The Pianist

A movie about a holocaust survivor directed by a holocaust survivor. As you can expect from that, it immerses you completely. It’s quiet and depressing, yet the amazing sound design, acting, effects, and sets create a living world. It doesn’t have sweeping and epic direction that persuades you how to feel. Instead the movie is very observational. It does not use narration, it sparingly uses music, and the shots have minimal style. It simply shows the events of the story in a matter-of-fact approach, with the viewer left to interpret it. It doesn’t follow a conventional plot with character arcs and emotional payoffs. Instead it follows an episodic, repetitive, and unpredictable plot that faithfully tells the story of Wladyslaw Szpilman. The plot is often unsatisfying and slow, but it was the reality of what he had to deal with. A nearly perfect movie that was unfortunately made by Polanski.