MovieChat Forums > The Pianist (2003) Discussion > The Pianist and Schindler's List Both Ha...

The Pianist and Schindler's List Both Had Jewish Directors, yet both contain


multiple scenes, depicting Jews as refusing to help each other!
They are depicted as being selfish with food, hiding places, and refusing to get involved, when some wanted to organize and use their superior numbers to fight back!
I guess I'm a little confused, why Jewish Directors, would choose to include Identical, unflattering depictions of Jewish behavior, in 2 separate films, that are clearly intended to be sympathetic to the Jewish plight?
Are we supposed to pity the selfish, because of their dire situation, as much as those they refused to help, less than those they refused to help, or not at all, because they refused to help?






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Are you saying that a Jewish director is not capable of telling an honest story, that s/he is racially obligated to defend "the tribe"?

Jews are human beings. In desperate conditions, human beings often behave in less than ideal ways. Both films you mention are completely honest and accurate in depicting that behavior.

Really, it's quite simple and has nothing to do with their ethnicity.

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Because it's human nature that some people would (& did) act in this way. Religion has nothing to do with it.

The directors are giving a realistic portrayal of things that actually happened.

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The Spielberg movie was overrated.

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If either director had portrayed all Jewish people as *complete saints* they'd be castigated for supremacist thinking and inauthenticity. To their credit (and as much as I detest Polanski for various other reasons), both directors favoured nuance and complexity, the implication being that NO HUMAN-BEING deserved what was done to 6 million Jews, regardless of how virtuous or otherwise individual Jews may have been.

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