The Pianist (2002)

On September 23, 1939 Polish Radio was forced off air by the German invasion of Poland. The last live broadcast was Chopin's Nocturne in C Sharp Minor, played by a young Jewish pianist named Wladyslaw Szpilman. Bombs rain down on Warsaw as he plays. The other people in the studio are panicking but still he plays on. Then a bomb hits the studio and Szpilman too takes cover.



Szpilman’s account of what happened next was first published in Poland during 1946 but it was almost immediately withdrawn by Stalin’s new Communist Government. Finally it was published in Germany in 1997 after Szpilman's son found it on his father's bookcase.

The film of that book is a dark, depressing tale about a man and his fight for survival and it’s simply brilliant. Roman Polanski, himself a survivor of the Krakow and Warsaw ghettos, directs.

For Szpilman, life becomes one long struggle to keep his family together as the German’s move in and impose their anti-Jewish laws. The Germans rapidly increase the restrictions, forcing Jews to walk in the gutter, wear the star on their arm and anything else they can think of to humiliate them. When they get bored with that, they brick them up inside the Ghetto instead. Life in the Ghetto is at first tolerable but quickly gets worse as the persecution escalates.



The full horror of the atrocities that go on there is not spared us. Jews are often lined up for no apparent reason and shot. One woman asks a Nazi officer, ‘What will happen to us?’ and promptly finds out first hand as she is shot point blank in the head. A man in a wheelchair is tossed over a balcony because he failed to stand up when the soldiers walked in.

Finding food becomes difficult, Szpilman’s father has to barter for a single piece of caramel and then cuts it in six pieces to share it with his family. This is also practically his last action because it’s not long before everyone is being packed into trains bound for Treblinka, an extermination facility. Szpilman himself is fortunate that a Jewish policeman recognised him and saved him. This was just one of many lucky escapes that Szpilman manages.



Everything in the film is shown from Szpilman's point of view and we become part of his frantic plight for survival. We share his guilt at not going with his family, although he knows that to do so would have been futile. You can feel the hopelessness he feels, his loneliness, his desperation.

He is conscripted into working for the Germans but manages to escape and goes into hiding outside the Ghetto. From where he witness's, from a safe distance, the failed Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

He manages to get help from other non-Jewish Poles and with their kindness manages to survive, moving from place to place. First in safe houses and then in bombed out ruins. He is continually hiding and fleeing, gradually becoming a shadow of his former self, visibly losing weight throughout the film and suffering jaundice along the way. All the time death via a German bullet never seems far away.

In one of the `safe house' there is a piano. As he sits at it and we hear music playing, we think he’s gone mad and the sound of his playing will give him away but then we see his hands are moving above the keyboard and realize that the music is playing only in his head.

His final hiding place is the attic of a bombed out building where he discovers a large can of pickles which might just keep him alive until the Russians come. The pickles though are his undoing. He makes such a din trying to open them that he is discovered by a German officer. You expect another quick shooting but when the officer finds out he ‘was’ once a pianist he tells him to play. After so many years of being unable to play you wonder at his capacity to pull this one off but after a few tentative chords, he does. This seemed to save his life and the officer ends up helping Szpilman, bringing him food and, finally, his overcoat.



When the Russian troops finally liberate Warsaw, after all he’d been through to survive; Szpilman is almost killed by his rescuers when they see the German coat he is wearing. Their shots miss him and then when they realise that he’s a Pole, they ask

“Why the ****ing coat?"

Szpilman manages to gulp a reply,

"I'm cold"

The officer who helped him tries to contact Szpilman from the pen he is incarcerated in and although Szpilman tries to find him, he fails and the officer is taken away to a Stalingrad labour camp where he was to die seven years later.

When broadcasting resumed on Polish Radio, six long years after it was bombed off air, it was with the same piece, Chopin's Nocturne in C sharp Minor and the same pianist, Wladyslaw Szpilman.

I was riveted from start to finish and although it can be hard to watch at times, it is a remarkable film. Szpilman is portrayed as a man that we can all relate to and that you care about what happens to. What would we have done in his situation? He doesn’t try to be a hero; he is just a man doing what he can to stay alive.

Also the film doesn’t try to judge anybody, although that would have been easy to do and just gives you the historical facts and what affect it had on one man's life.

The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards in 2002 and won Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Adapted Screenplay. I had to check to see what defeated it for Best Film that year. Now I haven't seen Chicago and no disrespect to it but I imagine most people who saw it back in 2002 will have forgotten it by now. Had they seen the Pianist instead, they wouldn't have forgotten it so easily. This film will stay with you for some time afterwards.

There were 3,500,000 Jews in Poland before the Nazi occupation; after it there were just 240,000.

Easy Virtue

Easy Virtue is based on a 1920's play by Noel Coward but I assume it's a fairly liberal adaptation. The male lead is John Whittaker (Ben Barnes), who marries a thoroughly inappropriate girl, the glamorous Larita (Jessica Biel), a racing driver whom he met in France. Naturally he's thrilled to have landed himself such a delightful catch but he should have kept her to himself. His mistake is taking her home to England to meet his family.

The first words his mother (Kristin Scott Thomas) utters to her new daughter-in-law are ‘Oh, you're American’ and it's all downhill from there. She immediately resents Larita's presence as part of the family and proceeds to be as vindictive as possible towards her. This is all before she finds out that Larita has been married before, to a man who died in suspicious circumstances.



John’s mother believes in upholding the traditions of the aristocracy whilst Larita has no intention of fitting in with that sort of lifestyle. Unfortunately for Larita, she is also poor and the Whittakers desperately need their son to marry into money so that they can maintain that lifestyle. It’s post World War One Britain and the status of the gentry is fading fast. His mother had hoped that John would marry his childhood sweetheart Sarah, the daughter of a wealthy neighbour.



The polar opposite to his mother is his father, the wonderfully sardonic Jim (Colin Firth). Firth is simply fantastic as the father. A man so disengaged from the family and all it stands for that he spends most of his time in his workshop. He's a World War One survivor, dresses down, unshaven and shuns the traditional country pursuits. He approves when Larita objects to fox hunting on moral grounds and then when asked ride with the hunt, does so on a motorbike. He likes Larita and sees her as a soul mate.



Easy Virtue is a romantic comedy and then some. There’s some great visual ‘gags’ some of which are so quick they’re easy to miss which means it doesn’t work too well on the small screen and would be better at the cinema on a bigger screen. That said there's nothing subtle about the 'traditional' can-can which doesn't endear Larita to John's sister or the nasty end that became of the Chihuahua (dog lovers should look away). There’s also the subtlety of songs such as ‘Car Wash’ and ‘Sex Bomb’ redone in period style.

Ultimately though, it isn't just a comedy. The brilliance of the film is how it explores the relationships between the various family members. There are some great exchanges between John’s Mother and Larita, who can give as good as she gets. Thrown into the mix are John's sisters, who don't know what to make of Larita at all, and some interesting staff members. Larita could have been a breath of fresh air blowing away the entrenched stuffiness of the family but is seen as more of a cold wind demolishing it.



As well as Firth, there are great performances by Biel and Scott Thomas and well most of the cast.

In the end, Larita whirls out in much the same fashion as she whirled in, realising that she’s totally wasted on John, advising the daughters to run away and destroying the Venus de Milo.

The final scene is interesting too. If this was the way the original play finished, then it would have been greatly subversive for its day. ‘Easy Virtue’ is a bit off the wall, which is probably why I liked it a lot.

Chéri

I liked the look of the pedigree of Chéri because the film was from director Steven Frears and writer Christopher Hampton both of who worked on ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ twenty plus years ago. That film featured Michelle Pfeiffer and she stars again here. There are other similarities between the two films, both being French period pieces and both involving libertine-esk behaviour or so I thought.

The synopsis for Chéri looked good. It promised the son of a courtesan being initiated in the ways of love by an older woman. Ah, a young boys dream.

The film opened with an annoying voiceover which explained about the ‘Belle Époque’ and what a ‘courtesan’ was, but thankfully the voiceover didn’t last long. A courtesan is, in this case, a woman who offers her charms to clients, usually rich folk in return for some of their money. These tend to be long-term arrangements, not brief encounters.

Michelle Pfeiffer plays one such upmarket prostitute, Léa de Lonval, who’s feeling that perhaps she’s getting too old for all this and she’s considering retirement. However she is persuaded to embark on one last assignment by a former colleague and ex-courtesan, Madame Peloux (Kathy Bates). Bates, incidentally, is as good as ever, not that I can really picture her younger self as an appealing courtesan doing the deed.



Léa agrees to spend a few weeks ‘educating’ Peloux’s 19-year-old son Fred (Rupert Friend). He has known her all her life as an auntie and when he was young she christened him Chéri, while he knows her affectionately as ‘Noo Noo’ or perhaps ‘Nu Nu’.

What they haven’t done before though, is get off with each other, obviously, and it somewhat spoils the film that this happens within seconds of Peloux giving them the green light. There’s no chase. Pfeiffer doesn’t have to be talked into her task and Chéri certainly doesn’t need asking twice. Our Fred, you see, is no shrinking violet. In fact he’s been a bit of a playboy and has been quite adept at putting it about, which is why his mother wants him with Léa and away from praying on other more impressionable young girls. Which is a shame, because had Chéri been more innocent then Rupert Friend would have been perfect as a blank canvas for Pfeiffer to work on but he’s not really believable as an object of lust for her. Surely an experienced woman such as Léa would have eaten him for breakfast and been bored to tears by lunch.

Apparently not, their few weeks’ turns into six years of living in sin, as their not terribly dangerous liaison blossoms into a full-blown romance. Quite what she saw in him I have no idea.



I’m also not sure what she educated him in. She certainly didn’t make him any more of a gentleman. He comes with very few redeeming features and he doesn’t seem to develop any under her tutorship. She even ends up paying for him rather than making money out of him.

The romance comes to an end when the Machiavellian Peloux corrals Chéri into an arranged marriage with some young crumpet that she’s found for him, the daughter of another courtesan.

Married life, unsurprisingly, doesn’t suit him and he soon comes running back to Léa’s boudoir offering her a second bite at the Chéri. Sorry couldn’t resist that.

Naturally she takes him back just long enough to ruffle her chiffon before she packs him back off to his wife.



Michelle Pfeiffer is as good as ever and looked the part, Rupert Friend does ok too but it’s a pretty uninvolving film, you just don’t feel much attachment to the characters. At the end, we are told that Chéri is tortured by his love for what he can’t have, a woman who is too old for him. Unfortunately this is the first time we get any inkling of this, at least from such a dramatic angle. The story of an ultimately doomed affair between an older woman and her toy boy could have been dramatic all the way through. It’s not particularly steamy either, despite all; the ‘educating’ going on. Dangerous Liaisons it certainly wasn’t.