I loved it and I hated it. (Some words about Chopin)

I loved it and I hated it.

I loved it because I was at the edge of my seat all the time -- good storytelling in this respect. I just wanted to find out what had happened to the couple. Some nice character portraits, great visuals.

The rest of this post contains spoilers. Further, if you haven't seen a movie and you are reading its forum, you are not very smart. Just stop it.

Here are the reasons I hated it, from least to most important:

7 - It strikes me as a false note that he finished the book before sorting out the situation with his marriage. Understanding it isn't enough. One can only write when one is happy. But I could be wrong here, after all, heads of people are the most variable thing in the universe. Further, writing while unhappy could mean he is in control of his emotions. Also, maybe he did write the book afterwards and the closing of the typewriter at the end is just a metaphor, meaning he finally understood. So this one can pass -- let's carry on to more important reasons why I hated it:

6 - I did not fully get the boat and tide metaphor. Maybe it means they were unable to control their own feelings and take control of their lives. So the marriage just drifted according to their moods. Sounds like a portrait of a marriage all right. But I am just not sure this is all there is to it.

5 - The view of love here is totally grim -- love is only true when and if your wife is dead. Other than this you wife could totally be hating your guts all the time. Or one could betray the other in an instant. During a honeymoon, even.

4 - Losing 2 babies must be a horrhorrhorrible thing. I am just not sure it would be enough to cause such hatred between them. Perhaps losing babies was just the start of it -- maybe they betrayed each other while depressed. But the movie doesn't tell us. I really wanted to be spoon-fed here. The guy wrote a 300-page book, why can't I be told what happened between them? Don't treat me as if I were Freud, 'cause I am not. Anyway, her flashbacks seemed to be only about pregnancy, not about betrayal, so I guess I just assumed wrongly.

On the other hand, maybe the filmmakers just want couples to identify with the characters -- and people's reasons for hate will vary. "We'll let the public fill in the blanks."

3 - What had happened at the restaurant? They seemed to have had a bad experience in the restaurant before. They had to dance at the restaurant in order to deemphasize the bad memories. But I still don't know what the Herr had happened at the restaurant.

2 - She is the Citizen Kane of the movie. He is the author of the story and he says he understands her (he knows her) but we never do. Her character is mysterious. For all we know she might just be stupid. He seems to do all the reflection while she is beside herself. We never really get to know what it was like for her. I mean, I get that she feels such hatred that she can't even confess, but that is not enough. And I wanted to know. So I spent 2 hours with them but didn't get to know them. "You are barren" is a fact, not an explanation.

1 - Here it is. The most important reason I hated this movie: the way Chopin was used.

First a word about the Prelude: When sadness gets sad, that's Chopin you hear. There is something sentimental about Chopin's music that you can't get anywhere else. I mean nowhere -- nothing comes close -- no Tchaikovsky, no Schumann, no Grieg, nobody can touch the sadness of some of Chopin's music. (Rachmaninov sometimes.) And here they chose a saaad piece. The third Prelude is as melancholic and tragic as nothing else in the world. The first half of the Prelude sets up a pathetic melancholy feeling but only in the second part do we realise the size of the loss and how unacceptable it is. It is difficult to play, because this is the tragedy of something lost, you cannot play it emphasizing anything, it is pathetic sadness, like a sad memory; if a single note comes out too strong the seriousness and the effect are lost. This is why you can cry when a master plays the piece, but you can cringe when it's your aunt playing.

Now the film starts with a pop arrangement of the first part of the piece, which meaninglessly loops back to the first part -- the crispation in the second part is never reached in the film. The pop arrangement is a stupid dilution of Chopin -- something in bad taste that should never have been made. Let us not name it. It is disrespectful, like urinating on a monument -- people who know what they are doing would never dare make this song. However, it functions perfectly for the first part of the movie: it means there's incredible sadness underneath, but the characters are avoiding it, they won't come in contact with it, they are trying to bury the sadness, pretending for the moment things are OK. So I think it was an appropriate choice for the beginning.

But then the couple spend their vacation trying to fix it. At the end, when they seem to have understood and accepted what happened, Chopin's Prelude in its original piano version starts playing, and I was thrilled. It would mean they finally accepted their sadness, a breakthrough at last -- it would be a perfect way to end the movie. It would provide perfect meaning to both the pop song and the original piano version. But Gollum forbid contemporary movie audiences from listening to a minute of Chopin, right??? Chopin is boring, right??? So let's interrupt the original piano version after 30 seconds -- just before the breakthrough second part -- to mix in the stupid French pop version AGAIN, at least it has drums, right??? This ruined the message I thought they had in mind -- do the filmmakers even understand the meaning of their own choices???

Now this could mean that the couple only touched a portion of their sadness, but then went right back to burying it. So no real breakthrough and the relationship will never really be fixed. If this is the case, then what the hell did I just watch? Why not show what you mean, why not show them breaking up at the end, or being miserable forever? So I don't believe this explanation and I just think they made a very poor artistic choice at the end. Her touching his hand in the car sends an optimistic message while repeating the stupid song means nothing is gonna change. This is contradictory rather than ambiguous.

The movies have always been horrible to Chopin, not once has an entire piece (even a miniature as in this instance) by the great Pole been heard in its entirety in a film -- not even in "The Pianist". This is how I know that filmmakers go straight to hell when they die.

By the way, I am not interested in any replies that second-guess my assessment of the emotional meaning of the music(s). Whoever disagrees must be a musical idiot, there are so many. I know how arrogant I sound -- can't help it. Sorry, I just won't reply.

Anyway, if you do reply, please: more than 2 lines? Make an effort to prove your point? Thanks.