Unable to escape his own childhood memories of the Holocaust, Roman Polanski has long harbored a desire to make a World War II survival film. The Polish director, famous for crafting the classics "Rosemary's Baby" and "Chinatown," never wanted to film his own personal remembrance, instead opting for the story of another, which he could then arrange to fit the things he saw and the truths he knew from his own experiences. Although an actual prisoner in a concentration camp himself, Polanski avoids the normal Holocaust film story line, never showing those familiar worksites in "The Pianist."

Based on an autobiography by Wladyslaw Szpilman, Polanski found the story of a man who seems to survive the German occupation more by luck than personal ingenuity. Trapped in the Warsaw Ghetto for most of the war, Szpilman stumbles from apartment to local work camp to hideout to hideout to abandoned hospital; the progression of the Nazi invasion and the path Szpilman takes to survival is completely unbelievable, and that just might be Polanski's point.

Immediately shown playing the piano for Polish radio, Szpilman's expert skill - and popularity - at classical music importantly plays a part in the young pianist's outliving of his entire family. Moreover, it is also this passion and ability that makes his years of silent, lonely survival all the more hollow. His radio station playing is quickly interrupted in the first scene when German bombs rock Warsaw; Polanski gives the viewer just enough time to appreciate the talent Szpilman possesses before the blast to the studio.

Forced to sell his family's piano, Szpilman finds a job playing simple atmosphere music at a Warsaw restaurant during the initial Nazi invasion. Unable to play in his years of hiding, this early performance becomes a memory Szpilman and the viewer share and hold on to through all the years of the war. The subtle, yet brilliant, use of music throughout "The Pianist" must be given its proper due for creating the film's desolate tone during this time. For a film where music is so integral to the main character and what he goes through, Polanski avoids a dominating score, choosing instead to leave the soundtrack mostly mute. This elevates the moments where instruments actually sound, moments which are few and far between.

Polanski looked long and hard for the perfect European to fill Szpilman's role but, in the end, found the right actor in little known, American born Adrien Brody. Brody's career has been marked by worthy but small performances in credible films ("The Thin Red Line") and wonderful, scene stealing turns in movies far inferior to his work ("Summer of Sam"). With "The Pianist," the choice of Brody embodies that rare occasion of perfect casting. Already wire-thin, Brody visibly grows more emaciated as his character eats less and less and becomes sick while locked away in hiding near the ghetto wall without visit from his supposed caregivers. Brody never feels inauthentic; the accent is flawless, and he continuously looks the part of a victim who, mirroring the detached point of view of the Szpilman book, shows no hate for the German soldiers, just the hope for survival.

Around this central performance, Polanski produces a setting so lifelike that it must only come from someone who lived it. With all the Holocaust films made in the past, cinema has never witnessed blocks and blocks of ruin that so powerfully show the effects of the war while simultaneously serving as Szpilman's hunting ground for the necessities to survive. Shots of destroyed Warsaw buildings, bombed and vacated, surprise Szpilman as he finally makes it out of his hiding place; the city he once knew, like the life he once lived, no longer stands.

Moments of near-death and helpful aides along the way, including a German captain (Thomas Kretschmann), are surely memories and people a survivor can never forget. The real Szpilman died in 2000, but with Polanski's breathtaking film, others can now appreciate all the chances of fate it took for him to make it out alive.

One of Polanski's most traditional films, and definitely his most personal, "The Pianist" proves that he doesn't have to break all the rules of moviemaking and use every trick in the book to elicit emotional response; simple, honest storytelling without the manipulation so often found in stories of war and the Holocaust can affect a viewer more than Hollywood sentimentalism.

Rating: 5 Stars