Given that the film deals with two possible roads that the life of an artist can take -based on his attitude towards the political environment- the possibilities of a great plot were immense... El pianista has interesting characters and could have built them in a deeper and more consistent way, but instead, they spent too much time mounting a parody in Paris or a "Felliniesque" encounter at a roof in Barcelona. These wasted times didn't allow the main plot to fully develop.
3 Reviews
A Catalan masterpiece
Guy3313430 April 2000
No matter how you look at it, this film has masterpiece written all over it. From the brilliant screenplay of this previously deemed unadaptable novel to the art direction to the superb performances, THE PIANIST is a gem. A very Catalan story about two Barcelona classical pianists who fall in love with the same woman in the midst of the bloody Spanish Civil war, the film is a model of the perfect screen adaptation of an epic novel spanning nearly five decades. The art direction, strong acting, character development, meticulous attention to details including the memorable score, and the use of the regional Catalan language, instead of the more mainstream (but potentially less realistic) use of Castillian Spanish are but a few of the touches that makes THE PIANIST a triumph in movie making nobody should miss.
Disappointing adaptation of Vázquez Montalbán's novel
albertoribas20 February 2008
Warning: Spoilers
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.
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