More than a few movies about the horrors of the Second World War have gone on to become acknowledged as classics - Steven Spielberg alone has directed two of them, Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan, while other lesser known movies such as Come and See have arguably explored the horrors of that conflict with considerably more depth. Roman Polanski's The Pianist, adapted the memoirs of concert pianist Wadysaw Szpilman (played in the movie by Adrien Brody, delivering one of the finest performances of his career), sits aside from many war films in that its focus is on an outsider, neither a perpetrator of atrocities nor a hero saving the world from facsism but a survivor, no more or less. Sitting in this morally ambiguous landscape, The Pianist rises above many of its peers on account of its objective appraisal of the war, making it one of the most rewarding if ambiguous war movies of all time.
