The Pianist is all out of tune
The Pianist
Roman Polanski
Adrien Brody, Frank Finlay, Maureen Lipman, Thomas Kretschmann
15.
The Cannes Palme d'Or went to this story, a true one, of the Polish pianist Wladyslaw Spilman who survived the horrors of the Warsaw ghetto during WW2; one wonders why!
It is not so much the story itself - it could not fail to be an inspiring one - as it’s telling. Surprisingly for the usually majestic Polanski, it is a lumpen tale, told with no real feeling and certainly with no real pace or structural balance.
Neither is the acting strong enough to enlist our full support of our sympathy for the characters. All of the key moments which we know should be in the film are missing, and what should have been a truly dramatically moving film ends up as a bit of a shallow mess.
2/5.
