Hacker Cinema
The Pianist
2002 · Film · 150 min
Directed by Roman Polanski
The true story of pianist Władysław Szpilman's experiences in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation. When the Jews of the city find themselves forced into a ghetto, Szpilman finds work playing in a café; and when his family is deported in 1942, he stays behind, works for a while as a laborer, and eventually goes into hiding in the ruins of the war-torn city.
9 positive1 mixed11 neutralfrom 21 commenters
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22 comments on Hacker News
Marvel movies is the worst example, it's a roller coaster ride, not a movie. I agree any braindead idiot or machine could write one. But they couldn't know to write The Pianist or how the subject could be approached or why it's time to write it.
AI can make slop yes, but it can't make the kind of art people don't get tired of. It's the difference between wisdom and knowledge.
I was going to say, were movies really that good in 2002?
Catch Me If You Can
Gangs of New York
The Pianist
City of God
Yes, yes they were lol. It is almost hard to believe those all came out in the same year.
Imagine in 2025 having to pick if you want to see The Pianist or City of God? It is just so unthinkable
> There's no such thing as an anti-war movie as Truffaut said.
This is an absurd statement, can you expand on this?
Have you never seen The Pianist, Schindler's List, Come and See, ..?
I wonder what WW2 reality is/was/means and how can you compress that in a movie? The Pianist? Dunkirk?
Schindler's list is pathetic. It was a good movie until the scene where Schindler leeds the people with a flag in its hands. This was desgusting.
La vita e bella - i have to rewatch it. My impression (20 years ago) was that tried to see some tragic moments with a comical note.
Pianist is ok.
For me RT has mostly been a reasonable indicator of what is worth watching and what isn't, subjective as that might seem.
Some stuff though just doesn't make any sense to me (going back to the point about subjectivity).
I love the movie The Ninth Gate, and that scores 44% on RT with the critics, and 57% with the audience.
I know a lot of people who love it as well. So I thought that the reviews were perhaps influenced by Polanski's history, but then when you look at The Pianist, which came after by quite some years, it scored 95%. So what gives?
> What I don't follow is the jump some people make from reasonable moderation like this, to fascism. They see internet platform moderation as a gateway drug to a physically oppressive government. I don't see how this jump is possible. Am I missing something?
You should watch the movie, The Pianist. It put the rise of Hitler's regime in a completely different perspective for me. Nobody in Germany at the time thought that the small things mattered too much. They all slowly shifted with the times until one day they were actively killing millions of innocent people. It's also interesting that a lot of Hitler's propaganda involved blaming the Jews for common health problems[0].
I'm not saying that any of this is comparable to Covid, because it's not. But your comment seems naive. There is no jump from a free government to a "physically oppressive government". There's a series of small compromises made by the people to give the government more power that ends up culminating into something nobody ever saw coming.
[0]: https://perspectives.ushmm.org/item/propaganda-poster-jews-are-lice-they-cause-typhus
It's not that people only go for theme park rides, they'll also go for "kino" movies. That's why Tarantino can still do it. His movies are all about completely immersing the audience in the movie's world and making use of tech and techniques that make for an epic viewing experience.
No one wants to go to the theater for a "basic" (maybe intimate?) movie where the cinematography doesn't really matter, the sound and visual effects aren't interesting, there's no grand cinematic vibe, etc. Don't get me wrong, it might be a great movie, but why would I want to see it in theater instead of at home?
People will go to theaters for Spartacus and 2001: A Space Odyssey, not for Life Is Beautiful or The Pianist.
A more modern example: I'm really stoked to watch The Whale, but I will absolutely watch it at home. I don't see any point in going to the theater for it.
There are quite a few recommendations for the classics, but if someone doesn't enjoy the slow burn of those deep books, maybe they should start with something lot more dopaminergic: animes and movies!
PsychoPass, Akira, Cowboy Bebop, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Attack on Titan.
So, movies. I only saw The Shawshank Redemption a few years ago, and it's really really good. Classic. Human. Touching. I'm not even sure how to characterize it except yes, really go see it, it's really at the top of the power distribution of movies.
12 Angry Men. At this point it's the cliché of old but good movies. At this point it's a satire of a socially interesting movie due to its naivete, yet for someone who seems a bit close minded it might be just the right thing. (Or not? :D)
The Pianist. Again, simple. Brutal. Or the recent Joker.
. . .
But really when it comes to AI and fiction.
Blade Runner. If that's not fiction that's worth investing time into, then what is? Even typing this I've got the chills thinking about Roy Batty.
> I have seen perhaps hundreds other far more moving scenes in other WWII movies (everything from Schindler's List to Saving Private Ryan to Downfall) that I far more vividly remember.
It’s completely different. Schindler’s list is great, but reads like a documentary. Downfall is flashy, but lacks the spontaneity of Casablanca, which was filmed in the thick of it. Completely different atmospheres.
Also, if you are into this kind of films, the Pianist is an absolute must-see. I would put it at the same level than Schindler’s List, way above both Saving Private Ryan (which is way, way too much of a Hollywood action movie) and Downfall (which is fine, but really not in the same league).
The pianist is such a good movie. I feel like it really captures the pointlessness of war for the vast majority of people involved.
Wow, I happened to watch the pianist last night, a movie about the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw during world war 2, which only mentioned treblinka in passing, and then came across your comment today. I read the whole interview. Both the movie and this interview contain unimaginable horrors. Like something that can’t be unseen, I don’t think I’ll ever forget them. I hope humanity doesn’t go down that road again
The Pianist is great, I would recommend watching it (more or less legally if you have reservations about giving money to some people). Also, a film is not only its director. There are many, many other people involved. I am sure some of them are arseholes and some of them are good people, but the end result stands on its own merit.
If someone said "I like The Pianist" I wouldn't judge them one way or the other, having never seen The Pianist myself. If someone said they liked Roman Polanski, I would have an opinion. I think extending honors or awards to him is more of the latter category.
I honestly would be fine with the award if Harrison Ford had simply continued on to explain that Polanski could not be there on account of being a child rapist on the run from justice. That would have put things nicely into perspective and, I think, clarified that they were awarding the accomplishment of the film and not honoring Polanski himself.
No it would be like suggesting that Polanski directed the Pianist so that he could sleep with the children cast in the movie.
MS is a convicted monopoly abuser. But that doesn’t mean every action of theirs is an abuse of their monopoly (further being publicly convicted and penalized for it, odds are they are less likely to do things that abuse their monopoly position).
Thanks for the summary, it rekindled my interest when I quickly got bored.
My own opinion: still a great film even while acknowledging this perspective. Mashing it up with The Pianist would not have made it a better film.
Warsaw was devastated after the WWII. It is estimated that about 85% of the buildings were destroyed, and only about one thousand people lived in the ruins, compared to more than one million before the war. The communist government that was installed by the Soviet Union after the war initially decided to build a new capital city, because it was calculated that it would be cheaper to build a new one than reconstruct the old one. Later, people started to move back, and Warsaw was reconstructed instead.
There is a short movie based on a Russian airplane photo footage taken in 1945, the City of Ruins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx3aGiurRbQ
The general feeling is also quite well represented in "The Pianist (2002)", which I highly recommend.
mainstream: American beauty, Pulp fiction, No country for old men, American History X, Saving Private Ryan, Taken, The pianist
classics: Lawrence of Arabia, The Shawshank Redemption, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Terminator I & II
hipster: Knife in the water (Polanski), Come and See (Idi i smotri - best war movie I've seen), Haute Tension (french horror movie), Requiem for a Dream, Trainspotting, City of God, Blue Is the Warmest Color, Goodbye Lenin, The cube
"I don't know how else to describe this: The movie made me feel bad. It filled me with feelings of unease and disquiet and anxiety. I walked outside and I didn't want to talk to anyone. I was drained. I'm not sure "Aliens" is what we mean by entertainment. Yet I have to be accurate about this movie: It is a superb example of filmmaking craft."
I felt the same about "The Pianist"!
Don't forget Isao Takahata another founder of Studio Ghibli and director of Grave of the Fireflies, Only Yesterday, Pom Poko and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya. Yet have to see The Tale of the Princess Kaguya which is discussed in the article but the drama Grave of the Fireflies is a masterpiece to me. The only truly beautiful film in my memory which I bitterly regret having watch. To me the best movie to give you the feels of World War II, even more than acclaimed titles like "The Pianist" or "Life is Beautiful". A must see.
IMHO Isao Takahata is the primary reason why an end to Studio Ghibli doesn't make sense despite Miyazaki bitter vision of the Studios. For those who know Miyazaki's temperament it's not a big deal. My interpretation is that he would have wanted the Studios to be as true, ambitious and fantastic as a Ghibli movie. Well by visiting/knowing the Studios, I bet most of us would be quite taken aback by the lovely people and the atmosphere reigning there.
1. The Killing Fields
http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/The-Killing-Fields/671140?trkid=438403#height1457
2. Danny Deckchair
http://movies.netflix.com/Movie/Danny-Deckchair/60033353?trkid=496751#height1554
3. As Far as My Feet Will Carry Me (German film)
http://movies.netflix.com/Movie/As-Far-as-My-Feet-Will-Carry-Me/70068024?trkid=496751#height1848
4. Vitus (another German flick)
http://movies.netflix.com/Movie/Vitus/70068654?trkid=496751#height1509
5. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (French film)
http://movies.netflix.com/Movie/The-Diving-Bell-and-the-Butterfly/70071610?trkid=496751#height1941
6. Band of Brothers (HBO mini-series)
http://movies.netflix.com/Movie/Band-of-Brothers-Disc-1/60024705?trkid=496751
7. The Pianist
http://movies.netflix.com/Movie/The-Pianist/60025061?trkid=496751#height1522
8. I am David
http://movies.netflix.com/Movie/I-Am-David/60034547?trkid=496751#height1771
The story itself is moving, as heroism in a good cause will be. But making art requires more than such a story as its point of departure.
The movie has what I regard as Spielberg's usual flaws: a taste for cheap trick, the quick laugh, the tremendous visual sense without much behind it. I'm sure that anyone in occupied Poland who could afford to look like that, did. I gain no particular insights into what anyone in particular might have felt or thought. Watch Europa, Europa or The Pianist, and I think you will see much superior movies--though these are even more on the periphery of the true horrors than Schindler's List.