85
Metascore
40 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100Washington PostDesson ThomsonWashington PostDesson ThomsonPolanski, himself a survivor of Nazi-occupied Poland, has created a near-masterpiece.
- 100Boston GlobeTy BurrBoston GlobeTy BurrThere are three Poles in The Pianist -- Szpilman, Polanski, and Frederic Chopin. Of the three, fittingly, Chopin speaks the loudest.
- 91Entertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumEntertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumThe result is a movie, and Cannes Palme d'Or winner, of riveting power and sadness, a great match of film and filmmaker -- and star, too.
- 90Chicago ReaderJonathan RosenbaumChicago ReaderJonathan RosenbaumThe results are masterful, admirably unsentimental, and never boring, if also a little stodgy.
- 90NewsweekDavid AnsenNewsweekDavid AnsenThis powerful, precision-made movie offers hope as well -- an act of kindness from a German officer that saves the pianist’s life, the music that sustains his soul.
- 90Los Angeles TimesManohla DargisLos Angeles TimesManohla DargisNever before has a fiction film so clearly and to such devastating effect laid out the calculation of the Nazi machinery of death and its irrationality.
- 89Austin ChronicleMarc SavlovAustin ChronicleMarc SavlovSzpilman takes to performing sonatas in thin air, eyes closed, those jittery fingers stroking nothing but air. It's a wonderful moment in a wonderful, ghastly film, and one of the most moving arguments for the redemptive powers of art ever made.
- 80The New RepublicStanley KauffmannThe New RepublicStanley KauffmannTo name only one of its predecessors -- for me, the towering one -- doesn't "Schindler's List" do everything that Polanski achieves and more?
- 70The A.V. ClubScott TobiasThe A.V. ClubScott TobiasThrough Brody's remarkably controlled, self-effacing performance, Polanski succeeds in making his hero an invisible man, but the sights he conjures are surprisingly artless and ordinary, familiar from a dozen other Holocaust dramas. Among the casualties in The Pianist is a great director's imagination.