The Pianist (2002) is NIGHTMARE FUEL 

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The most haunting part for me about the film is how swiftly but unnoticeable the oppression of the jews happens. First its the little things like not being allowed in a cafe and then its the armbands and all of the sudden theyre living in ghettos. Sends chills up your spine.

One thing that hit me most about The Pianist is the "stripped down" nature of it. Most movies about a terrible incident make the story bigger by connecting it to even larger parts. In Schindler's List, we see the concentration camps being operated by Germans, we see Schindler transform from war profiteer to savior; for lack of a better term, we get to see inside the Nazi genocidal machine. But The Pianist is much smaller, more intimate. The movie never shows what happened the Szpillman's family, it only shows his horror as he already knows what will happen. Why is he alive? Because an old friend pulled him from the line and said "run." We don't see a girl in a red coat for emphasis, we only see Szpilman trying to survive. In Schindler's List, it fills me with horror and indignant rage of why anyone wouldn't take up arms to destroy that horrific monster. In The Pianist, it puts it down to Earth. I want to say I would spit in the Nazi's face and say "I will not wear an armband, shoot me!" but, no. Spzilman is the answer to how most of us would react, and it pulls the movie from escapist horror to true horror.

I could never bring myself to watching The Pianist. Not since I was 7. My dad was watching it in the basement while we were eating dinner, and then I could here the boy’s screams from that one scene. I asked my mom what that was because it sounded weird, and she described the scene in detail. My 7 year old brain couldn’t understand why someone would just kill a child… and that’s how I learned about the Holocaust

That scene in the end where Szpilman played for one of the only benevolent nazi officers who then helped him survive a bit longer is one for the film history books.

“The Pianist’s use of children shook me to my core.” Ah yes, Roman Polanski has a long history of using children to horrific effect….

One of the hardest movies I've ever forced myself to watch. Randomly came across it on my Netflix recommended for whatever reason in 2020, right when Covid lockdowns were in full swing and everyone was in a panic. I was in my second year of university, living alone away from home in an apartment near my campus, and it was the first time I'd ever spent going days or weeks without seeing or speaking to another person. This movie made me tearing up and crying throughout the entire runtime, and by the time it finished, I just felt empty and disheartened. Looked up and read the life stories of many of the people shown in the film and all the horrible things they endured for years. It really gave me more of an appreciation for life and changed my outlook on a few things

The part where the mother was bawling her eyes out after killing her baby because it wouldn’t stop crying almost made me stop watching this movie, this movie is gut wrenching.

5:08 My mum had to walk out of the theatre during the wheelchair balcony scene, she couldn’t stand seeing such atrocity even when simply acted out in a movie 😞

The scene with the Szpilman patriarch spending an enormous amount of money for one small caramel, then cutting it up with his pocketknife so that the family could share it… brings me to tears. Then the potato. Then the pickles. The use of food (or lack of) is a pretty basic dramatic device, but it works. This movie profoundly affected me.

It was probably easier to stomach the movie as a teen because of how much regarding the war I had studied on my own and likely desensitized to it. It's still hard to forget such a movie even though I only watched it once.

The first thing that took my breath away while watching the Pianist was the scene in which an old lady was killed by the Nazis in the ghetto, no one removed her body, which you could see on the street in every scene afterwards, like her body - the body of a human being - was reduced to nothing more than a pothole to be avoided. And Adrien Brody's acting - my God. In that last scene, when he finally gets to play a piano after such a long time after all the horrors, the expression on his face was that of a man who has been starving for ages finally finding some food. Everyone should watch this movie at least once in their lives.

The letters Hosenfeld wrote to his wife during the war shows that he was not a bad man. He wanted Germany to lose the war. Spielman was not the only person he helped. He also wrote letters to his wife from the Soviet POW camps and he never complained about his fate, instead he told his wife never to worry about him. Even weeks before his death, he was telling his wife not to worry.

Great movie! What they went through is pure Nightmare Fuel! This is the movie that really made me a fan of Adrien Brody.

I casually clicked on this movie recently when it popped up in my suggestions. Needless to say, I was not prepared for how unrelentingly bleak and miserable this movie was. You don’t even feel happy for Szpilman at the end. Just empty, like the ruins of Warsaw.

more like reality fuel, and people don't even know it.

What makes it even more sad is that this movie is based on a true story

I remember in History class, we saw this movie, but it was only up until the point where Szpilman is pulled out of the train and rescued by the guard, and he's just walking around the ghetto, sobbing. It was sad enough to watch, but the rest of the film is just gut-wrenching. All these war movies are. Because the true nightmare fuel, it's not ghosts and boogeymen, the nightmare fuel is the human condition. The wars, the massacres, genocides, it's all a nightmare. We can't wake up from it. We can only remember it. And never let it happen again. Have you ever seen the 1997 Life Is Beautiful? I hear that one gets rather nightmarish.

Truly horrifying. An unspeakable thing that humanity will never forget nor understand. It makes me sick to my stomach. But enough of the director and his crimes….

The wheelchair balcony scene has haunted me for years. I honestly couldn't remember if it was in this movie or Schindler's List as those aren't movies I rewatch. I actually yelped when I saw the clip in your video. I'll never understand such monstrosity.

I wonder why Roman wasnt at the oscars that year

Sadly lots of children died during the holocaust bc they weren’t fit for work 😢 so the directors choice to use lots of children was very accurate for what happened.

I don't remember who said it, nor do I remember the quote fully, but it went something like this, "The First World War was a War without purpose, soldiers dying for nothing, a bad war, but the Second World War was a good war, we know what would have happened to the many occupied peoples of Europe and Asia if we did nothing. Soldiers died for a purpose, and that purpose was just and good. For the soldiers died, fought, and were wounded for the singular goal of liberation. The Second World War was a war, where the dehumanization of the enemy can be accepted, as the Nazi's and Imperial Japanese were genuinely Evil and immoral."

You should do The Kid in Striped Pajamas next, definetly a nightmare fuel.

I wish there was a movie that would show the holocaust MY ANCESTORS suffered, painted with the same vivid colors, and commented with the same pious words. But alas, we native americans don't have that luxury. Our sorrows and those of my ancestors are remembered only by the earth, water, and nature. The same land and animals we loved and nurtured by thousands of years. Solitude and bare rock, lost legends of bygone happy days. We remember.

the pianist feels very raw maybe because its based on a true story but the majority of the movie had no convenience everything that happened to him is either really bad or really good i shat my pants when hosenfeld randomly appeared out of nowhere the movie imo is like a dark tunnel and a faint bright light representing the humanity of the people who helped him

My polish parents made me watch this when I was around 10. I've had nightmares about the wheelchair scene for years....

It brought me to tears when the Jewish people were put in the train carriages, I had to pause the film. The scene with the family at dinner and the guy in the wheelchair. This movie was heartbreaking.

This was the best and most authentic Holocaust film I've seen.

i think every « edgy » kid who likes to make jokes about the holocaust should watch this movie

You should watch Polish movie" Wołyń" or russian "Come and see" both about ww2...pianist is a walk in The park compare to those two. They both also a very good movies

Do NOT ask Roman Polanski why he did no come to America to pick up his Oscar.

I would also recommend A Woman in Berlin, to show what the Germans got when the Soviets arrived in Berlin, and enacted their revenge on the German people for years of death and destruction

Spoiler alert, Germany gets fuckin wrecked

This comment section varies from people who understand the themes of the movie, and painful immature cringe. I hate the world...

I saw thing when it came out. It is such an important movie to see. It always meant a lot to me because my father was a pow of the serbian army in 93. He still has the serbian army jacket he wore as a pow for warmth. The end of movie with the coat reminds me of it.❤

The movie is horrifying but you know what else is? When youre in Poland you can see ENTIRE districts or CITIES that were once Jewish and now theres is not a SINGLE Jewish person there. In my hometown almost every house built before the WW2 was Jewish (expect one) and now all the houses are Polish and there is a mass grave in the forest.

I was actually thinking about this film the other day when going through the list of war films I probably won’t watch anytime soon but plan to watch at some point in the future. Stuff like Schindler’s List, Come and See, Grave of the Fireflies etc These video are always really well done and very respectful at the same time. I can’t imagine they are easy videos to make though

I read from "The Fall of Berlin" that the advancing Russians forced a captured German officer to either play the piano or be shot if he dares to stop, the german played by the roadside for like 16 hours, nonstop, before collapsing, and subsequently he was shot as promised......what goes around comes around I guess, especially in a hellish war like this.

Although this movie saddens me deeply, this is undoubtedly my favorite movie. No other film has touched my heart like this one.

This was a good, yet brutal movie. Brings tears to my eyes. So devastating.

“If you strip everything good from a person, you’re left with a human being.”

Hosenfeld died because he was on the wrong side.

The Pianist is one of my favourite war films, because it shows the horrors of war! I watched this film on TV and was shocked too!

I’m watching this in 2024 and it feels alarming how the world seems to repeat the same mistakes, as antisemitism is rising globally. Breaks my heart. I really wish history won’t repeat itself 💔

I actually find this movie to be way better than Shindlers List. Very underrated these days

Speaking of the depiction of children being harmed in war movies, there is a scene from the 2016 movie, 'Anthropoid' (starring Cillian Murphy) that has been scarred into my brain forever. After Reinhard Heydrich is killed by the assassins, the SS and Gestapo go about trying to find out where them and the Czech partisans are hiding which culminates in a final shootout inside a church which is honestly one of my favorite firefight scenes from any war movie. Unfortunately to get that information the Nazis intimidate a young boy (probably 11-12) by torturing him with his mother's decapitated head inside a bucket. That is easily one of the most messed up things I have ever seen in any movie ever and just another example of how beyond horrible the people who made up the ranks of the SS and Gestapo were. That film belongs in the Nightmare Fuel series just for that scene alone.

It's all happening today.

I can never forget the way Adrien Brody says "I am cold" at the end scene. The three words hold so much of emotions to it. It gives me goosebumps everytime I think about it.

It may sounds weird but my boyfriend (whom also is pianist player) and I love this movie. We've seen it about ten times and through all the horror shown in the movie the part what hits us most is the relationship between Wladek and Dorota. At the beginning of the movie they adored each other and might have had a happy life together. But that all was denied through Wladek's arrest in the ghetto - only because he was jewish. The scene where he meets her again (married and pregnant) one or two years after is heartbreaking.

One of the most disturbing scenes fior me was not the wheelchair over the balcony but what happened right after that. When the Nazis got into their vehicles to drive away they ran over the still alive Jews that had been shot in the street. They could have easily driven around them but instead drove right over them

As a fellow Jewish musician, this film and the story of Wladyslaw Szpilman have always made me weep. I've been so affected by this film that even hearing the same Chopin pieces being used in other films brings Szpilman's plight to mind, as well as that of my ancestors. Roman Pulanski has said before that "The Pianist is a testimony to the power of music, the will to live, and the courage to stand up to evil." He couldn't have put it better.

This is a movie I watched at 18 and haven’t watched again but remember vividly. Oh god how it burned into my brain, I knew the history it’s based off was well aware, but this movie captures a horrifying part of history very very well. The wheelchair scene lives rent free in my head.

I'm one of those people who watched this movie way back on 2003. I was a kid back then but dark themes of the film really hits me hard. So when I was on College I always talked about how The Pianist is one of the greatest movie I have ever watched and I actually made a movie review on it as my final thesis on college. Sadly this kind of movies are not anymore present. I missed the times when movies are all about epic movies, history and documentary which makes sense.

The scene that always gets me is the one where he plays the piano for the Nazi. It’s like he is getting out his rage at the situation through his playing. It’s heartbreaking

Watched this a couple of nights ago for the second time. I am still awed by the superb production of this movie along with Brody's performance. I didn't know that he prepared himself so harshly for the role. He deserved his Oscar.

We can see the horror of war. Let’s hope humanity learns the mistake of the past.

My teacher showed us this movie when i was 12 and i never finished it until I was about 14-15.

Godlessness? I remember the Nazis being overwhelmingly catholic.

This is probably the best WW2 film ever made as it captures the horrors of the holocaust.

This and Schindler's list are easily some of the best Holocaust movies out there. Polanski almost did Schindler's list but he turned it down because he wasn't allowed to write the script. So instead Polanski went with the spillman story instead of the oskar Schindler story. I guess he related to the spillman story more because he was never saved by oskar Schindler. But i always liked how these movies show what civilians go through in warzones not just soldiers or the generals. Or the leaders that start the wars in the first place

The thing that did for me was when he went back to the village and there was no one there just a bunch of abandoned belongings it was chilling, and the silence was something that made it even more scary, crazy to think that whole cities ended dead or in absolutely awful conditions in the camps.

My favorite part is when Roman Polanski was a nonce

Just the words baby and death rattle also broke my heart 😢

I love nightmare fuel more nightmare fuel the better lol

I was born and rised up in Poland in 00s Almost every family in Poland lost someone during the German and Soviet occupation my family hid their Jewish neighbors in the basement during the war in Poland, the only country in Europe occupied by the Nazis, the death penalty was imposed on the entire family that hid Jews In 1938, 32 million people lived in Poland in 1946 only 23 milion. So manny good and talented pepole's was kill by russians and germans only because they was Polish or Jewish and millions of those who fled from communists and Nazis to America. Next time someone who is a Pole born outside of Poland, in many cases it is those who did not return to Poland Except that unlike the Jews, after the war we did not have our own country and this pain grew with each generation until the fall of the Berlin Wall and then it turned into the question of my peers Why do Germans have more money and are wealthier than us? the answer is that they could live in peace and we under another occupation.

Incredible video for an incredible movie. You summarized the emotions and messages conveyed very well and I will definitely be watching more. Well done sir.

I hate the director he was a rapist that got away with it and he abused his wife before Manson got her

Watched it yesterday and now it popped up in my recommended

Ah the Pianist, I saw it much later in life as part of a Holocaust and Genocide Studies Class in High School. Amazing film

I remember watching this movie as a kid and being genuinely traumatized, it was worse than a horror movie for me. Since then I eat what I get and I'm glad for whatever I have, never complaining about anything I have less of.

This movie is like barney and friends compares to Threads and The Day After...

Welcome to my countries history. Learn as much as you can about it and use it. That’s my responsibility

I watched it once, and couldn’t watch it again. The scene where the child is killed while trying to sneak through the wall, broke me.

Say what you will about the director's personal life, but, he felt this story had to be told, and, I'm sure him drawing on his own experiences during the war must've been difficult. Bit of a history buff when it comes to films about World War II.

Read about whats happening in Yemen, India, Palestine, China, etc. Things have not changed. These atrocities are still happening even today.

This subject reminds me about a book by Hanna Krall „Shielding the flame”. It's a interview with one of the members of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. The story is really chaotic and mixes in his post war expiriences, but I think it is worth a read, especially if you are interested in the subject and want to see something more about it.

i would wish they showed a few more scenes with him and a piano. But besides that, the film is absolutely perfect.

I had to watch this movie in breaks, my heart was pumping , almost cried, palms were sweating , it was a beautiful and tough movie to watch

Happening again..

This one was great, I remember watching it and enjoying it

Thank you guys so much for covering this! You are the absolute best! Keep up the amazing work!

What is the point of this video? It’s not an analysis; it’s just an explanation of plot-points. Just watch the movie lol.

Great film.

Such horrifying events, such astonishing art

Incredible S tier film

Now you see why moste civilian causalties were in Poland

I was raised christian, but I left religion behind me a long time ago. I've never understood why christians hate jewish people so much. It always seemed to me that they should be grateful to the jews for being saved.. wasn't it supposed to be god's plan that christ would be crucified by the jewish people in order to pay for their sins? Weren't the jews doing exactly what god wanted them to do, in order to save humanity? So why do all christians hate them?

My dad watched this movie once. Then he said never again. I haven't watched it; I don't think I can handle it.

A cautionary tale for the direction our current society is taking.

It was the most beautiful and heartbreaking film I ever saw, second tp the the Passion of Christ . We need to pray that history will not be reapeted, Or will certainly be the end of humanity.

Correction thought, Szpilman was not hiding in Warsaw's outskirts. Szpilman was hiding in the very center of the city. It is mentioned in the movie that it was right next to the "German District". When Germans conquered Warsaw in 1939 they took over previous Government District, located in the center of Warsaw, and gave it the "Nur für Deutsche" (Only for Germans) status, thus making it the German District. In 1944, when the Poles rose up against the Germans in the Warsaw Uprising, Hitler personally gave the order to raze Warsaw to the ground and erradicate its population as an example to anyone alse considering ressistance. Around 90% of the entire city of Warsaw was systematically demolished. What you see in the movie is not the fate of Warsaw's outskirts but of the city in its entirety

I recently watched flowers of war.. And Christ.. I don't know which is worst..

I remember watching this during history class in my 7th or 8 grade and it became one of my favorite movies of all time

I watched it when I was 9 in my school on history lesson I couldn’t Cooperate for the rest of the day and smile for the rest of the week

My 13 year old son watched it many times when I bought the dvd and it’s an excellent portrayal of the treatment of the Polish Jews. Excellent video btw

Hey there! First off, I just want to say how much I absolutely love your RU-vid channel. Your essays on movies and the clips you use are just fantastic. I was wondering if you could share where you source your clips for the essays you create. It would be really interesting to know

I remember when my mom learned able WWII. She's from Mexico but moved to Texas years ago and I remember how schocked I was when I found out she knew absolutely nothing about the world wars. She tried to innocently explain it away saying that Mexico wasn't apart of it so there was really no use to teach it to kids. I remember trying to explain the horrors of WWII but she was pretty aloof about it like how most people are when you try to explain them history. It wasn't until she watched The Zoo Keeper's Wife that she fully understood the impact of the war and she was absolutely disgusted. She couldn't believed these were real events...

Seen this one for Class essay. It was because the movie we were going to watch was unavailable to me. It was a fascinating film.

Roman Polanski. What a man of contrasts. We all know what he’s been through (Mom killed by Nazi’s wife and unborn son killed by Manson’s followers) and yet he constantly cheated on his wife and went on to r a p _ a 13 year old girl. So he is both a victim and perpetrator. A protagonist and an antagonist in his own life. I think all these experiences good or bad is what makes him a phenomenal genius director. This film was so brilliant and so horrifying it will never leave me. And Adrian Brody absolutely killed it. One of the best performances of all time.