Michael Finley wrote in Blogcritics that he walked out. Perhaps he'll watch it again now that is out on DVD.
DVD File: "This [DVD has] a comprehensive and very well-produced making-of that is bereft of gimmicks but infused with hope and humanity...While brief interview clips with Adrien Brody, producer Robert Benmussa and screenwriter Ronald Harwood are also included, as well as many of the crew, it is really Polanski's show. Despite his broken English (always charming) his passion is clear in every word, from the personal nature of the project to the surprisingly jovial onset atmosphere. We are also treated to some disturbing archival newsreel footage as well as the real Wladsylaw Szpilman..."
NY Times DVD column: In a documentary that is part of the DVD of "The Pianist," released this week by Universal, the director Roman Polanski says that Wladyslaw Szpilman's memoir of survival in the Warsaw ghetto was the perfect source for a film because it was written shortly after the actual events and was extremely accurate. Books written 20 or 30 years later, Mr. Polanski says, don't have the same degree of recollection or detail. (The most famous eyewitness account written at the time, which survived the ghetto although its author did not, was that of Emanuel Ringelblum.)
As a child, Mr. Polanski escaped the Krakow ghetto and survived the Nazi occupation, so obviously he "had a very particular image of things in his mind," says the costume designer Anna Sheppard. To adapt Szpilman's book, he chose the British playwright and screenwriter Ronald Harwood, whose film credits include "The Dresser" (1983, adapted from his play), "The Browning Version" (1994) and "Cry, the Beloved Country" (1995).
"Polanski went to see a play of mine running in Paris," Mr. Harwood said last week by telephone from London. It was 2000. The play was "Taking Sides," about the efforts of the celebrated German conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler to clear himself of charges of collaboration with the Nazis. "Polanski liked the play, and he said, `Well, the guy knows about Nazis and he knows about music,' " Mr. Harwood said.
Article comments
1 - Temple Stark
Yes sir. I have a comment.
Steve you are amazing.
Polanski grosses me out, but if *you* can be detached enough to separate the art from the "man" then he produces great work - other than the Pianist, which I thought was sentiment drivel. But obviously, that's pretty much just me.
I think you might also have a bit more than the "fair use" of the NY Times book review.
2 - Mike Finley
I paid to see it again, and sat through an entire hour ... and walked out again.
The movie is unredeemable. Or at the least, for me, unwatchable.
I have only walked out on two movies before -- the ultraviolent "Platoon" and Sam Peckinpaugh's "The Wild Ones."
Oddly, I have never walked out on a sex scene.
3 - Reena
Just want to say, for those of you that walked out and didn't 'like' it: READ THE BOOK!
This movie is based on the AUTOBIOGRAPHY of a real live survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto. It's completely true to the book, unlike many or most movies, and it achieves to do great justice to SZPILMAN'S experience. We see life through HIS eyes and get GLIMPSES of things that happened around him... we are not MEANT to see everything in detail.