The Pianist (2002) Critic Reviews
Metascore®:
Based upon 15 Critic ReviewsHighest Rated
- |
- Publications (A-Z)
- |
- Critics (A-Z)
- |
- Favorite Critics
There are three Poles in The Pianist -- Szpilman, Polanski, and Frederic Chopin. Of the three, fittingly, Chopin speaks the loudest.Read the full review
One of the great Holocaust films.Read the full review
Polanski, himself a survivor of Nazi-occupied Poland, has created a near-masterpiece.Read the full review
A beautiful story, told in measured cadences by a master of old-timey narrative compression and expression.Read the full review
The best film of 2002.Read the full review
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.Read the full review
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.Read the full review
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.Read the full review
With this 2002 Cannes Film Festival best-picture winner, Polanski skips the quirky flourishes and simply brings history to life.Read the full review
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.Read the full review
