dallas Observer
There have been other films dealing with the Jewish ghettos during the Nazi occupation of Poland -- some very good -- but The Pianist, the latest feature from Roman Polanski, may be the best.
|
| 90 |
Chicago Reader
The results are masterful, admirably unsentimental, and never boring, if also a little stodgy.
|
| 90 |
Newsweek
This powerful, precision-made movie offers hope as well -- an act of kindness from a German officer that saves the pianist’s life, the music that sustains his soul.
|
| 90 |
Los Angeles Times
Never before has a fiction film so clearly and to such devastating effect laid out the calculation of the Nazi machinery of death and its irrationality.
|
| 90 |
The New York Times
Polanski, who was a Jewish child in Krakow when the Germans arrived in September 1939, presents Szpilman's story with bleak, acid humor and with a ruthless objectivity that encompasses both cynicism and compassion.
|
| 90 |
New York Magazine
Polanski’s strongest and most personally felt movie.
|
| 89 |
Austin Chronicle
Szpilman takes to performing sonatas in thin air, eyes closed, those jittery fingers stroking nothing but air. It's a wonderful moment in a wonderful, ghastly film, and one of the most moving arguments for the redemptive powers of art ever made.
|
| 88 |
Miami Herald
If The Pianist isn't quite as devastating as "Schindler's List" -- the movie with which all other Holocaust movies must be compared -- it's because Polanski isn't interested in an expansive view of the war.
|
| 88 |
Charlotte Observer
After an hour, The Pianist stops being the Holocaust movie and becomes a Holocaust movie.
|
| 88 |
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Polanski's view of life is like that of Greek tragedy, with the same cold comfort that tragedy implies; from the larger perspective which art gives us, we know even horrors eventually pass.
|
| 88 |
New York Daily News
The power of the arts to transcend cultural differences is presumably what moves the German to spare Szpilman, and, perhaps, is the key to Polanski's salvation as well.
|
| 88 |
USA Today
With this 2002 Cannes Film Festival best-picture winner, Polanski skips the quirky flourishes and simply brings history to life.
|
| 88 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
To the extent that movies bear the residue of their filmmakers' autobiographies, I found The Pianist particularly compelling.
|
| 88 |
Chicago Sun-Times
The closing scenes of the movie involve Szpilman's confrontation with a German captain named Wilm Hosenfeld -- Polanski's direction of this scene, his use of pause and nuance, is masterful.
|
| 88 |
ReelViews
Crafted without a whiff of melodrama, this motion picture takes a steady, unflinching look at the plight of Jews in Warsaw.
|
| 88 |
Rolling Stone
Nothing can detract from the film as a portrait of hell so shattering it's impossible to shake.
|
| 80 |
LA Weekly
Polanski, wisely, doesn't interpret or explain. He seems to have decided that in the face of such meticulously planned horror, the best one can do is get the details right.
|
| 80 |
Time
A raw, unblinking film. It teaches that in dire circumstances our only obligation is to our own survival; all else -- culture, ideology, even love -- is a dispensable luxury.
|
| 80 |
Film Threat
Darrin Keene
Does the world need another Holocaust film? When the director is Roman Polanski, the answer is an unequivocal “yes."
|
| 80 |
TV Guide
Polanski's film is an unqualified success both dramatically and artistically.
|
| 80 |
The New Republic
To name only one of its predecessors -- for me, the towering one -- doesn't "Schindler's List" do everything that Polanski achieves and more?
|
| 75 |
New York Post
The Pianist recalls "Schindler's List," even down to its weakness: Just as Spielberg's film turned sentimental in its final half hour, Polanski's work, too, has a schmaltz coda. But that doesn't make The Pianist any less effective.
|
| 75 |
Christian Science Monitor
Has a sense of emotional urgency and deep-dwelling grief.
|
| 70 |
The New Yorker
The movie is about preservation and restoration and the power of art. But with what gain in knowledge? It's as if Szpilman had no soul, and no will, apart from an endless desire to tickle the keys. [13 January 2003, p. 90]
|
| 70 |
Village Voice
Suffers from over-explanation. The movie maintains tremendous momentum through the Szpilman family's deportation. The second half is another story.
|
| 70 |
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Through Brody's remarkably controlled, self-effacing performance, Polanski succeeds in making his hero an invisible man, but the sights he conjures are surprisingly artless and ordinary, familiar from a dozen other Holocaust dramas. Among the casualties in The Pianist is a great director's imagination.
|
| 67 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Offers nothing new. It's actually one of Polanski's more conventional films and, ultimately, it's hard to recommend it with a clear conscience.
|
| 60 |
Wall Street Journal
Astonishing visually and problematic dramatically.
|
| 50 |
Film Threat
At the risk of being called an anti-Semite, I would like to propose a moratorium on Holocaust movies -- While it would be crass to discount the importance of the subject, at the same time one has to admit there is some degree of excess going on here.
|
| 50 |
Variety
Surprisingly lacks a feeling of personal urgency and insight that would have made it a distinctive, even unique contribution to the considerable number of films that deal with the war in general and Holocaust in particular.
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