BETTER THAN SCHINDLER'S LIST
357984
I disagree with the previous reviewers.  This movie was far better than Schlinder's List.  For me it was  more emotionally moving than Spielberg's List.  In fact as far as I am concerned it makes  Spielberg look like an amature.  I also think Spielberg may have stolen the little girl's red coat idea from this movie.  After seeing this movie I was so turned on that I checked out 2 biographies of Wallenberg from the library.  The movie was very faithful to the biographies.
1293268
The Pianist follows Wadysaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody), a celebrated Polish-Jewish pianist, as he struggles to survive the tyranny of Nazi Germany from 1939 to 1945. The Pianist is a powerful and difficult experience.

The Pianist has a familiar story, but that doesn't affect its impact whatsoever. The struggle of Wadysaw Szpilman, his family, and his peers hits hard and consistently. Throughout the story, over the years, we see the degradation of the Jewish people, and their constant push for survival. Although the main storyline is powerful, the smaller details and scenes had a large impact, as well: Nazis driving over the recently executed, some that are still alive; a young boy begging his pale, dead father to wake up on the street; small children begging for food and money with an authentic look of worry and sickness on their faces; the elderly stealing food from each other, only to desperately eat it off the dirty street floor. These scenes, plus the Nazi's atrocious actions throughout, may infuriate you, or, at least, make you shake your head. Adrien Brody is magnificent, his character's transformation throughout the film is stunning to watch. The music is excellent. The cinematography is superb, as well.

Overall, The Pianist is a powerful and captivating film, with amazing performances, beautiful music, and great cinematography. It's a difficult film to watch, but an experience worth having. As of 3/10/13, this film is available on Netflix Streaming, although a purchase is HIGHLY recommended.

The Pianist has strong violence and blood.
1109140
I had seen this movie in the theater years ago and recently read and discussed the book with my book club.  Though this book was not a favorite of the others in the book club they all commented on how well written this book was and how it should a unique perspective on WWII and the Nazi regime.  I must say I prefer the book as the movie did take some liberties even though it followed the story closely.
The entire subject of the concentration camps is so horrific, but this story transcends the horror and
shows the importance of true friendships and how innocent young children often do not carry the baggage and hatreds we grow to accept as adults.  My best friend hated the movie because it caused her to have nighmares. WWII was a nightmare but as the author of the book points out - this world has many fences.  We cannot close our eyes to what is happening if we want to make this world better.
I would recommend both the book and the movie.  So well acted.  Bruno is a treasure.  Such a lovely blue eyed boy who had such a tender heart.
3028070
Although I have researched and studied the Holocaust for many years, I had not read Leon Uris Mila 18 until now. The book is an excellent retelling of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising during World War II, with memorable characters and vivid descriptions of events that took place before and during the uprising.
The Jewish characters and the Poles who helped them were believable and through Uris descriptions and I felt their pain as they fought their oppressors. The German characters were sufficiently evil and there was no question that I despised them and everything they stood for.
It is especially interesting to get know to the strengths and weaknesses of the Jewish and Polish characters. Andrei Androfski, the Jew who is a leader in the uprising, is a complicated man whose weaknesses are outweighed by his bravery. Chris de Monti, an American-Italian journalist, becomes brave enough to fulfill his mission of getting diaries of the Jews in the ghetto to the outside world.
As I watched the uprising unfold, I gained a better understanding of the human side of the tragedy and what the fighters faced. Not only are the Germans the enemy, but Jewish collaborators make the characters more determined to fight to the death.
After 70 years, it is still perplexing why the people of the world, even after hearing of the horrors in Warsaw and Poland, did nothing to help people who were being annihilated. Uris does not try to address the whys, but expertly tells the story of those who were abandoned and chose to fight.
2304930
This is one of the most profound stories that I have seen on the Holocaust.  The story is so touching it will haunt you for years to come.  It has been at least a year since I viewed it and few stories can grab you with the childhood innocence and childlike faith that this story embodies.

When a young Jewish boy is taken into a very poor farm family, few neighbor's believe he is their city cousin.  Though he is taken to Sunday Mass and begins to study for his first Holy Communion along with several other village children, a noisy neighbor begins to make threats that he will expose the truth to the authorities and attempts to blackmail the family.  As the story progresses, man's inhumanity to man is revealed and it would seem everyone in the village has a secret.  A great tragedy befalls this wonderful farm family.  The one young son suffering from dwarfism is a witness to the unvarnished reality of man's desperate corruption.  He takes the story of Christ's sacrifice to heart and has the other children reenact the crucifixion.  Soon thereafter he sees an opportunity to intentionally places himself in harm's way in his own desire to purify those in the village, who are so regrettably sinful.

It is a wonderful lesson in self-sacrifice and a reflection of Christ's great love for his brethren.  This is not a preachy story, it doesn't have to be, the interaction among the children clearly display how little acts of sin lead to bigger acts of atrocity.  I wonder if this is based on fact.  It's message is tremendously powerful.

I think this would make a great Youth Group Movie night and even offers wide appeal for the entire church body.
2921358
After seeing the movie "In Darkness". As this film was based on this book and another "In the Sewers of Lvov", I purchased both and would strongly recommend them. A powerful story of the Jews who were hidden and taken care of by Polish sewer workers in Lvov. In particular this is the story of Leopold Socha who made it his personal mission to save these people; firstly for monetary reward and then just out of the sheer goodness of his heart and compassion he felt for them. This is also the testimony of the remarkable spirit of the survivors who overcame the most horrendous experiences and living conditions for 14 months in the sewers.
3445781
Up till now, I had never heard of the amazing heroism of an Italian cattle dealer named Giorgio Perlasca during the last year of WW II in Hungary. Stranded due to unforeseen circumstances, he sees the atrocities committed against the Jewish populace and decides to do something about it. Taking advantage of his status as a veteran of the Spanish war, he helps as many Jews as he can, placing them in safe homes, so that they would not be deported to the concentration camps. Even when he had the option to leave Hungary for safer refuge, he chose to stay behind to help the Jews. When the Spanish Charg d'Affaires (portrayed as the Spanish Ambassador in the film) has to leave Hungary for Switzerland, Perlasca opts to remain in Hungary, and fools the Nazis and the Arrow Cross (the Fascist organization in power in Hungary at the time) into believing he was the deputy left in charge.

It is estimated the Giorgio Perlasca saved around 5,000 Jews in Budapest from being deported/killed by the Arrow Cross and the Nazis. The movie may be 2 hours 4 mins. long but it is fast-paced and filled with many dramatic heart-stopping scenes. Some memorable ones include Perlasca confronting one of the Arrow Cross leaders, and bribing him into releasing Jews who had been forcibly taken from one of the safe houses; Perlasca rescuing two children from a transport and finding out later that the Nazi officer he spoke to was Adolf Eichmann; Perlasca valiantly wrenching Jews from being deported on cattle trains, and more.

The reason I took one star off is due to the fact that at times, it feels like the film, even at over 2 hours, tries to cram too much into the time frame, so that the viewer is left reeling, trying to take everything in. Perlasca is depicted as almost superhuman at times, and although I greatly admire this individual for risking his own life to save the helpless, I felt the movie could have toned down the super-heroism element a bit.

The film is nevertheless compelling, and covers a lot of historical events as unfolded during the war including the infamous scene where Jews were shot into the River Danube in Budapest. There is also some historical footage woven in such as the executions of the Arrow Cross leaders at the end of the war. The Arrow Cross members are depicted as being extremely cruel and sadistic which is borne out by real-life witness testimony, and their actions are even more deplorable considering they were Hungarians themselves, inflicting such pain and misery upon their own countryfolk.

Watching this film is painful and heartbreaking, but nevertheless a timely reminder that individuals can make a difference, and speaking up for what is right is never a wrong thing. It brings to mind a quote I heard in another Holocaust movie, Uprising, "Can a moral man uphold his moral code in an immoral world?" Individuals like Giorgio Perlasca prove that indeed, one can and must.
851445
The story of Sophie, a Polish girl who survived a Nazi concentration camp and is living in Brooklyn, her lover Nathan, a wild, weird, and sometimes wonderful guy, and their friend Stingo, who grows up to be the writer that  describes it all. As the story moves through the lives of these three in  Brooklyn, Sophie tells Stingo, in bits and pieces and with lots of  flashbacks, the tale of her life in Poland and in Auschwitz. Her complex  and contradictory feelings about her life, her father (who was actually a  supporter of Hitler's so-called Jewish Solution), and her experience in  Auschwitz are revealed bit by bit, complicated by her attempt to hide some  of the things she feels most ashamed of. How Styron weaves these threads  into such an engrossing and riveting story is an absolute wonder. His is a  dazzling display of lyrical and powerful writing, combined with an equally  dazzling display of a deep and compassionate understanding of the human  heart. They made a movie of this book (Meryl Streep played Sophie and won  the Oscar for best actress that year; Kevin Kline played Nathan), and I  recently watched it again. At each scene I was disappointed, not because of  what the movie showed, but because of all the things I knew had to be left  out. This is a wonderful, wonderful book. It will make you cry, and make  you laugh; it will make you depressed; it will make you stand up and cheer.  You will cherish each and every page. It is truly one of the greatest books  ever written.
999263
When someone loaned me this book, I saw the long lis  of the author's other works, and decided she must be a pulp writer.  I didn't have high hopes. Maybe that's why I was so amazed by The NIGHTINGALE. The Holocaust is probably written about more than any other subject in Western History, yet Hannah manages to tell the story in a unique and different way. We American readers are often conditioned by movies and books to wait for the happy ending, as well as to find deep meaning in suffering.  But this author doesn't provide us with easy ways out,, instead showing us the reality of the suffering in wartime France and the Holocaust, in all its' horror.  She does this with very careful detail to the inner world of the characters responding to their awful circumstances. In a culture where we rush to numb the smallest suffering, we get all that unbelievable suffering of the characters right in the face.  And when the characters solve one dilemma, here comes another right on its tail. And, of course, the plot is very interesting, but I would not say the characters are exactly complex.  In fact, Isabelle's role climbing over those Pyranees seemed just a bit over the top for me. But I would still give this book 5 stars for the empathy induced in the reader for this particular historical time. I cried all the way through it.
2880212
Yes, Adrian's acting was a bit dry in this film, but maybe that was Wladyslaw Szpilman for you.  The movie is about him, and if his demeanor was that way so be it; but no one can deny that the ordeal and pain this man endured for approximately 5 years of his life is not intriguing and worthy of a film.  This person managed to survive the impossible, lost his family, his home, was in the warsaw ghetto (very low survival rate) and managed to escape, his profession and ultimate love (that of the piano) was stripped away from him, and even without these things to keep him going, he SURVIVED?  This movie was amazing, and the fact that it was a true story is absolutely incredible.
This film also brings to light the struggles of non-jewish Poles in Nazi occupied territories.  The resistance of the warsaw ghetto and the poles, the Russian army.  It's an excellent movie for history buffs.  I own the DVD and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys historical films.

UPDATE: Just saw Schindler's List - Both movies are tied in my book.
1311865
As you know, I'm an avid reader and I adore children's books.  What you may not know is that when it comes to reading adult novels, I am a lover of historical fiction, especially books set during World War II. You can imagine how excited I get, then, when a middle grade book comes out that takes place during this time period. Especially when that book is pitch perfect, appropriately conveying the tumultuous and terrifying years that were the Holocaust in a manner suitable for young children. Enter Survivors Club: The True Story of a Very Young Prisoner of Auschwitz, written by the dynamic father/daughter duo, Michael Bornstein and Debbie Bornstein Holinstat.

Michael was one of the youngest survivors of Auschwitz, liberated from the camp when he was just four years old. A lifetime later - during the 1980s - Michael was living in the US and went with his wife to see a movie set in Brooklyn in the 1940s.  During the film, the main characters watched a newsreel showing children liberated from Auschwitz. The director of the movie had utilized real photographs, and Michael was stunned to recognize his face in the footage. Michael had always stayed relatively quiet about his childhood; however, after seeing the film, and upon realizing that history was at risk of being forgotten, he decided to speak.

What follows is Survivors Club, the remarkable collaboration between Michael and his daughter Debbie, who painstakingly pieced together Michael's childhood wartime memories with photographs, essays and other documentary evidence to reconstruct his family's history. The result is a moving and harrowing piece of narrative non-fiction about Michael's life as a toddler in Zarki, Poland during the German invasion, his subsequent internment in Auschwitz, and the horrors and antisemitism he returned to after the war.  Suitable for late elementary and middle grade readers, Survivors Club is an exceptional and important work that will undoubtedly have a place on shelves with The Diary of Anne Frank and Number the Stars.  A must read for children and adults alike.
1935035
This is the third book of Adlers Shoah Trilogy (after The Journery and  Panorama).  Like Elie Wiesel, he is a holocaust survivor (of four different camps) and brings a unique prospective to his fiction.  One of his other books is about the model camp Theresienstadt (Terezin in Czech) where the character Arthur Landaus grandmother was interned. Though the story was written right after the war, it wasn't published until 1989.

The main character, Arthur Landau, returns to his native city (which seems like Prague) but later moves to the Metropolis (but seems like London) just after the war.  He looks to find out what happened to his parents.  He goes back to his fathers old haberdashery store which he finds boarded up.  Next door is a fruit stand run by a man who never got along with his family.  He is told by the old man that they were deported during the war to Auschwitz and are most likely dead.

While in his native city, he begins working on a book called the Sociology of Oppressed People but cant find a publisher in the new socialist country.  He goes to work at a museum that collects the property of the people who were sent to the concentration camps.  While at the museum he writes to a friend who emigrated before the war to the Metropolis.
With his friends help he is able to emigrate.  There he meets his second wife Johanna (his first wife died in the Holocaust) and has two children (a boy and a girl).  He later is accepted into a circle of prewar intellectuals who had settled in the Metropolis and laud Arthur as the new Adam.

Because the book is written in stream of consciousness, there are no chapters or breaks in the story.  This becomes problematic to the reader when trying to distinguish between Arthurs dreams and musings about his time in the Camps and before the War.  Everything can get jumbled up in the story and is sometimes taken to the absurdist extreme when pallbearers come to pick-up Arthur for his funeral, though they can see hes not dead.

As to the title of the book, Arthur sees things from the other side of a wall.  For me the wall represents Arthurs experience in the Camps which cant be explained to people who weren't there.  Its a personal experience that other people cant be made to understand and therefore hes always set apart from the rest of the world by this Wall.  An amazing story, with a monumental translation.

Zeb Kantrowitz  zworstblog.blogspot.com
4933033
The screenplay is so much better than the book, with much more sensible dialogue and age-appropriate behavior, and the strong acting backs it up. It sweeps you right into their world.  Junkie XL's music is superb (will really miss that in the Insurgent film), and the re-imaging of Chicago fits just right with the dystopian world of the factions, yet retains the true magic of that city.  I felt each subsequent book got weaker; I'm hoping each screenplay gets stronger.
4858082
One of the most "moving", emotional movies I've seen since Schindler's List. The cinematography is breath taking, great directing and Christine Lahti has never been better. Some scenes are difficult to watch due to the cruel events of that time, but a viewing experience you won't soon forget.
3695489
This is a Spielberg movie that came out before Schindler's List, and I wonder if that has something to do with the lack of critical respect that it deserved. While it had some of the classic Spielberg whimsy and flash, the storyline and acting were excellent. Though not on par with the likes of Out of Africa and a A Passage to India, there is something in this movie that is just as epic as those two films. Christian Bale's performance was amazing; nothing like the films that he is known for these days. John Williams soundtrack for this movie is one of his best.

This movie was filmed in Shanghai in the 1980s - before China's economic boom - and in the extras of the DVD version that I own Spielberg notes that they couldn't as easily replicate World War II China with a 2000's Shanghai as the could with the way it looked in the 1980s. Europeans caught in between the Chinese and Japanese during World War II is an interesting aspect of the movie, duplicated somewhat in a more recent movie The White Countess.

I can't help but think that if this movie had been made after Schindler's List that it might have received a lot more acclaim. It really is a good film and I highly recommend it.
1674705
THE PROS:
Powerful, gripping story.  More poignant and intense than Boris Pasternak's "Dr Zhivago".  However, instead of fiction, this is a true story.  Instead of WW I era, this is WW II.  Instead of Russia, this is Slovakia at the crossroads of two continents and the shifting boundary between cultures through the ages.  Instead of a man's point of view, this is a woman's point of view.  The unique, eye-opening and often startling results, are a penetrating and candid analysis of personal experience, relationships and events swirling around a little known, but dramatic part of WW II.

The large group of OSS operatives that went into Slovakia in 1944, was doomed by forces outside their control.  Their long struggle through winter weather in the mountains, to evade capture and return to allied lines, illustrates the amazing human will to survive.  Along the way, they are confronted by the end of their food, energy, health, group cohesion, and personal identity.

14 of the 19 members of the group were eventually caught, interrogated and executed by the Nazi's, under personal orders of Himmler.  The remaining 5 survived.  But their persistence, pluck and luck, defies the imagination.  Alternately exhilarating and devastating, as only a woman can make you feel.

The author's husband was a childhood friend of one of the 5 survivors.  Their family visit in 1964 led to developments ending in this book.

I have over 2 dozen books about the OSS in WW II.  The writing in this one, is one of the easiest to comprehend, despite the depth and breadth of subject matter.

THE CONS:
The subject matter is superior, and the writing is excellent in general.  However there are some typos in the book.  I noticed at least a couple dozen.  This resulted in discrepancies of rank in 2 or 3 officers at times, and in the year (1945 instead of 1946) in one place.  The reader can usually figure these out without much trouble.  As an author myself, I recognize the effects of limitations in word processing software, and aging eyes.
4969438
This is an amazing movie. Although it didn't get much recognition, it definitely deserves it. Bruno, the 9-year-old son of an SS officer, who was moved to the countryside, next to a concentration camp, is completely oblivious to everything that is going around him. He seems somewhat naive - almost a little too naive, when everything around him is against Jews and for the Nazis. He makes friends with one Shmuel, a boy in the concentration camp, wearing 'striped pajamas,' who lives in the 'farm.' Bruno thinks Shmuel is lucky, being able to 'play' with so many friends and to wear 'pajamas' all day. He sneaks food and games for Shmuel, and eventually begins to learn about the differences between him and the people behind the fence.

If you are planning to read the book as well, the book is more seen through the eyes of a young child. The movie is definitely for an older audience, and show Bruno's family more as a unit than the book does.

Although the it's rated PG-13, it might not seem like it at the beginning. The subject that this movie is dealing with is very delicate, but I think that the director did a great job of handling it. Although the movie never explicitly shows what happens to Bruno and Shmuel - you can find that out for yourself - you get the gist of it, and I think that is the worst part - not in a bad way! The movie really makes you think and gives a lot of food for thought. Be forewarned, tears will come! The book and movie are slightly different, but they are both worth taking a look at. There is a great message to be learned in the movie, like the subtitle says: innocence lost, humanity found. The ending of the movie is extremely sad, but the message is very powerful and you will not be disappointed.