Who saw The Pianist?

[NativeNewYorker]

Posted: 1/14/04 at 4:32pm

I finally sat down and watched it the other day and have been asking just about everyone if they've seen it and it seems like nobody has! I really wanted to talk about it with someone. I've honestly been having nightmares about it...what a beautiful, haunting movie. If I ever meet Adrien Brody, (which will probably only happen if he does a Broadway show and I meet him at the stagedoor! haha) I seriously just want to hug him and tell him what an incredible performance he delivered.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 1/14/04 at 5:14pm

I liked it, but it was almost as depressing as Schindler's List, only in color. Adrien's performance was outstanding, but I don't think I could watch it again.

[NativeNewYorker]

Posted: 1/14/04 at 6:16pm

I agree, once is enough.

This actually upset me MORE than Schindler's List...probably because you are personally involved with the victims, in Schindler's List you just kinda watched them from the outside.

When they threw that man in the wheelchair out of the window...MY GOSH. And when you see the woman and her little son before they got on the train and in the next scene, they are both dead. Just...so horrifying. What monsters. Scares me to think things like that really happen.

You know what was bothering me...the two blond women who helped him. Why did they have to look alike? They were confusing me.

I was hoping Szilman's family would be in the audience at the end, watching him play, but I guess that was expecting too much I was hoping the sister he said, "I wish I knew you better" would have been there, but they all died.

[orion59]

Posted: 1/14/04 at 6:27pm

I actually have the dvd and have watched this movie more than once. It is difficult to watch because it is so wonderfully acted and therefore very realistic. In fact, I felt it was one of teh most realistic representations of the horrors of the holocaust ever to be put on film. Not that i would know through personal experience but, in watching The Pianist, you can imagine that this is just how horrific it must have been for those who did experience it personally.

I guess the reason why I chose to watch it again in spite of how difficult it was is that it also claerly had a message of hope and survival. Throughout the terrible things that this man faced, he never gave up the belief that the situation would change, that human beings could not possibly alow the mass musrder to continue. He believed that he would see his family again and that got him through. It's quite inspiring.

[thirdrowcenter]

Posted: 1/14/04 at 9:27pm

I had to leave the theater and wait for my friends in the lobby. I can't handle man's inhumanity to man all that well.

[ChrisLovesShows]

Posted: 1/14/04 at 10:16pm

My sister was visiting and we rented it. My gosh, it is brutal. I remember turning to her about 1 hour in and telling and didn't know if I could make it. But we were glad we saw it--what a powerful, brilliant film. I do not think I could watch it ever again, though. Sophie's Choice is the same for me in this regard.

[magruder]

Posted: 1/15/04 at 2:29am

The Pianist and Schindler's List are certainly powerful, devastating films, but several scenes in SHOAH, Claude Lanzmann's nine and half hour documentary about the Holocaust will stay with you for the rest of your life.

The real life testimony of survivors, bystanders and participants includes:

-People from the village of Chelmno remembering how the Germans made the children sing while they were killing people.
-Villagers who lived near the Treblinka concentration camp saying how when they worked in the fields near Treblinka, they heard hideous cries from inside, but "you get used to everything".
-A concentration camp survivor remembering how the Poles would laugh at the Jews dying of thirst in the wagons as they arrived in Treblinka
-The Ukrainian guards who would kill any Jews who tried to escape from the wagons, or would just fire gunshot into the wagons for sport.
-The peasants outside Treblinka who would made throat-slitting gestures as Jews arrived in the camp.
-Nazi-in-hiding Franz Grassler on hidden camera, who happily sings the Treblinka work song, saying "No Jew knows that song today."
-Two people from the town of Grabow remembering how children were flung into the wagons and trucks by their feet.

All that said, nothing prepares you for a sequence with Abraham Bomba, a barber living in Israel, who was a survivor of the concentration camp Treblinka. Because of his trade, he had the job of cutting women's hair just before they entered the gas chambers. To not generate mass panic, they had to give the impression the women were just receiving a nice haircut. He describes how one transport included his fellow Jews from his hometown. Because they were under the eye of the guards, they couldn't respond when people who knew him asked, "What's going to happen to us?"

As he starts to tell the story of one of his fellow barbers at the camp(while being filmed giving a haircut in modern day Israel), Bomba freezes and tells the film's director, Lanzmann, "I can't. It's too horrible." Lanzmann tells him he must go on. After a long, anguished silence, Bomba regains his composure and continues. The transport included the other barber's wife and daughter. He couldn't hold them or touch them. He had to cut their hair, before never seeing them alive again. If he said anything, he would be shot by the S.S. guards behind him. Given the task, he does the best he can to give them extra care and spend more time with them before they are sent to their deaths.

Once seen, that scene will never leave your mind.

Updated On: 1/15/04 at 02:29 AM

[SueleenGay]

Posted: 1/15/04 at 3:22am

When you see SHOAH all other Holocost films will seem...I don't know...subplots? I hope that does not offend anyone, but SHOAH is just so monumental.

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 1/15/04 at 11:17am

I don't think I could bear to watch it.

[magruder]

Posted: 1/15/04 at 11:45am

Sometimes you need to be confronted with man's inhumanity to man, just to see what human beings are truly capable of. As more Holocaust survivors pass away, I expect revisionists and Holocaust deniers will continue to soften and rewrite the events of that era (particularly with world anti-Semitism currently at a fever pitch). That's what makes a film like SHOAH not just important, but crucial.

[orion59]

Posted: 1/15/04 at 1:10pm

I agree, Magruder. I remeber as a kid in history class learning about WWII and Hitler. I won't say the teachers down played the evil of Hitler or the Holocaust but, being a history class, it was a very academic look at what happened. It wasn't until High School when i came across Elie Wiesel's "Night" and read it, did I realize the extent of the horror and that it didn't efefct just world politics but, it efefcted individuals. So, yes, movies like this are crucial. they show us what some people are capable of and how horrific it gets when the rest of close our eyes to it.

[Unknown User]

Posted: 1/15/04 at 2:21pm

I need to see The Pianist again. I've unfortunately seen so many (and so many sub-par) Holocaust films, that they all seem to be rote by default now. When I first heard about The Pianist, I said "Do we really need another Holocaust film?"

I think the strongest images from the Holocaust that will stay with me for a while were from an art exhibit I saw at the Jewish Museum last summer. It was called MIRRORING EVIL: NAZI IMAGERY IN RECENT ART, and for the most part it was a very hallowing experience. There was one film that had clips from the Olympics that Leni Riefenstahl shot, The Night....Listener, I believe is the name of the film, and a Calvin Klein commercial, and at one point you literally don't know what image is from which film. There was another that was a huge room with a row of headshots of Nazis in the media (a lot of films, TV shows, some propaganda ads.... Schindler was there, as was Colonel Klink) and they were all huge, neatly lined up and looming slighty above you so as to have the effect of being looked down upon. And they surrounded the room. Another I remember very distinctly was a film where the artist compiled several of Hitler's speeches and cut and spliced them so that he was saying "Hello Jerusalem, I apologize," in Hebrew. Absolutely chilling experience.... Has anyone else seen it? I believed it had another incarnation on the West Coast.

I also recommend the film The Horrible, Wonderful Life of Leni Riefenstahl. That woman led one hell of a life.

[magruder]

Posted: 1/15/04 at 2:54pm

Like so many Roman Polanski films, The Pianist is compelling for so many other reasons, apart from aspects of the story it has to tell and the strength of the filmmaking itself. In The Pianist, you have to feel Polanski is working through some of his own demons in his incredible, terrible life.

[Auggie27]

Posted: 1/15/04 at 7:38pm

Anyone else here remember seeing SOPHIE'S CHOICE in the theater? Even having read the book, I remember being devastated. Like an idiot, I went on New Year's Eve. It finished off that year as few things could. I remember walking home from the theater, shell-shocked. I have never been able to watch a single scene again, without being overwhelmed with the sadness of those unique people. Meryl did Charlie Rose a couple of years ago, and I saw The Scene again, with Meryl's commentary on how it was done. Even hearing how it was filmed, etc, I was deeply disturbed, revisiting the imagery of that loss. No single image ever summon up such a gargantuan moment in history; all we can do is remember. SC remains, if not major Holocaust literature, a most disturbing portrait of post-Holocaust issues, including survivor guilt. (This year's "House of Sand and Fog" did make me feel some of SC's anguish.)

But as we all know here, many Holocaust scholars, like Wiesel, believe that no literature or film can come close to appoximating the depth of such tragedy. I can't argue, though I don't personally knock the heart-felt visions of artists who've tried. PIANIST ranks among the most extraordinary efforts, and I was happy that both actor and director were recognized at the Oscars.

[Unknown User]

Posted: 1/16/04 at 12:08am

THE PIANIST is extrordinary. An exquisite moving film. I loved it and highly recommend it.

Bulldog

[Unknown User]

Posted: 1/16/04 at 1:36am

God, was Sophie's Choice a beautiful movie. This WILL be the year I read the entire book.

[orion59]

Posted: 1/16/04 at 8:06am

I think you're right that no piece of literature or a film can come close to the real horror that was experienced by the people who lived through that. Just like the days of Black slavery in this country or the devestation of a race of Native Americans. Those of us who didn't expereince can never completely understand. Nothing written or filmed will ever capture how terrible it was. Hopefully though, the well written pieces can convey enough to make us learn something. We can undrestand how easily we as human beings can directly participate in or at least allow through denial, the mass murder and torture of other human beings.

Besides The Pianist and Sophies Choice, the book I mentioned in an earlier post, Night by Elie Wiesel, is one that is well worth reading for anyopne who hasn't read it yet. Also of note is Snow Falling On Cedars. It's a nice love story that gives a somewhat decent account of the WWI interment in the US of Japanese citizens. It seems to gloss over it a bit but, I read it never having heard of this event in US history. So, it was an opener. I would recommend the book over the movie.

[lassy]

Posted: 1/16/04 at 9:01am

Read Night years ago when I took a class on the Holocaust in college. Some of my classmates and my professor would weep in the middle of discussions. I remember sitting frozen in class, not letting myself cry. AIA is the first movie I've seen Meryl Streep in since Sophie's Choice. I could never get over the scene in which she made one of her choices--chosing one child over another.