Apparently, having the stomach flu is no excuse for neglecting my blog duties. So I apologize for the lack of a post yesterday. Here's one I started Wednesday before my stomach had other plans for me.
If you haven’t seen “The Pianist,” go rent it. Now. I have it if you want to borrow it. But don’t expect a very pleasant movie. “The Pianist” was released in the winter of 2003, and won Oscars for director Roman Polanksi and actor Adrien Brody. It tells the remarkable true story of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish Jewish musician who fights to survive in the Warsaw Ghetto during the Nazi occupation in WWII. The film depicts how the Nazis gradually limited the Jews freedoms in Warsaw which led to their eventual deportation to the surrounding death camps. Some of the things shown in the movie are gruesome and hard to watch, but Szpilman’s determination to survive is a true testament to the human spirit.
The fact that Polanski even made a movie dealing with the harrowing Holocaust is remarkable. His family moved to Poland two years before the outbreak of WWII, and both of his parents went sent to concentration camps (his mother would die in one). Polanski escaped the ghetto and survived by wandering around the Polish countryside taking up with different Catholic families.
Sadly, Polanski could not even pick up his Oscar for Best Director. After pleading guilty to “unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor” in 1977, Polanski fled the U.S. and hasn’t been back since. I’m not trying to condone statutory rape or anything, but this guy’s had a pretty rough life. Remember when the Manson cult stabbed to death a 8-month pregnant Sharon Tate in 1969? That was Polanski’s wife and unborn child.
Regardless of his past, Polanski directed a phenomenal film with “The Pianist.” I’m still angry that it lost best picture to that worthless musical with piss-poor acting by Richard Gere and sourface Renée Zellweger. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0253474/
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment