First of all I'd like to comment on how time f*cking flies and how that great philosopher of our time Rod Stewart profoundly stated "like a fist full of sand it falls right through your hand".

Anyway, 10 years this year since the Pianist was released and I think it would be rather nice to have a look back at it. I was 21 when I first watched this 9 years ago and I found it moving, and shocking. i was expecting a critics' choice family drama that was designed to appease the media-minded rather than the masses, but in practice it was/is a film for everyone.

The film is violent. As violent in many ways as any war film, but in a bleak and completely unglamorous fashion. Don't get me wrong, this isn't a bad thing. All war films to some extent sex up violence, even when depicting scenes of genuine horror. The Pianist is one of the very few war films I've seen to completely reduce violence to its most base and destructive level without adding any sparkle to appease the audience or dehumanise the victim(s). I'm confident that even the most hardened Rambo type nutters would wince at some of the inhuman treatment on show here. Perhaps more than any orthodox war film, the Pianist tells us that war/occuption really f*cking sucks for the victims on a massive scale.

When I say orthodox war, I mean a film about a war primarily. And I think this is the interesting thing about the The Pianist. The war is at once both the main player in the film, and a mere backgound character to the family drama depending on where you're at. In other war films its easy to become desensitised to even horric violence because these guys are soldiers, killing machines right?!! It has a kind of unreality to it all. Full metal Jacket gives us a graphic depiction of the process that takes place inbetween civilisation and the unreality of armed conflict. With the Pianist, armed conflict walks into your lounge whilst you're drinking your tea and smashes the butt of a rifle into your skull whilst your love ones watch on.

The protagonist is not a hero in the conventional sense. Far from it. He hides when is fellow countrymen are putting up an ill-fated resistence. He doesn't raise his fists in anger or dish out any retribution. There's actually a kind of quiet almost-acceptence about his demeanor which of course means he is to a large extent dependent on the charity of others to keep alive. Including, most poignantly, the charity of his sworn enemy. A man charged with eliminating any evidence of his existence.

For me The Pianist is an important film because quite simply it is a film about a human being in a war.. Not a soldier, not someone with revenge or retribution on his mind. Just a person who has his limited abilities of surviving day-to-day to defend himself.

I once knew a local priest who said that good wouldn't defeat evil, but rather evil would just exaust itself trying to extinguish good. I'm not a religious man but I kind of got what he meant. This film reminded me of him.

Awesome film. The scene where the little boy is trapped under the wall and then beaten to death is truly disturbing.

I need to re-visit this one. I only saw it once and that was on a plane coming back from Europe on crappy headphones and 6 inch screen.

This was the film that got Brody his Oscar where he famously stuck his tongue down Halle Berry's throat, wasn't it?

The Pianist is a great film, one of the best of Polanski's career.

On a related note, what ever happened to Adrien Brody? He did this film, King Kong...and we haven't seen him in much since.

He was surprisingly good (well, not surprisingly good, perhaps surprisingly buff) in the latest Predator film. The Brothers Bloom was an under-appreciated and under-seen little gem; Giallo (which I saw at the Munich Fantasy film Fest a couple years ago) was absolutely horrible. Completely embarrassing for everyone involved, Brody and Argento especially. He was good as Dali in Midnight in Paris; He was good in a side role in The Darjeeling Limited, and his voice work in The Fantastic Mr. Fox was very good. He's done a few more movies since then that I haven't seen (Cadillac Records, The Experiment, Splice). Definitely still on the radar.

I remember him in Hollywoodland and Splice and being Dali.

The Pianist was, in many ways, a movie I had been wanting to see for a long time -- a movie about survival, about a man making it from day to day under incredible odds. It's too small-scale to be the definitive Holocaust film, but it's a great film in many ways and should have won Best Picture

Too small-scale to be the definitive Holocaust film... Why do you think that? Please elaborate.

I don't want to speak for J-Kizzle, but I think I understand what he's saying. The Pianist does a great job of driving home the experience by viewing it through the eyes of one man. What it doesn't do is capture the magnitude of the atrocities committed during that time. That's not necessarily a knock against The Pianist; it just isn't that film.

Ken's understood me exactly right. Including the part where that's not necessarily a knock. The Pianist is small-scale, and very much through one man's eyes. For instance, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is viewed through a window.

Well then, what is the "definitive Holocaust film"? Not that I want to open that effing can.

I completely agree that The Pianist does not capture the large scale, but, fuck...to see it through that lens really makes it more personal. Put yourself in that situation...

The most vivid shot in that movie, for me, right now...those potatoes. Why?

I would say Schindler's List is the definitive Holocaust film. Quite apart from its extraordinary merits as a film, it covers almost the entire experience of the Shoah, from the German invasion of Poland and the initial restriction of rights to the ghettos to the work camps to the death camps to liberation.

And it does so without the "everything and the kitchen sink" rat-a-tat structure that plagues some movies that try to cram that much history into three hours or less.

Agreed. The first time I saw The Pianist all I could think about was how it wasn't as good as Schindler's List. I'm glad I'm not the only one.

I would agree that Schindler's List is the definitive American Holocaust movie; in my opinion, Claude Lanzmann's Shoah (1985) is the definitive (if such a thing can exist, best is probably better) Holocaust film.

Personally, i prefer The Pianist to Schindler's List. Adrien brody's performance is incredible; I was on the edge of my seat the whole time wondering if Szpilman was going to survive. I agree that The Pianist is rather small in scale compared to Schindler's List, but I like that.



While Schindler's List is obviously larger in scale, it obviously only covers a fragment of the Holocaust. I don't believe for a second that Speilberg was trying to cover "the entire experience of the Shoah", nor was he trying to make the definitive Holocaust movie, as it was unfortunately marketed in 1993 and has since been shallowly regarded in American popular culture.

I don't like how when you quoted me you omitted my word of mitigation ("almost") to make your point stronger. But I don't think Spielberg's intentions are important here. With the possible exception of Oliver Stone in Platoon, filmmakers don't often set out to make "the definitive X" film. What matters is what emerged. And I think Schindler's List has emerged as the definitive film about the Holocaust. The Grey Zone is great, as is The Pianist, and there are a bunch of others which are very good, but even if they share Schindler's List's depth (which I don't think most of them do) they don't have its breadth. It covers as much of the Holocaust as any narrative film possibly could. Comparing the film dismissively to Shoah is unfair. One of them is a (fairly) mainstream film, the other is a 9 hour long documentary. Obviously the latter can include a lot more material.

If that's how the film is "shallowly regarded in American popular culture" (don't sound pretentious or anything there buddy) then I'm happy to join the unwashed masses here.

James -


I don't get why you make this point. I know what you you mean by it, but don't get why you make it. The Pianist is clearly always intended to be from a narrow and personal perspective.

darthyoshi -


That's a strange thing to think. The films aren't alike. Just like Platoon and The Deer Hunter aren't alike.

ram1312 -
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Exactly. The sweeping epic can sometimes be tiresome. That monster of history Josef Stalin said "one death is a tragedy, a million a statistic". I don't agree with this statement, but I do understand his angle of attack. In making the deaths fewer but more personal I think the Pianist retains even more power than Schindler's List.

James - -



I disagree with this. I think this is exactly what Spielberg intended. In fact I think it's what he intends 95% of the time.

And I think the Pianist is a damn fine movie. I gave it four stars in fact. I thought we were just talking about what the movie has become 10 years later, and I was commenting on how I think time has kept Schindler's List on a higher pedestal as far as Holocaust movies go, in large part because The Pianist's focus is so narrow.

I understand yeah. But as I made the point in my opening ramble, the War/Occupation is sometimes a background player in the Pianist with general themes of the survival of one man taking centre stage.

Schindler's List is about the Holocaust. The Pianist could have been set in any struggle.

Agreed. And I think that diminishes the latter slightly