The Pianist

Mr E

I imagine this will be the last week The Pianist will be in our local cinema - I very nearly didn't see it...

If you haven't seen this movie, go and see it.

Wladyslaw Szpilman is the pianist in question. During the course of the 2nd World War, we see him at the start as a middle class, educated man growing up in Warsaw, Poland. The Nazis come, and bit by bit his life disintegrates as he is forced into lower class, into the slums, and then even lower than that.

Its been a long long time since I became so emotionally involved with a character in a movie. As this movie progressed, I found myself wanting him to live, to beat the odds and survive to the end of the war.

There are some savage, senseless acts of violence and cruelty that will shock you. Nazis pick jews randomly out of a lineup and shoot them in the head. Killing a disabled person because he won't stand when ordered to. Dead bodies lie in the street. Mothers with dying children in their arms, begging for food and water. Poor people mugging poor people for food. 3 times during this movie, people left and didn't come back.

I won't tell you how it ends, but I recommend you find out for yourself. If there is any justice in the world, Adrien Brody will be at least nominated for an oscar for his portrayal of Szpilman. Polanski should win the oscar for best director (arguably his best movie).

- Dave.

Pigman II

I liked the movie but the one aspect of it that put me off the way every single Nazi (except for one single Captain at the end of course) was painted as some psychoitic sadist who's only reason for going to work in the morning seemed to be to persecute Jews.

You mention that it was 'some scenes' but it seemed to me that every single time a Nazi appeared on screen he was either killing, persecuting or humilating one of the Jewish citizens and I for one found that a little hard to swallow/believe.

aine

You mention that it was 'some scenes' but it seemed to me that every single time a Nazi appeared on screen he was either killing, persecuting or humilating one of the Jewish citizens and I for one found that a little hard to swallow/believe.

I havent seen the film yet, in fact Im going this afternoon, but it was obvious that the film was going to be THE most anti-Nazi WW2 film ever made! Polanski himself ( to the best of my knowledge) was living for a time in the Warsaw ghetto, his father sent him away just before the round up started! so it would kinda follow that the man is going to be biased! perhaps the problem people will have with the movie is that he refuses to be sentimental about the subject. he turned down the offer of Schindler's List for that reason.

tHE vAGGABOND

fantastic movie....

Talliesin

Originally posted by Pigman II
You mention that it was 'some scenes' but it seemed to me that every single time a Nazi appeared on screen he was either killing, persecuting or humilating one of the Jewish citizens and I for one found that a little hard to swallow/believe.

It was the Warsaw Ghetto! What did you think went on in the Warsaw Ghetto, the SS handing out dreidels at Chanukkah!

Yes the Germans are people too and they went through a lot, but this is not a time and place that their humanity shone through (if it did they would have been shot anyway).

Pigman II

Originally posted by Talliesin
It was the Warsaw Ghetto! What did you think went on in the Warsaw Ghetto, the SS handing out dreidels at Chanukkah!

Yes the Germans are people too and they went through a lot, but this is not a time and place that their humanity shone through (if it did they would have been shot anyway).

Shouldn't your avatar have six points not five?

I'm not saying the Nazi's were a bunch of saints who loved all God's creations but at the end of the day this movie just too biased and personal to be taken objectively.

Talliesin

Shouldn't your avatar have six points not five?

Wha?
Does that have a point, or is it just random cretinism?

this movie just too biased and personal to be taken objectively.

What's so unbelievable about it?

Think about it. How do you get people, most of whom were not psychopaths, to engage in the wholesale slaughter of millions of other people?

First you repeatedly humiliate, persecute and depersonalise the people you want to slaughter.

Then you make those who will be doing the execution repeatedly humiliate, persecute and depersonalise the people you want to slaughter.

Then when you tell them to kill you have successfully brainwashed your soldiers enough to do so.

This humiliation wasn't a phenomenon within the Shoah that was only engaged in by the more sadistic soldiers; the humiliation was an important part of Third Reich propaganda that enabled them to carry out the Shoah at all.

Draco

Lads - while the discussion has its merits, it belongs more on humanities - can ye start a thread up there about it?

yellum

A friend of mine won't go and see this because its directed by a guy that drugged and raped a 13 year old girl and admitted to doing so, but when he found out he was going to get jail time he fled to France.

This probably belongs in Humanities too but any Polanski offering should have "Directed by an on the run child rapist" next to it.

Pigman II

Originally posted by Talliesin
Wha?
Does that have a point, or is it just random cretinism?

Cretinism is a disease that leads to dwarfism. What exactly is YOUR point? Or do you just deal in throwing around glib put-downs that you don't actually understand the meaning of?

DadaKopf

Why is it that sp many films that try to portray the holocaust always decend into debate like this?

I was interested to see that the Irish Times gave this film a bad review. Personally, I think it does more to portray the horrors of the holocaust better than Schindler's List.

The story was told from a Jew's perspective and a Jew's perspective only - a Jew's perspective both in terms of the narrative and the director's own opinion.

To me, the film wasn't so much about the holocaust as it was about the many ways in which the Jews of the Ghetto managed to survive. To this end, Polanski had to portray the Jews' plight in as honest a way as possible (something which Spielberg totally failed in in Schindler's list). Some Jews stole from each other, others joined the Jewish police, others scrounged, others played music for leeches. It was all about human survival - a universal instinct.

For the pianist, it was ultimately art that saved his life. So at the same time as Polanski is daming the Nazis throughout most of the film, and some of the Jews, too, he essentially ends up saying that art (in this case music) is a universal language that transcends all kinds of craziness like war, racism and hatred.

I thought the film, which itself is composed like a piece of counterpoint, simply uses the holocaust as a mechanism to drive a universal story of human survival. The film may have as easily been set in former Yugoslavia or Somalia.

There are higher things being explored in The Pianist and I think most of you are kind of ignoring that in favour of accusing each other of racism or something.

sceptre

Originally posted by yellum
A friend of mine won't go and see this because its directed by a guy that drugged and raped a 13 year old girl and admitted to doing so, but when he found out he was going to get jail time he fled to France.

That's not quite what happened. She wasn't "drugged" (though there were drugs in the house, can't remember if it was Jack Nicholson's house or Angelica Huston's), her mother was well aware of what was going on (not that that means anything really), it was statutory rape (she was a minor) and he got 90 days for his trouble. Little that Bill Wyman hasn't done (not that I'm condoning that). He did piddle off to France though. If it gets an Oscar he won't be coming to collect it as the DA said about two years ago he'd still be doing 90 days if he entered California. Polanski swore blind that he didn't know the girl was underage - feel perfectly free to disbelieve him (but that's all he admitted to). Tell your friend not to see any more John Landis movies either after what was effectively corporate murder on the Twilight Zone set.

yellum

Originally posted by sceptre
That's not quite what happened. She wasn't "drugged" (

Are you sure ? Read this

sceptre

Completely different to what I read in a few accounts quite a few years ago but it's from the horse's mouth as they say so I'm not going to argue with that. Am I sure? Not any more.

Talliesin

Originally posted by Pigman II
Cretinism is a disease that leads to dwarfism. What exactly is YOUR point? Or do you just deal in throwing around glib put-downs that you don't actually understand the meaning of?

The English speaking world has long been split on whether to use medical terms such as "idiot" and "cretin" to mean those conditions or to mean someone who is stupid ever since we left the period when the use of such words for both at the same time stopped being acceptable (and rightly so).
I do not use "cretinism" for severe hypothyroidism, I dislike classifying someone as having enough human intelligence to differentiate him or her from an animal, hence allowing them to be baptised as a Christian, but no more intelligence than that (the original meaning of “cretin”, it’s derived from “Christian” on that basis).
Arguably, this leaves me with the opportunity for using “cretinism” for an act or statement of extreme stupidity, lacking any reason or justification. However it can also be argued that one shouldn’t use the word at all, and if you take offence at this use I withdraw it and apologise.
As for my making the statement, however worded, you haven’t shown that it was unjustified.
In stating that I should have a Jewish religious symbol as by avatar instead of a Wiccan one you draw a line and place myself and all the world’s Jews on one side and yourself on the other (better keep my mouth shut about Palestine while I’m over here!). That may be less work than sensibly debating whether the film was or was not an accurate reflection of what happened in the Warsaw Ghetto (one that is also damning of the Jewish capos, a matter that is glossed over or ignored by other films on the subject) but it is still deeply stupid in a number of ways.
You do not provide any explanation for who the Shoah could have happened without the necessity of propagandising the German soldiers by having them routinely humiliate those they would later be ordered to kill, by extension you accuse the Germans of being far worse than the film does.
And while you appeal to the claim of the film being “personal” you do not examine “personal” in the context of the film, for it has two aspects.
The first is that both the character in the film, on whose recollections the script was based, and its director would have reason to be biased against the Germans, and especially against the Nazis.
The second is that the actual wartime experiences of both these men was centred on what happened in the Ghetto, and as such they could have had experiences such as those portrayed without that necessarily meaning that all of the actions of those involved, or of Germans elsewhere, were on the same moral level.
This second possibility means that the film being “personal” does not necessarily invalidate the accuracy of its account.

---

On a slightly different note. I wonder what people think of the influence of Polanski’s war-time experiences on his other films (this being the first he has made that directly dealt with the war). In many of his films there is a sense of claustrophobia, and of being at the complete mercy of fate, that perhaps stems from this.

aine

wow!! count out the nominations!!!!

really hope Adrien Brody gets best actor!!!

pickarooney

Just watched it last night, left me completely nonplussed. I just couldn't get a feel for any of the characters and there was nothing new about the holocaust in it. Nothing really happenned as such, there was no tension or intrigue as the final outcome was inevitable (it's based on the guy's book after all). It's hard to admit to being de-sensitised to possibly the most horrific event in human history, but I suppose you get used to anything if you see it enough.

Did I miss something?

therecklessone

Originally posted by aine
wow!! count out the nominations!!!!

really hope Adrien Brody gets best actor!!!

He won't. Its not until the second half of the film that he really starts to shine. I'm still backing Nicholson.

As for the film, I saw it today and was spellbound. It is a remarkable pice of work. I haven't cried since my fathers funeral three years ago, and to be honest I don't think I can anymore, but the emotion which I found welling up in me was seriously overwhelming. The first half of the film, leading up to the emptying of the ghetto, was harrowing, but not only because of the actions of the Germans, but also because of the part played by the Poles, both Jewish and Gentile. The film shows true human evil at work, and the conditions which are necessary for it to thrive.

I was struck by the attitude of the "upper class" Jews (for want of a better term) in the film. For some reason, the stories I have heard of Irish traders profiting during the Famine kept coming to me. Just goes to show we are all capable of disregard for human life given the right(wrong?) circumstances...

Pigman, the avatar remark was out of line. I suggest you try reading Primo Levi's If This Is A Man, and if you are ever in Berlin, visit the exhibition behind the last remaining piece of the Wall which depicts the various attrocities of the Nazis and their willing helpers. It is truly chilling. Maybe then you will appreciate the film a little more.

Clintons Cat

Pigman,whilst i would agree with you that not all Germans were Sadists or even sympathetic to National Socialism,the conditions in the warsaw ghetto were hardly conducive to displays of human kindness.
On the one visit that Himmler n,the head of the SS and chief architect of the holocaust payed to the Warsaw ghetto he fainted at the conditions there.Not that it made him change his policy,far from it he issued orders that all officers of the SS should be made to see the "Real face of the parasitic Jew left to fend for itself"...Apparently that the conditions were a result of Overcrowding,Forcible Starvation and the cutting of water and electricity suplies passed him by...

...Given the scale of the Inhumanity,Cruelty and Human Suffering of the Warsaw Ghetto,any attempt to portray individual acts of kindness against such a backdrop of suffering on film would render such a portrayal a heavy handed cliche.
For example
A soldier might pick a doll out of the dirt,dust it off and give it to a crying child,later the same doll might be seen tossed onto a pile of identical dolls in the sorting warehouses at austwich where the new arivals possessions were collected for redistribution and recycling.
Or a soldier might be seen giving a child a chocolate bar or potato,only to see him starve the next day,or shot breaking curfew.
Ultimately futile.
......

I havent seen the film yet but i will when it comes out on DVD,Polanski is a very thought provoking director and not afraid to speak out on a variety of issues,like when he and woody allen called a press conference at cannes to speak out against the American media portraying modern europe as being as anti semitic as germany in the thirties.

.............

Dadakopf>>> a simmilar universal theme of survival in the face of abject degradation and suffering can be found in James Clavells Novel King Rat based in a signapore POW camp during the war,
Based on the authors own wartime experiences it is well worth a read.
I have been meaning to get stuck into "Gulag Archipelago" but its quite an impeniterable book for the casual reader,.

PS i seem to recall sometime ago you were asking about political comics,have you tried Maus ?

..........
Edit Unrelated Link to German protest in Berlin 1943]

aine

Awoohoo two Baftas! it deserved some recognition! I hope it will be forthcoming at the oscars too, chances are though that this is its lot! Id love to see Adrien Brody get something for it though!

Clintons Cat

Should sit nicly alongside the six Ceres Awards from Paris and the Palm d'or from cannes though.

Loomer

Some review I saw by a critic I usually agree with said it was basically a load of **** and it gets 2 Baftas? But it wouldn't be the first time a film scooped awards for pulling all the heartstrings.

Then again I am a cynical bastard

TheFoot

Originally posted by Pigman II
Shouldn't your avatar have six points not five?

I'm not saying the Nazi's were a bunch of saints who loved all God's creations but at the end of the day this movie just too biased and personal to be taken objectively.

Err...let's be clear about a couple of things here. This movie is a work of fiction. Yes, it depicts factual events, but in the context of a narrative film. If you want an objective interpretation of reality, you should watch documentaries. They're not objective, but they're a lot closer.

From a narrative perspective, it's in the artists' interests to depict the majority of Nazis as evil. That way the Captain's actions at the end are all the more powerful.

Incidentally, there were two soldiers who seemed fairly ambivalent in the Ghetto. They were the two that the old man and the children almost ran into. DB.

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