The Pianist

Right now you can watch The Pianist in Australia on Stan, and in the US on Amazon Prime Video and YouTube TV — and it holds up to as much attention as you give it. The length is exactly right for the story it is telling — nothing rushed, nothing dragged out. 10,221 people have weighed in on TMDB, and the verdict leans heavily positive. Adrien Brody's performance alone is worth the time investment. Put it on tonight on Stan and see for yourself.

The Pianist is not trying to be everything to everyone, and that focus is exactly what makes it work. The Pianist takes its time building the world its characters inhabit, and the patience pays off. The true story of pianist Władysław Szpilman's experiences in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation. When the Jews of the city find themselves forced into a ghetto, Szpilman finds work playing in a café; and when his family is deported in 1942, he stays behind, works for a while as a laborer, and eventually goes into hiding in the ruins of the war-torn city. Adrien Brody and Thomas Kretschmann lead a cast doing genuinely serious work here. The Pianist came out in 2002. The writing trusts the audience to sit with ambiguity rather than wrapping everything up in a tidy conclusion — it is the approach that separates good drama from great. The hit rate here is high enough that skipping ahead never feels like an option.

For anyone looking for storytelling that takes its characters seriously, The Pianist delivers. It has built its own audience without needing a direct comparison. The complete film is available and best experienced without too much prior knowledge of where it goes. Adrien Brody's work here is the kind that gets referenced in career retrospectives. It makes everything else feel thin by comparison.