SOURCE: Verniere, James. “Touching all the Right Keys.” Boston Herald (3 January 2003): 9.

In the following review, Verniere asserts that few Holocaust films have achieved the “power, restraint, and precision” of Polanski's The Pianist.

Its maker probably would disagree, but the English-language drama The Pianist is autobiography by proxy, perhaps the only way Roman Polanski would tell the story of his experiences as a child in Nazi-occupied Poland, and it's easily the best, most personal film of the year. Eligible for the 2002 Academy Awards, this impressively spiritual work of art marks a major comeback for the exiled 69-year-old director of some of the greatest films of the 20th century, including Chinatown, a 1974 film noir on my short list of the best movies ever made.

Based on the memoir Death of a City, by Polish musician Wladyslaw Szpilman, the film allows Polanski to return to his roots in his native Poland...