The theme of Roman Polanski's new film The Pianist concerns redemption through high art. This is a well-worn cinematic subject. In anybody else's hands, it would run the risk of mediocrity or sentimentality.

But Polanski, at 70, is now an old master. In his deft hands, the movie approaches greatness, especially because the theme is so utterly autobiographical. More than that, it is Polanski's own gesture at redemption. It is his way of saying: forgive me the errors of my youth. Forget them. Take this votive offering as a token for my sins.

Where has Polanski been these years? In the wilderness, pursued by allegations of scandal and pedophilia, undone by isolation and legal trouble. His life, in fact, is the stuff of tabloid sheets and unauthorised biographies.

As a boy, Polanski's family lived in the Jewish ghetto of Krakow. They watched one day as a wall went up to keep them inside. That scene appears in The Pianist and it poignantly sets off an immense dread that fills the film. Polanski's parents were sent to concentration camps where his pregnant mother died. He hid in the Polish countryside, on the run from the Nazis.

In Hollywood, Polanski directed such groundbreaking films as Rosemary's Baby and Chinatown, making the disparate genres of horror and noir his own. Then came another of the events that would come to define his life. His wife, actress Sharon Tate, pregnant with his child, was butchered by Charles Manson and his followers. It was 1969, the Summer of Love had officially ended.

Polanski made six films in the 1960s and five in the 1970s. In the decades since he has made only five films. This reticence has afflicted him with a kind of genius. The Pianist tells the story of Jewish musician Wladyslaw Szpilman () who spends much of the war in isolation, in hiding from assassins in uniform.

Trapped in an apartment where he must make no sound, Szpilman has the immense fortune, or misfortune, to discover there is a piano in the next room. He opens the piano, adjusts the seat and starts to play. Glorious music fills the theatre but the camera shows us only Brody's rapt face. Then we see he is playing air piano, his fingers a few inches above the keys, his mind filling in the silence with pitch-perfect sense memories.

That scene is perfectly balanced by another toward the end of the film. Szpilman is discovered hiding in an attic by a German officer Wilm Hosenfeld (Thomas Kritschman). By then, the pianist looks like a homeless man -- bearded, soiled, unkempt. He has been trying to open an ancient can of pickles in the hope of finding something to eat. He is unable to reply to the German's questions because he has not spoken for a long time. The officer takes him to a piano and tells him to play. He plays, perhaps for his life. The virtuoso sequence that follows is shot without sentimentality or kitsch.

Ironies abound. When Szpilman finally comes out of hiding and surrenders to the Russian army, he is wearing the German officer's coat and is almost shot dead as an enemy combatant. More significantly, Szpilman is not without ambivalence himself. He is not a heroic figure, having abandoned family and dignity for survival. Would he have abandoned his music as well? Of course, Polanski suggests. Therein lies his film's horrifying and sublime humanity.

The Pianist is bound for Oscar glory. More than that, it will win its maker his reserved and deserved place of honour.