I saw The Pianist two nights ago and I'd be interested if anybody could explain to me why this is supposed to be a good movie.
It's a detailed (if extremely unpleasant) first person account of actual events--probably as close as you'll get to what it was actually like to be in the Warsaw ghetto during the Holocaust. It's an amazing survival story, even though the film never pretends for a minute that Szpilman's living was anything other than a fluke. The Holocaust simply can't be sentimentalized, so this movie is a lot more honest to me than Schindler, Anne Frank, and Life is Beautiful, which try to concentrate on the Good in a situation that was essentially as Bad as it ever got. I thought it was really powerful. That's my best defense.
I'm sure you're right. I see what you're saying about the non sentimentality of it, and I agree. Also the fact of his survival being a something of a fluke, as you put it, did work well. I don't know why I had such a negative reaction to it. Or not negative, but I was just expecting some more new ground to broken, given all the noise being made about it.
But that's probably about me more than it is about the movie. Thanks for your viewpoint Tom.
It's not necessarily good but maybe interesting. FWIW:
1. Testimony. It's the most accurate depiction of the Warsaw Ghetto yet made (based on what I have read and heard). The affectless inter-weaving of scenes showing cruelty, charity, compassion make it hard to watch at times but everything in it happened, for six years.
2. Moral complexity. The movie shows "good" Poles (and the German officer) and "bad" or morally compromised Jews (like the policeman) as well as the reverse, all without pulling its narrative punches. This is almost unheard of in Hollywood movies, particulary on this topic -- cf.Schindler's list, which Spielberg supposedly offered to let Polanski direct before taking it on himself . But to be fair, such complexity also wasn't shown much in older Polish films about set in this period (eg. Wajda's Kanal, Ashes and Diamonds) perhaps due in part to political censorship.
3. Absurdity of Fate. The NYT complained that the hero Szpilman is too weak. (He was after all a very talented musician, but that doesn't make him a better human being). I think Polanski means him to be imperfect, almost a cipher, so that his inexplicable survival (both from the Nazis and the Poles who almost kill him by accident near the end) then poses a problem for him: What do I do now? How do I live my life? He has only his art, perhaps, to see him through.
In short, I think Polanski identifies with him and his destiny. BTW Szpilman lived to be ninety and died in 2001. But in any case:
The French honored Polanski at Cannes and they are gutless weasels.
Polanski is persona non grata in Hollywood as he is a fugitive sex criminal.
And Gangs depicts downtown New York as a foul, rat-infested slum full of bigoted nativists and heroic immigrant, and bombarded by Federal troops, no less. How untimely can you get?
Therefore Chicago will sweep the Oscars. Hollywood will prefer a cynical musical about buying your way out of the justice system than a more complex view of the human capacity for good and evil.
I was moved to tears more than once by the film. One of the great moments was the scene of the Szpilman family boarding the train to the concentration camp. The Jewish cop pulls Szpilman from the line in order to save him, Szpilman's half hearted attempt to reboard and die with his family giving way to the stronger urge of self preservarion. That understated portrayal of his shame was really powerful.
Polanski drew heavilly upon his own war experience: He spent the first 9 years of his life in the Warsaw ghetto. One day while out stealing food to help feed his family he was fingered by a snitch. He fled and took a circuitous route home arriving in time to see the Nazi's hauling his family away. That was the last time he saw his mother and sister. He spent the next few weeks roaming the countryside to the point of collapse. Members of the resistance pulled his sick and half starved body from a pile of maggot infested manure, nursed him to health and basically forced him to fight against the Nazis.
Well, this settles it. There is definitely something wrong with me.
As if this wasn't clear already...
I'd like to retract my complaints against the Pianist and lodge them all and several new, and more biting ones, against City by the Sea. (Don't ask.)
I thought it was encouraging at least that the Academy tried to rescue Gangs with 10 nominations, after it did poorly at the box office. It wouldn't do well here because it reminds people too much of New York in the Abe Beame years.
Yeah I agree with all three of your points Bruno. The NYT complaining that the Szpilman character is too weak seems especially bone headed. The ambiguity there was something even I liked.
I really thought the movie might end (badly for Szpilman) with the mistaken identification by the Poles scene. I wonder if I would have liked that more. Something about the ending - the bit where things get turned around on the "good Nazi" - didn't sit right with me. And strangely, I think it's because it felt tacked on, while also being the only part of the movie that seemed like it might address an interesting, and still open question.
That life was as bad as it gets in the Warsaw ghetto doesn't seem to be too much in doubt. Still, I guess we can never have too many reminders. Whether such reminders constitute good art or not is another question.
Well, it is a biopic, so you're kind of stuck with the guy's life on a story level. I think the "art" is more a collection of striking details. The most memorable parts for me are what characters see looking out of windows: the construction of the brick wall around the ghetto is really chilling; the shocking death of the old man in the wheelchair; scenes of the ghetto uprising, the Polish resistance--they're all seen like movies within the movie. The passivity of the main character is frustrating, but it's also the main reason he survived. That's not something most of us want to think about.
I liked it but can't quite identify why. It seemed to be, in many respects, a very conventional filming of a subject notoriously difficult to treat. However, I fell in love with the physicality of Adrien Brody's acting. I'm haunted by his shuffling walk that becomes more clown-like as his fate becomes more extreme. And by his hands. And by that face: Buster Keaton, Nick Cave, an old boyfriend. In the end I suppose it boils down to the knicker region for me.
The real question that should be asked about this film is: Why didn't Polanski tell his own story?
The political reasoning one hears is that Szpilman's is the more noble and untainted.
Polanski has already told a part of his story within the density of "Chinatown."
But for the fury, terror, tragedy (his mother died in a concentration camp) and repression he experienced as a child and adolescent through the war and the aftermath of soviet poland, we'll have to wait.
That, I suspect, might really be a hellified work of art.
what part of chinatown relates directly to polanskis experiences?
I didn't say that "Chinatown" relates directly to Polanski's experience.
I said that "he has already told a part of his story within its density:" Its themes of loss of innocence, incest, the inevitability of complicity with corruption, images of evil/good and good/evil dopplegangers (Jake and the Polanski-Kitty-Kitty character/Evelyn and her sister/daughter/Mulray and the John Huston character), wastelands, water as substance of spirit and life only available as a purchase from demonic authority figures (a purchase which is instrinsically corrupting) and so on.
Polanski must have been doubly freaked and fragmented by his wife's violent murder--particularly since figures from the Manson family apparantly wafted around the drugs-and- hollywood scene of the period. Helplessness and complicity, a sense of victimization yet at the same time, having survived-Polanski may have even partied with his wife's killers in passing at some point.
So it's that plus the childhood, the displacement, the mother-death, the suvival etc. I'm not waiting for his life's story on film--As far as I'm concerned, he never has to make another film after "Knife In Water" or "Chinatown." But since he made a film about a man his age during the holocaust, I wonder what it might be like to see Polanski's story or rather, his telling of his own story through an analogue.
Maybe "The Pianist" is meant to be that analogue--as close as we're going to get now, as close as he's going to get any time in the near future.
All that watching bad shit out of apartment windows, which I mentioned above, made me think of The Tenant.
finaly saw it on sunday, its stuck with me ever since, more than any movie in a long while, i thought it excellente but didnt expect it to linger this long....
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- jim 2-28-2003 8:33 pm
It's a detailed (if extremely unpleasant) first person account of actual events--probably as close as you'll get to what it was actually like to be in the Warsaw ghetto during the Holocaust. It's an amazing survival story, even though the film never pretends for a minute that Szpilman's living was anything other than a fluke. The Holocaust simply can't be sentimentalized, so this movie is a lot more honest to me than Schindler, Anne Frank, and Life is Beautiful, which try to concentrate on the Good in a situation that was essentially as Bad as it ever got. I thought it was really powerful. That's my best defense.
- tom moody 2-28-2003 11:05 pm [add a comment]
I'm sure you're right. I see what you're saying about the non sentimentality of it, and I agree. Also the fact of his survival being a something of a fluke, as you put it, did work well. I don't know why I had such a negative reaction to it. Or not negative, but I was just expecting some more new ground to broken, given all the noise being made about it.
But that's probably about me more than it is about the movie. Thanks for your viewpoint Tom.
- jim 2-28-2003 11:35 pm [add a comment]
It's not necessarily good but maybe interesting. FWIW:
1. Testimony. It's the most accurate depiction of the Warsaw Ghetto yet made (based on what I have read and heard). The affectless inter-weaving of scenes showing cruelty, charity, compassion make it hard to watch at times but everything in it happened, for six years.
2. Moral complexity. The movie shows "good" Poles (and the German officer) and "bad" or morally compromised Jews (like the policeman) as well as the reverse, all without pulling its narrative punches. This is almost unheard of in Hollywood movies, particulary on this topic -- cf.Schindler's list, which Spielberg supposedly offered to let Polanski direct before taking it on himself . But to be fair, such complexity also wasn't shown much in older Polish films about set in this period (eg. Wajda's Kanal, Ashes and Diamonds) perhaps due in part to political censorship.
3. Absurdity of Fate. The NYT complained that the hero Szpilman is too weak. (He was after all a very talented musician, but that doesn't make him a better human being). I think Polanski means him to be imperfect, almost a cipher, so that his inexplicable survival (both from the Nazis and the Poles who almost kill him by accident near the end) then poses a problem for him: What do I do now? How do I live my life? He has only his art, perhaps, to see him through.
In short, I think Polanski identifies with him and his destiny. BTW Szpilman lived to be ninety and died in 2001. But in any case:
The French honored Polanski at Cannes and they are gutless weasels.
Polanski is persona non grata in Hollywood as he is a fugitive sex criminal.
And Gangs depicts downtown New York as a foul, rat-infested slum full of bigoted nativists and heroic immigrant, and bombarded by Federal troops, no less. How untimely can you get?
Therefore Chicago will sweep the Oscars. Hollywood will prefer a cynical musical about buying your way out of the justice system than a more complex view of the human capacity for good and evil.
- bruno 2-28-2003 11:12 pm [add a comment]
I was moved to tears more than once by the film. One of the great moments was the scene of the Szpilman family boarding the train to the concentration camp. The Jewish cop pulls Szpilman from the line in order to save him, Szpilman's half hearted attempt to reboard and die with his family giving way to the stronger urge of self preservarion. That understated portrayal of his shame was really powerful.
Polanski drew heavilly upon his own war experience: He spent the first 9 years of his life in the Warsaw ghetto. One day while out stealing food to help feed his family he was fingered by a snitch. He fled and took a circuitous route home arriving in time to see the Nazi's hauling his family away. That was the last time he saw his mother and sister. He spent the next few weeks roaming the countryside to the point of collapse. Members of the resistance pulled his sick and half starved body from a pile of maggot infested manure, nursed him to health and basically forced him to fight against the Nazis.
- steve 3-01-2003 8:18 am [add a comment]
Well, this settles it. There is definitely something wrong with me.
As if this wasn't clear already...
I'd like to retract my complaints against the Pianist and lodge them all and several new, and more biting ones, against City by the Sea. (Don't ask.)
- jim 3-01-2003 5:46 pm [add a comment]
I thought it was encouraging at least that the Academy tried to rescue Gangs with 10 nominations, after it did poorly at the box office. It wouldn't do well here because it reminds people too much of New York in the Abe Beame years.
- tom moody 2-28-2003 11:25 pm [add a comment]
Yeah I agree with all three of your points Bruno. The NYT complaining that the Szpilman character is too weak seems especially bone headed. The ambiguity there was something even I liked.
I really thought the movie might end (badly for Szpilman) with the mistaken identification by the Poles scene. I wonder if I would have liked that more. Something about the ending - the bit where things get turned around on the "good Nazi" - didn't sit right with me. And strangely, I think it's because it felt tacked on, while also being the only part of the movie that seemed like it might address an interesting, and still open question.
That life was as bad as it gets in the Warsaw ghetto doesn't seem to be too much in doubt. Still, I guess we can never have too many reminders. Whether such reminders constitute good art or not is another question.
- jim 2-28-2003 11:46 pm [add a comment]
Well, it is a biopic, so you're kind of stuck with the guy's life on a story level. I think the "art" is more a collection of striking details. The most memorable parts for me are what characters see looking out of windows: the construction of the brick wall around the ghetto is really chilling; the shocking death of the old man in the wheelchair; scenes of the ghetto uprising, the Polish resistance--they're all seen like movies within the movie. The passivity of the main character is frustrating, but it's also the main reason he survived. That's not something most of us want to think about.
- tom moody 3-01-2003 12:15 am [add a comment]
I liked it but can't quite identify why. It seemed to be, in many respects, a very conventional filming of a subject notoriously difficult to treat. However, I fell in love with the physicality of Adrien Brody's acting. I'm haunted by his shuffling walk that becomes more clown-like as his fate becomes more extreme. And by his hands. And by that face: Buster Keaton, Nick Cave, an old boyfriend. In the end I suppose it boils down to the knicker region for me.
- rachael 3-01-2003 6:28 pm [add a comment]
The real question that should be asked about this film is: Why didn't Polanski tell his own story?
The political reasoning one hears is that Szpilman's is the more noble and untainted.
Polanski has already told a part of his story within the density of "Chinatown."
But for the fury, terror, tragedy (his mother died in a concentration camp) and repression he experienced as a child and adolescent through the war and the aftermath of soviet poland, we'll have to wait.
That, I suspect, might really be a hellified work of art.
- bunny (guest) 3-04-2003 7:32 am [add a comment]
what part of chinatown relates directly to polanskis experiences?
- dave 3-04-2003 8:38 am [add a comment]
I didn't say that "Chinatown" relates directly to Polanski's experience.
I said that "he has already told a part of his story within its density:" Its themes of loss of innocence, incest, the inevitability of complicity with corruption, images of evil/good and good/evil dopplegangers (Jake and the Polanski-Kitty-Kitty character/Evelyn and her sister/daughter/Mulray and the John Huston character), wastelands, water as substance of spirit and life only available as a purchase from demonic authority figures (a purchase which is instrinsically corrupting) and so on.
Polanski must have been doubly freaked and fragmented by his wife's violent murder--particularly since figures from the Manson family apparantly wafted around the drugs-and- hollywood scene of the period. Helplessness and complicity, a sense of victimization yet at the same time, having survived-Polanski may have even partied with his wife's killers in passing at some point.
So it's that plus the childhood, the displacement, the mother-death, the suvival etc. I'm not waiting for his life's story on film--As far as I'm concerned, he never has to make another film after "Knife In Water" or "Chinatown." But since he made a film about a man his age during the holocaust, I wonder what it might be like to see Polanski's story or rather, his telling of his own story through an analogue.
Maybe "The Pianist" is meant to be that analogue--as close as we're going to get now, as close as he's going to get any time in the near future.
- bunny (guest) 3-04-2003 7:54 pm [add a comment] [edit]
All that watching bad shit out of apartment windows, which I mentioned above, made me think of The Tenant.
- tom moody 3-04-2003 8:06 pm [add a comment]
finaly saw it on sunday, its stuck with me ever since, more than any movie in a long while, i thought it excellente but didnt expect it to linger this long....
- Skinny 4-01-2003 6:36 pm [add a comment]