http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0253474/
For some reason lately I've been watching a lot of historical films, and so I finally decided to break down and watch The Pianist. Adrien Brody gives a fantastic performance of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a concert pianist from Poland who survives the Holocaust by hiding in in Warsaw. Roman Polanski's art direction gives this film depth and beauty beyond measure. Over all, I felt this was a good film. (note the use of the word *good* not great)
After saying all of that, I feel I must add this. This film fell short of being a great movie by inches, and I feel like it really could have been one of the best movies ever made had Polanski did a few things. There's a lot of dead space in this film. It seems that he wanted to show off his sets more than he wanted to show the story in certain sections. Also I found some of his costumes distracting. Let me put it this way, at the beginning a female lead is wearing a pumpkin orange coat. It's really hard for me to get past that and listen to her when she is made up like a traffic cone. This is not to say that one shouldn't see this film, and I can see why history teachers are showing it in class.
Over all, it's a fantastic perspective film on the Holocaust, but it just had some near misses that didn't put it in the same league as Schindler's List.
For some reason lately I've been watching a lot of historical films, and so I finally decided to break down and watch The Pianist. Adrien Brody gives a fantastic performance of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a concert pianist from Poland who survives the Holocaust by hiding in in Warsaw. Roman Polanski's art direction gives this film depth and beauty beyond measure. Over all, I felt this was a good film. (note the use of the word *good* not great)
After saying all of that, I feel I must add this. This film fell short of being a great movie by inches, and I feel like it really could have been one of the best movies ever made had Polanski did a few things. There's a lot of dead space in this film. It seems that he wanted to show off his sets more than he wanted to show the story in certain sections. Also I found some of his costumes distracting. Let me put it this way, at the beginning a female lead is wearing a pumpkin orange coat. It's really hard for me to get past that and listen to her when she is made up like a traffic cone. This is not to say that one shouldn't see this film, and I can see why history teachers are showing it in class.
Over all, it's a fantastic perspective film on the Holocaust, but it just had some near misses that didn't put it in the same league as Schindler's List.
