Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.

Lots of chatters weighing in with reviews today, and it’s a pretty mixed bag of stuff, too.

Take Strangelove, for example. He’s got a look at Roman Polanski’s much-hailed new film, and personally, I can’t wait to see the film for myself. I love some of Polanski’s work, and would flip to see something great come out of him at this late date.

Hey Harry,

Dr. Strangelove here with a review of Roman Polanski’s THE PIANIST, heralded as his comeback masterpiece, winner of this year’s Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

THE PIANIST is based on the WW2 memoirs of Wladyslaw Szpilman (played by Adrien Brody), a Polish born Jewish pianist who against all odds managed to survive throughout the ordeal of the Holocaust, escape from the war ravaged Warsaw ghetto and evade capture in war torn Warsaw with help from Poles and a compassionate German officer, Wilm Honsfield (played by Thomas Kretschmann). Szpilman started writing his memoirs in early 1945, just months after all the terror he lived through, and had the manuscript completed by late 1945. The memoirs where published soon, but due to the severe anti-Semitism of Stalin’s oppressive regime, they quickly fell into full obscurity only to be accidentally discovered by Szpilman’s son in 1999, translated, then published with great success in Germany, later becoming a critically acclaimed worldwide bestseller. In their second coming, the memoirs where noted for their intensity, realism, a work filled with reminiscences of even the smallest details from a fresh memory all amidst the on goings of one of the most crucial and dramatic moments in modern history. To Polanski as well as anyone who read the memoirs, it had to be rather obvious there where all the makings of a great cinematic experience inside this document of survival against all the odds.

Szpilman was renowned for his skill as a pianist and a composer before the war, employed by the Polish national radio; he was performing on air when the first German bombs struck Warsaw. With the German invasion of his native Poland the Jews where relegated to second class citizens, soon Holocaust was in full swing and Szpilman’s family was deported to a concentration camp, a grizzly fate he narrowly escaped. Still, he along with other Warsaw Jews that where not sent to the death camps was forced into a life inside the confines of the walled up ghetto. While at first people within tried to maintain a sense of normalcy, Szpilman himself playing a piano in cafés for the first few months, but this false sense of normalcy wasn’t to last, the inhabitants inside the ghetto where running a race against the time; in the course of each passing day the Germans where reducing the ghetto’s boundaries, severely cutting back on food rations and intensifying their atrocious campaign of total eradication of the Jewish nation. The situation for Wladyslaw was becoming utterly desperate, yet, owning much to the Poles that helped him despite knowing the Germans would have no mercy towards anyone who they found helping a Jew, and an encounter with a sympathetic German officer who was soon amazed by his skill and talent, Szpilman survived seeing much of the war hidden behind the windows of safe houses. A first person, intimate Point-Of-View Polanski brilliantly employed and successfully managed to convey on-screen.

To Polanski the story must have hit hard at home, as a Polish born Jew he experienced firsthand much of the same horrors of the Holocaust, his family also sent to the camps, where he lost his mother. Thus, just a ten year old at the time, he was left all alone in the ghetto and forced to struggle for sheer survival in the streets of the war-ravaged Warsaw; managed to escape from the desolation of the ghetto, and with the help from Poles hid in the countryside for the rest of the war. Considering such an intimate connection of the filmmaker with the subject matter portrayed in the film, it is no surprise that THE PIANIST is a triumphant achievement amid an imposing opus that includes such honored classics as CHINATOWN, ROSEMARY’S BABY, TESS, REPULSION, FRANTIC... It is Polanski’s best effort in more than two decades, thematic return to his native Poland, a full come back to form after a series of somewhat mediocre undertakings, as well as his most intimate and individual movie to date. As someone who has lived thought most of the same experiences Szpilman had, Polanski has managed to portray on-screen the same extraordinary level of detail and emotion that had made Szpilman’s memoirs unforgettable. He does an amazing job portraying first the oppression, then the outright Nazi campaign of terror the Jews where subjected to, until they had no hope left, but to rebel, thus starting the famous insurrection inside the Warsaw ghetto; all of this seen as Szpilman saw it amid his own fight for survival.

Adrien Brody does an amazing job playing Szpilman, he perfectly fits in with Polanski’s direction, and his acting is capable of great emoting. Especially amazing is the work he does with his eyes as they flawlessly react to all the situations his character goes thought. With an aura of an artist, appearance of great sensibility and empathy, Brody looks perfectly suitable this role, adding an extra layer of believability. The rest of the cast is as notable, with Thomas Kretschmann giving the necessary dose of humanity to the role of a German officer, Frank Finlay and Maureen Lipmann as his parents and charismatic Ed Stoppard as his brother Henryk.

THE PIANIST has superb pacing thought the whole 2 1/2 hours of its running time, with a masterful exposure of the story and amazing atmosphere Polanski has created with help from a talented crew that includes Cinematographer Pawel Edelman (PAN TADEUSZ, EDGES OF THE LORD), Costume Designer Anna Shepard (BAND OF BROTHERS, THE INSIDER), Art Director Sebastian Krawinkel (GANGSTER No.1), Production Designer Alan Starski (SCHINDLER’S LIST, WASHINGTON SQUARE) and Composer Wojciech Kilar (THE NINTH GATE, THE TRUMAN SHOW, F.F Coppola’s DRACULA). Krawinkel and Starski Have done a stunning job recreating the pre war, and later war torn Warsaw, the sets are realistic, textured; they feel and look real, with the same level of detail that’s present in all other aspects of THE PIANIST, and are perfectly complimented and vice versa by Edelman’s enchanting photography, bringing WW2 destruction, pain, and struggle to an unseen before level of visual perfection. All further enhanced by Kilar’s fabulous instrumental score.

There is plenty of brutality in THE PIANIST, but there is also an abundance of hope. Watching it its easy to establish a connection, you feel with it, you smile with it, you cry with it. It is a welcome return of a living legend. THE PIANIST opens in US with a limited release on December 27, if you are in of those lucky select cities, try do your best to see this one; it is more than worth 2 1/2 hours of your time. It is a great work, magnificent even.

Wanna critic the critic? Send me love letters? Talk WW2? Or just wanna tell me how this made you'r day... clickee here and get in touch with the good doctor. What ever it is, send me mail. I'd be happy to reply.

Thanks, Strange. Enjoyable as always.

"Moriarty" out.