2002, 2 hrs 20 min., Rated R for violence and brief strong language. Dir: Roman Polanski. Cast: Adrien Brody (Wladyslaw Szpilman), Emilia Fox (Dorota), Ed Stoppard (Brother, Henryk), Maureen Lipman (Mother), Frank Finlay (Father), Jessica Kate Meyer (Sister, Halina), Julia Rayner (Sister, Regina), Thomas Kretschmann (German officer, Capt. Wilm Hosenfeld).

If there�s one depressing, but powerful, Holocaust movie you see today, make it The Pianist. Of course, first, put yourself in the right frame of mind, and steel yourself for ghastly pictures. Then, forget that it was directed and produced by a man who drugged a 13-year-old, raped her and fled justice to Europe.

It�s all worth it, though. The Pianist is a very well-made, very well-acted, very overwhelming movie. It deserves all of its seven Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Actor (Brody) and Best Director.

The film begins in Warsaw, 1939, just as the German blitzkrieg tears through Poland, and we immediately see the effects of Nazi rule of the Jews.

Adrien Brody (Summer of Sam, The Thin Red Line) is Wladyslaw Szpilman, from who�s autobiography the movie draws for a powerful story. Before the war, he is the foremost pianist in Poland, and perhaps even Europe, enjoying plying his art on the radio. During the war, as the tagline says, �Music was his passion. Survival was his masterpiece.�

Dorota (Emilia Fox) is his muse, a beautiful blonde, if gentile, cellist who mourns his loss in society, then loses him to the Ghetto, eventually helping him hide from the Nazis in Poland, essentially sitting out WWII in muted rebellion.

That Szpilman was able to survive the Warsaw Ghetto, not get shipped to the death camps with his father, mother, brother and two sisters, then a few years in hiding in Warsaw, is phenomenal. Almost every man and woman he�s even slightly acquainted with dies, many in helping him live, whether Jew, gentile or even German.

The Jews were terrorized by Nazis, eventually placed in the Warsaw Ghetto (the word �ghetto� originates from an area in Venice that Jews were forced to live - beginning in 1516) before the �final solution� comes to bear. Nazi atrocities against Jews are constant, yet all the Jewish people could do was keep going, walking over dead people on sidewalks and entire families being executed in the street.

There�s not much hope, not much uplifting, just a lot of �the Allies will be here soon talk,� all six, long, harsh, years of Warsaw�s captivity under German rule. So much fear, but not a whole lot of resolve. They seemed relegated in an expectation to be treated terribly, and only sought to live.

Only after so many had perished did talk of revolt get taken seriously, as if they couldn�t believe that the Nazis were so vile. The Ghetto uprising begins April 9, 1943, and lasts over a month, as the last 60,000 or so (out of half a million Jews in Warsaw) try to fight, knowing they�ll die, but with dignity.

The Pianist is a powerful movie. It�s restrained in letting the audience figure things out (trust me, an old lady behind us was very proud when she caught on, and very confused when she couldn�t relate a person from the past). Still, when a scene begins, you can catch on to the emotions and the circumstances just by the actors� faces.

For instance, how painful we could tell it was for Szpilman to be in hiding with a piano in the room but unable to tickle the ivory. He could shadow play, pretend to hear the beautiful sound, waiting for freedom to play loud and proud.

We usually only see the War from Szpilman�s vantage point, looking from a balcony to the uprising, or out a broken window in the bathroom as the Nazis terrorize all of Warsaw, Jew or Gentile, exterminating anyone in the city as the citizens try to rebel. We see packaged bits of hell, and can only imagine that if one man sees such things, how shocking must it be for tens of millions in the larger world to see events just as malicious.

It should be depressing. It should be horrible and difficult to watch. It reminds us of why we should never let a people be treated like animals. �Genocide� and �ethnic cleansing� sounds too friendly, even, for horrors as this.

The Pianist encompasses the full range of the human condition. You feel alone in your seat, yet swept up in a sea of humanity, feeling for one man with utmost empathy, and feeling for humanity in a heavy sadness for the possibilities of those given too much power and with evil intentions. Yes, evil. I know I�m not supposed to think of the world in terms of good and evil (at least to the guys with �Drop Bush, Not Bombs� signs), but it�s impossible in movies like this where you see such brutality, such horrors, knowing these - and worse - events transpired in real life.