THE PIANIST
OK, the movie that everyone really needs to see is Roman Polanski's The Pianist. Not just because it's a great movie, but because your $7.50 needs to show the movie industry that the American viewing public will gladly fork over money to see good quality films in our mainstream theaters. If this movie hadn't won any Oscars, it would still be withering away in the dark recesses of the Lefont or Tara, and not playing within comfortable driving distance of AMC.
The Pianist is powerful filmmaking. I'm hesitant to attribute its power to the work of the actors, writer, and director rather than the emotional baggage that a Holocaust movie will naturally bring to the audience. I mean, Holocaust fact is far more interesting than fiction, and any film that does even a mediocre job of handling the subject will have some gravity to its story. That said, I still think Polanski does an excellent job in honestly showing us war atrocities we've seen and haven't seen in Holocaust movies before. The first half of the movie is full of shocking recreations of life in the Jewish ghettos of Warsaw, where people turned against each other to gain a morsel of food or privilege. In one scene, an old man tries to rip a bowl of soup from an elderly woman's arms; when it spills on the ground, the man proceeds to lick it off the ground.
There's more to the movie, though, than typical Holocaust themes: Adrien Brody's character of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a promising young pianist, tells a story of how art survives in the face of war, torment, and other human evils. The film opens by showing Szpilman performing on Polish radio; during his piece, the first German bombs begin to drop on Warsaw, but Szpilman refuses to stop playing only until the studio windows are blown open. Polanski presents art as a separate entity from war, but as something that is persecuted by human suffering just as it is something that alleviates it. It may be posturing when Brody plays his "mental concertos" while he hides from the Nazis, miming the fingering of invisible piano keys as we hear the music in his head; but the scene where Szpilman finally gets to play the piano, his passion, after five years of hiding out in silence, even if it's for a German officer who may or may not kill him afterward; if that scene is manipulative, then who the hell cares, because I loved it. This is a movie about the hope that art brings, and the belief that hell is temporal.
At its heart, it's just a good story, too. I mean, when you recall that it's all factual, it really is amazing how fate truly guided Szpilman out of harm's way during the war. I found the movie to be so quick on its feet because of the taut suspense of the story.
Yeah, Rob Marshall did a great job with Chicago, and so did Roman Polanski with the Pianist. It's unfair and stupid to rank one over the other. They both made amazing films, and they were amazing because we forgot for two hours that they were stories told by big name actors and directors with a past. When I watched these movies, I wasn't thinking about awards or acting techniques or camera work, I was just immersed in the movie experience, which, I believe, is the highest achievement a film can attain.
OK, the movie that everyone really needs to see is Roman Polanski's The Pianist. Not just because it's a great movie, but because your $7.50 needs to show the movie industry that the American viewing public will gladly fork over money to see good quality films in our mainstream theaters. If this movie hadn't won any Oscars, it would still be withering away in the dark recesses of the Lefont or Tara, and not playing within comfortable driving distance of AMC.
The Pianist is powerful filmmaking. I'm hesitant to attribute its power to the work of the actors, writer, and director rather than the emotional baggage that a Holocaust movie will naturally bring to the audience. I mean, Holocaust fact is far more interesting than fiction, and any film that does even a mediocre job of handling the subject will have some gravity to its story. That said, I still think Polanski does an excellent job in honestly showing us war atrocities we've seen and haven't seen in Holocaust movies before. The first half of the movie is full of shocking recreations of life in the Jewish ghettos of Warsaw, where people turned against each other to gain a morsel of food or privilege. In one scene, an old man tries to rip a bowl of soup from an elderly woman's arms; when it spills on the ground, the man proceeds to lick it off the ground.
There's more to the movie, though, than typical Holocaust themes: Adrien Brody's character of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a promising young pianist, tells a story of how art survives in the face of war, torment, and other human evils. The film opens by showing Szpilman performing on Polish radio; during his piece, the first German bombs begin to drop on Warsaw, but Szpilman refuses to stop playing only until the studio windows are blown open. Polanski presents art as a separate entity from war, but as something that is persecuted by human suffering just as it is something that alleviates it. It may be posturing when Brody plays his "mental concertos" while he hides from the Nazis, miming the fingering of invisible piano keys as we hear the music in his head; but the scene where Szpilman finally gets to play the piano, his passion, after five years of hiding out in silence, even if it's for a German officer who may or may not kill him afterward; if that scene is manipulative, then who the hell cares, because I loved it. This is a movie about the hope that art brings, and the belief that hell is temporal.
At its heart, it's just a good story, too. I mean, when you recall that it's all factual, it really is amazing how fate truly guided Szpilman out of harm's way during the war. I found the movie to be so quick on its feet because of the taut suspense of the story.
Yeah, Rob Marshall did a great job with Chicago, and so did Roman Polanski with the Pianist. It's unfair and stupid to rank one over the other. They both made amazing films, and they were amazing because we forgot for two hours that they were stories told by big name actors and directors with a past. When I watched these movies, I wasn't thinking about awards or acting techniques or camera work, I was just immersed in the movie experience, which, I believe, is the highest achievement a film can attain.
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