Boston Globe by Ty Burr

There are three Poles in The Pianist -- Szpilman, Polanski, and Frederic Chopin. Of the three, fittingly, Chopin speaks the loudest.

Washington Post by Desson Thomson

Polanski, himself a survivor of Nazi-occupied Poland, has created a near-masterpiece.

Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum

The 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.

Los Angeles Times by Manohla Dargis

Never 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.

Newsweek by David Ansen

This 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.

Chicago Reader by Jonathan Rosenbaum

The results are masterful, admirably unsentimental, and never boring, if also a little stodgy.

Austin Chronicle by Marc Savlov

Szpilman 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.

The New Republic by Stanley Kauffmann

To name only one of its predecessors -- for me, the towering one -- doesn't "Schindler's List" do everything that Polanski achieves and more?

TV Guide Magazine by Ken Fox

Polanski's film is an unqualified success both dramatically and artistically.

The A.V. Club by Scott Tobias

Through 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.