Product: La Pianiste (Original French Version)
Rating: 5.0
Jelinek, Haneke, & Huppert
Nobel or no, it surprised me Jelinek's novel got made into a movie. There is of course a filmable plot to the book, but its blunt narrative is so stylized, almost childish in its urgent impetus, and hounded all throughout with a foreboding sense of reader-voyeurism, that it seemed to me totally unfilmable or at least very difficult to reproduce on film.And then I thought - of course, Haneke. The master of cool intellectual voyeurism, done in a visually often flat but (for the viewer) psychologically harrowing way. Plus, Huppert, the master of sangfroid surrender. It could not be any more perfect. Who else but these two to translate onto film the strange, disinterested yet intense tone of the book?! Yet, curiously, the result is surprisingly a lot less like either Jelinek or Haneke.For one thing, I've never seen his camera as romantic as it is here. It's almost lyric, and although unblinking in its gaze on Erika, it also clearly pities her. It shows her depravity, but it *sees* her as ill. I found myself wondering why Haneke did this. He could not have failed to see the book has far less pity than a slight contempt in its clinical scrutiny. Nor could it quite have been the usual 'movie' reason of having to make its main character sympathetic enough to stay with -- at least not for the director of movies like 'The Seventh Continent.'These aren't complaints. I have no complaints against this movie. But it should be said that even if Haneke isn't interested in a transparent novel-to-film transfer, it's not as obvious in its being a 'Haneke' film (again, not a complaint).Actually, I think the movie is all Huppert's. She's devastating and devastated and completely searing.