Based on Vázquez Montalbán's novel of the same name, Mario Gas's "El pianista" fails to meet the challenge of adapting into into film a text that consists of almost 300 pages of continuous dialogue. Sadly, the outcome is a flat story abounding in stereotypes and lacking in the nuance with which the original characters were represented.
Arguably, "El pianista" is Vázquez Montalbán's best novel because of its unforgiving representation of political disillusion. The sadness and pathos that pervade the original novel are lost in Gas's preachy, manichean, and morally facile film. There are many aspects of the original novel that are radically transformed or watered down in an unproblematic representation pallatable to the Spanish socialdemocratic left. For example, the film version fails to represent the squalid life conditions and the bitter, humiliating and dehumanizing defeat endured by Rossell (the pianist in the title) and other characters who choose to stay loyal to their ideals. Similarly, the character of Ventura, a disillusioned, middle-aged leftist who in the novel is clearly in the path of becoming another Rossell, is turned into the film into an active, insightful journalist in perfect control of his circumstance that leads the old Doria to a moment of reckoning in his old age. Doria, who in the novel appears as a triumphant, flamboyant, self-centered man lacking a conscience and principles, appears here meek and full of regret before the pianist Rossell. At the end of the film Rossell appears silent, holding the high moral ground, aware of being observed by his peer, while in the novel he is explicitly described as "a ghost" passing by barely noticed by the people around him.
The film has a few remarkable interpretations (like the young Rossell or the old Doria), and the second section of the film on the roofs of the Barcelona buildings is an enjoyable imitation of Fellini.
All-in-all, the movie may be enjoyed by fans of Spanish Civil War cinema or unconditional lovers of Catalan film and music.
Arguably, "El pianista" is Vázquez Montalbán's best novel because of its unforgiving representation of political disillusion. The sadness and pathos that pervade the original novel are lost in Gas's preachy, manichean, and morally facile film. There are many aspects of the original novel that are radically transformed or watered down in an unproblematic representation pallatable to the Spanish socialdemocratic left. For example, the film version fails to represent the squalid life conditions and the bitter, humiliating and dehumanizing defeat endured by Rossell (the pianist in the title) and other characters who choose to stay loyal to their ideals. Similarly, the character of Ventura, a disillusioned, middle-aged leftist who in the novel is clearly in the path of becoming another Rossell, is turned into the film into an active, insightful journalist in perfect control of his circumstance that leads the old Doria to a moment of reckoning in his old age. Doria, who in the novel appears as a triumphant, flamboyant, self-centered man lacking a conscience and principles, appears here meek and full of regret before the pianist Rossell. At the end of the film Rossell appears silent, holding the high moral ground, aware of being observed by his peer, while in the novel he is explicitly described as "a ghost" passing by barely noticed by the people around him.
The film has a few remarkable interpretations (like the young Rossell or the old Doria), and the second section of the film on the roofs of the Barcelona buildings is an enjoyable imitation of Fellini.
All-in-all, the movie may be enjoyed by fans of Spanish Civil War cinema or unconditional lovers of Catalan film and music.