It's a truly wonderful, if somewhat depressing movie. Spectacular cinematography, great acting and a passionate story. No matter what one may think of Polanski as a person, he is a truly gifted director. I do believe that his personal story (he lived through the Krakow Ghetto) has much to do with how well this movie was made.

I grew up in a small Warsaw suburb and went to a Warsaw high school, so I've always seen it as much my home as Piastow (the town I grew up in) was.. In Poland, we all grew up on stories of the Holocaust. I think every Pole has a family story about those who perished in WWII. It would be hard not to, with so many gone. So this movie hits very close to home, even though i am not Jewish.

I loved that it portrayed people without the usual division into roles. There are bad Jews and good Jews, bad Poles and good Poles and amazingly, for a Holocaust movie, even a good Nazi. It all comes down to a struggle for survival when caught in assigned roles none of us get to choose. Shindler's List was well made but it missed that by a mile. It fell into the usual division of "bad" and "good". I was quite upset with how it portrayed Poles as anti-semitic nazi-slaves. Horribly historically inaccurate and very undeserving to those who risked and gave their lives to help. Like with any people caught in extraordinary circumstances.. some live up to their humanity and some don't. It's never black and white.

There was just one part of the story I didn't like, the German officer most likely died without ever knowing that Szpilman did try to help. That's depressing, but such is life and this was a true story after all.