Book + Movie List

The Pianist
Tony Pisarenkov Harkins Camelview 5, Scottsdale, AZ 25 January 2003

Brilliant to a point that defies description. Just see it.

The Pianist
A Bennett Hollywood Video DVD 08 June 2003

A sentimentality-free two and a half-hours (a bargain at any price). Easy to dismiss as overrated and just as easy to canonize as a new classic and an “Important” film, _The _Pianist_ is perhaps a bit of both. Told with a starkness of dialogue and narrative line, as though the German occupation of Poland and ensuing extermination of its population (Jewish and other) robbed the story of embellishments as much as the times robbed the main character of his dignity, the film stands as remarkable on two points. Point One: It tells us not one single new thing about war, suffering, or survival—or even, specifically, about World War II in Europe. And in doing so it wastes none of our time (or its momentum) with lectures, indictments or revelations. Point Two: In giving us a main character of whom we know very little before the War, and whose anguish and privation consume his character (and viewers) so fully as the film goes forward that we end the film similarly dis-acquainted with this man, and how he might be in the post-War society, this film offers an incredible gift: the journey of a single man, specific, yet general; a man boiled down to basest parts--and yet a man whose nobility and larger humanity illustrate that such things cannot be stolen from us without our own complicity.

The Pianist
Kristin Schrock DVD 08 June 2003

Revision: okay, so maybe my first review of "devastating" was a bit melodramatic. How about, very, very, very sad and difficult to watch at times. Holocaust movies just aren't a good time even when they dramatize the "triumph of the human spirit" and feature a few Highlander alumns. There. Now do you want to see it, Julie?

The Pianist
Ray Hunley DVD 15 June 2003

What?

Szpilman manages to survive the Warsaw Ghetto; we see some Germans Acting Badly; the acting and direction are competent, with Brody's performance maybe edging into memorable. There's not much here we didn't see in "Schindler's List", or even "Life Is Beautiful". The shot of a bombed-out Warsaw as Szpilman exits one of his hiding places in a hospital is stunning, but it doesn't make a movie. Worth seeing, but vastly overrated.