Friday, August 26, 2016

"The Pianist" and "Playing to Live"

This is exactly when Wladek Szpilman was playing to live for Captain Hosenfeld of the German Army.

The piece is Ballade No.1 in G minor, Opus 23 by Chopin.  The actual pianist was Janusz Olejniczak.  Of course I don't know these things from memory but I needed to know what it was and now you do.

To my taste, this example of Chopin is a bit 'grandstandy' even when it must take unbelievable technical brilliance to play and you can see the hands so how in hell could any human ever do that.  For me, it's a bit too much of a muchness but I'm endlessly admiring of the skill of it.




We can go with 'music hath charms to soothe the savage beast' but that's an easy shot and too obvious to score.

That he plays for his life and lives to play are good observations but none of us will tell us why any of this had to happen.

It's not supposed to make sense apart from this.  How could it possibly make sense.

Roman Polanski and Adien Brody did masterful jobs of it along with a large cast of friends.  Thomas Kretschmann played the German Army officer.  We assume they were friends as they had to have suffered to make the movie even when it was simulated.  All of this they do together so it seems brotherhood is inevitable in that circumstance maybe in a virtual way a bit like it was in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Anything in our lives is infinitesimal next to that but maybe it was a reflection.  The book was written by Szpilman so there was no invention.

The emotional impact is not the same as "Playing to Live" but both are identical in how such impossibly beautiful music flies above them.


Mystery Lady, there's some puzzle here as the version of "Playing to Live" I saw was uploaded by someone Dutch and that was definitely the name.  That you found apparently the same thing called "Playing for Life" is odd but all the actor names were correct, run-time was a match, etc.

I'm so curious about your reaction to it, mostly insofar as whether you thought experiencing the devastation of the movie was enough counterbalanced by the exquisite beauty of the music.  Maybe that''s impossible.

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