Watch This: The Pianist

And now for something completely different. Last month, a Blog Catalog friend sent out an invitation for guest bloggers. I accepted, and now we’re at the point where we are both featured on each other’s blogs. Many thanks to Rebecca for the following guest movie review.  Rebecca shares her passion for history at her blog My Adventures in History.

The Pianist

Although this movie has been out for some time, I finally saw The Pianist, which tells of the story of Jewish musician Wladyslaw Szpilman during World War II. The film tells the story of his survival amidst the Holocaust and the Warsaw Uprising towards the end of the war.  The film is based upon a book written by Szpilman, and adapted by Polish film director, Roman Polanski. Polanski drew from his own personal experiences, growing up in the Krakow Ghetto during the war.

The film begins when the Germans invade Poland.  Szpilman’s family is then forced to live in the Warsaw Ghetto and witnesses the mistreatment of the Jewish people at the hands of the Nazis.  It follows Szpilman’s struggle to survive during the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the subsequent demolishing of the city by the Nazis before the Soviet invasion.  The most emotional scene in the movie is when Szpilman is saved from going to the death camps with the rest of his family.

What impressed me most with the movie was not in the actual film itself but in the bonus features. In an interview, Roman Polanski stated that the point of the movie was not to make one group of people out to be purely evil. In the film, there are good Jews and bad Jews. There are good Germans and bad Germans. There are good Poles and bad Poles. For that, it is one of the best movies about the Holocaust I’ve seen in a long time.