The Pianist - a short review

[TAFKAn]

A lifeless, perfunctory holocaust movie with an incredibly misleading title.

The Pianist was not much of a character, more of a vehicle for showing one generic nazis-are-evil scene after another. Don't waste your time. You've seen it all before countless times. Nothing interesting or new about this film. I was hoping it was going to be about a musician who used his music to stay sane throughout his awful ordeal, thus showing us the power of the human spirit or at least SOMETHING like that. No, it was full of cut-out characters and rote depictions of nazi-cruelty.

Guess what! Nazis suck. Save your money.

[David Steele]

I loved the film.

It was about a musician. He remained completely
a pianist despite the lack of a piano.

The nazis were evil so why avoid that? I can't think
of to many actual nazi characters with much of a role
except the main one and he is quite a different sort.

It is not similar to the war films I have seen, instead
of larger then life heros like Schindler List ( which I also
like) it depicts the chaos and randomness surrounding a
meeker kind of hero.

D.

[Ray Zee]

i agree with you. the movie had no redeeming features. there was no character a person could identify with or even care about. doesnt want to bring you into the movie. as you i am sick and tired of the jewish movies that want to remind us constantly of how bad it was for them 50 years ago.

[adios]

I agree that it hit an Academy "soft spot" in that the Academy is favorably disposed towards movies about the Holocaust. However, Roman Polanski didn't make the movie for that reason IMO. He's from Poland and is Jewish. Here's a short biography of him:

Roman Polanski - A Biography (http://minadream.com/romanpolanski/Biography.htm)

Polanski hasn't been to the USA for 20+ years due to a statutory rape conviction.

Anyway the Holocaust is a major historical event IMO that is comprised of many sub-events if you will. IMO the Warsaw Ghetto uprising is a very important part of that story with major implications as to the formation of Israel after WWII. I also found the portrayal of the Polish situation at the start of WWII as interesting in that the British and French declared war on Germany after the invasion of Poland but didn't lift a finger IMO to help the Poles. Yeah lots of stuff about the Holocaust has been shown in movies and on TV and it has been 50 years since it happened so I can understand why some didn't like it at all. I liked the movie, gave it a B-.

[Cyrus]

Thanks for the link, Tom. I didn't think Polanski was (even partly) a Jew. You are considered a Jew if your mother is Jewish and she wasn't practicing the religion at all. (From the link : "Roman's parents were told to wear white armbands with the Star of David stencilled on them in blue. Roman was told it was because they were Jewish, although his parents did not practice their religion and his mother was only partly Jewish.") In any case, Polanski must not have felt a Jew at the time, seeing as he returned to Poland to work, a country that was more anti-semitic during the 20th century than Germany ever was.

The movie Pianist stank. Polanski has been past it for quite some time now, in any case. The Hollywood sybarite years can do that to you.

(There's never been a more powerful Holocaust film than Shoah.)

[John Cole]

For a fine treatment of the Holocaust on film, see Annette Insdorf's Indelible Shadows. At eight hours, Shoah might be a bit too much for some people; Resnais's Night and Fog at only a half hour is an equally important film.