Review of The Pianist (2002) by Liam C — 12 Aug 2013

This movie is the perfect representation of The Holocaust. Depressing, dreary and went on far too long. The Pianist tells a rather boring story of a man trapped in The Holocaust. Just because its based off of a true story does not make it interesting. Do forgive me if I sound disrespectful but if this was supposed to be a dramatic eye opener, it failed miserably. Nothing about it seemed urgent or even important. Yes, The Holocaust was one of the most horrific events in history and they managed to make it not only dramatically lacking, it was boring. This is mostly due to Brody, who the hell thought it'd be a good idea to cast him as a main lead in a film that was supposed to emotionally involving? Because of this, it remains emotionally distant to the point where I do not care what happens to his character. He mostly faded in with the background and just stood around not doing anything, while other more interesting characters with things called 'personalities' filled up the time, with probably a sheet of A4 of dialogue to work with, it ultimately comes off flat and was not deserving of an Oscar at all. So he gave up all his possessions, does that garner a good performance, apparently it does. When I think of actors to play in a Holocaust movie, would anyone think of Brody? I did not like his performance at all and considering he is in pretty much the whole thing, it kind of failed. He just seemed really out of place being there and I could not get past that, maybe that worked in its favour as the character was really out of place too. However, Daniel Day-Lewis or Nicolas Cage deserved that award, hell, anyone of them should have gotten it, freaking anyone but Adrien Brody.

Now, I'm not completely heartless, the shocking imagery is unforgettable and Brody did do some good things that made me get passed the fact that he shouldn't have been there but this was only in the last 30 minutes and by that point it is far too late. His playing of the piano, a whopping 5 times- kind of a misleading title there, was faultless, I can't criticise his performance when playing the piano it was breathtakingly fantastic. The length was also an insult, I'm all for slow moving character dramas as I feel they are the only films that I can actually connect with, but this was stretching it, like my problem with 'Brokeback Mountain' if some finer editing had been done and made this movie shorter I guarantee it would be more emotionally connecting. The editing was awful anyway one scene would just come out of nowhere while another still seemed like it should have carried on. On the other hand, the music was fantastic and worked well with the surroundings, the production values are high and it's filmed competently. <- my first review. I've seen it 3 times now. It gets better every time I see it but it just makes me sad that Brody never did anything of this quality ever again.