 |
| The film follows pianists competing in the Chopin competition |
Yesterday I watched another documentary as part of the Vancouver International Film Festival, called Pianoforte, which follows several pianists vying to win the International Chopin Piano Competition. Needless to say it's stressful to watch the competitors deal with the immense pressure.
The competition started in 1927 and from 1955 is held every five years. The 2020 competition was postponed for a year because of the pandemic, and that is the one that was filmed in Pianoforte. There are some 160 competitors, that gets knocked down to 80, then 40, then eventually down to the final 12. Four runner-ups are announced before the winner.
The director Jakub Piatek approached the organisers of the competition in 2019 about doing the documentary and they were interested. He admits not knowing much about classical music, which he says allowed him to ask a lot of questions that would inform the viewers of what was going on.
 |
| (left) Gadjiev and Armellini are good friends |
Piatek interviewed 40 competitors in video calls, and then met them in person when they had to perform in the preliminary round in Warsaw, Poland, and that helped them narrow down the pool to about six or seven pianists. Some were knocked out in successive rounds, and so in the film there are only quick clips of them packing up their suitcases despite having filmed their back story in their respective home countries.
Because of the pandemic, Piatek had to rely on finding film crews in places like China, Japan, Russia, Italy and Poland.
The final group of people they followed were diverse in race, outlook, and approach to the competition. Italian-Slovenian Alexander Gadjiev seems a bit older than everyone else with graying long hair, only wears shirts, and slacks, and practices his own kind of meditation that involves moving his wrists in circles.
 |
| Hao with his teacher Li and director Piatek |
Hao Rao is a 16-year-old from Jishou, in Hunan province, China. He is accompanied by his piano teacher, Vivian Li. She is very encouraging, but constantly telling him to practice and he dutifully obeys. There is a striking scene of him at home in a small apartment. He plays the piano while his mother cooks nearby, and his father watches him from behind. They politely listen, but probably have no understanding of the talent their son has.
His mother pulls out a binder filled with the train tickets they have taken to lesson and competitions. He travels 16 hours to Guangzhou for his lessons which is quite the feat -- and proves his love of music. Li later admits that her teacher had primed her for this Chopin competition, but when it came down to it, she chickened out, claiming she was not ambitious enough.
Hao contrasts with a young Russian teen about the same age as him whose teacher is very tough on her, a woman in her 60s who came from the Soviet-era of piano training. The teen, who has very long hair, is caught between focusing on her playing and being belittled by her teacher.
 |
| This Russian teen believes she is talented... or not? |
A Polish pianist even uses his smartphone to film himself playing because he knows the cameras are going to film him at the piano and so he wants to know what he looks like...
It's these small scenes that reveal the stress, the relationships between the pianists and their parents or teachers, the humour and the passion. Pianoforte does not focus too much on the playing because really, who are we to judge? We can see their agony and dread, elation and relief on their faces, and that's all we really need to know.
If you follow the competition, you will know who won, but it is not revealed until the end of the film. It's not important -- it's what drives these people to compete for 21 days straight and we as the audience can sympathise with them.
Directed by Jakub Piatek
89 minutes
No comments:
Post a Comment