I saw Roman Polanski's "The Pianist" yesterday, it's the true story of the struggle for survival for a Polish pianist during the second world war. Since director Roman Polanski himself survived the holocaust in the same Warsaw ghetto that the main proponent strives to do in the movie, it's fair to assume that certain details are Roman's own experiences whilst most of the story outline is the true story as told by the pianist -- Wladyslaw Szpilman -- or people close to him.

Unlike most other movies about the holocaust, this movie isn't set in Treblinka or any other concentration camp. While it briefly touches on the subjects of heroism, sacrifice, and so forth as is common in movies on this topic, this one's mostly about survival and emotional detachment. Roman Polanski paints a very sad and disturbing picture. It takes a firm grip of your heart and your breath in the very first few minutes, the rest of the 150 minutes of it are spent watching it with a lump in your throat, a broken heart and with little sustained hope that anyone is going to survive at all.

There's nothing PC about it, it puts a substantial amount of focus on the "bad Poles", and the "Jew Police" which basically beat up on the rest of the Jews to look good in front of the Germans. The perspective is notably that of a single individual on the streets of Warsaw, there's no overhead view of the "bigger picture" astrocities, it simply tells the first hand experiences of Wladyzlaw the pianist and, presumably, Roman Polanski.

So if you're up for a total downer, feel like having your heart crushed, your throat choked up in sorrow, or simply want a better view of what it might have been like in ghetto Warsaw, watch this movie.

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