Chopin:Desire for Love

Rating:
Summary: It finally arrived! The waiting was all worthwhile.
Review: After so many musical biographies being made to the big screen, a film about Chopin was long over due. Now it finally has arrived. And the waiting was all worthwhile.

Chopin: Desire for Love is an exquisite film about Chopin's life. Chopin's music is played throughout the film and the director's musical selection for each scene is most appropriate and touching. The entire cast, all Polish, is great. Piotr Adamczyk as Chopin is fantastic. In the second half of the film, his portrayal of a lonely and ailing Chopin just breaks your heart. The story is very close to history. I'm a huge fan of Chopin and have read every version of his biography that I could get my hands on. Many scenes are based on true stories, including some of the dialogues and letters quoted. Chopin and George Sand's last meeting in the film is almost identical to what actually happened, according to many Chopin's biographies. The part about Chopin and Solange, George Sand's daughter, is a little further than the truth. Still, this is the closest version to Chopin's life, compared with Impromptu and A Song to Remember.

The film runs 134 minutes long and you just don't want it to end. It is made with limited budget, but completely satisfying for its story, music and fine acting.


Rating:
Summary: Chopin, simply a great movie!
Review: finally, this DVD is here on Amazon. simply a great movie.

please buy it or see it, if only to hear the astonishing 57 pieces of Chopin's great piano music, it will leave you breathless.....you will know most of the music by heart.

Chopin: Desire for Love is directed by the famous Oscar nominated Polish director, Jerzy Antczak (best foreign movie- Nights and Days, Noce i Dnie, 1974), currently professor at UCLA.

the music is sublime, played by the famous polish pianist one and only- Janusz Olejniczak, winner of the International Chopin Piano Competition in Warsaw. Olejniczak also played piano in The Roman Polanski movie, 'the Pianist', playing piano for Szpilman. wasn't he amazing? just like in the Pianist here you will hear simply the best piano works by Chopin played by a legend. only here you will hear different works by Chopin....some of it fun, like when we see Chopin playing with his puppy, very cute, :)

if you loved the other Chopin movie, 'Impromptu' with Hugh Grant, you will find this movie equally engaging.

i only wish that the historical events were better presented in the movie. not all people today understand what Europe was like in the early 19th century. but, the director gives us some credit for our own intelligence and does not bore us with facts but instead creates a movie about Chopin and Sand's 'Desire' for love.

i am so happy that this movie is available here for general distribution along with other movies about great composers such as Mozart or Beethoven. Chopin deserves to be remembered by a great movie. thanks to Jerzy and Barbara Antczak for giving us this masterpiece.



Rating:
Summary: Disappointment!
Review: The movie concentrated on the acerbic, immature and utterly repulsive relationship between Chopin, George Sand, her son and her daughter. It would have made more sense to delve a bit into Chopin, his motivations, and the draw between Chopin and his muse. Snippets of his music were the only saving grace in the film. I came away without sympathy for any of the characters in the movie, unable to identify with any of them, and disgusted with the lot of them, from Chopin's hatred of chicken thighs to Sands being oblivious to the impact of her affair on her family, to Selange's throwing herself at Chopin and to Maurice's immaturity and hatred of Chopin. Talk about a dysfunctional family! And how did Chopin put together his magnificent music and maintain his irrepressible talent throughout all of this? A very disappointing movie.

Rating:
Summary: sounds better than it is
Review: The music in this film is exquisite, with Chopin's compositions primarily played by Polish virtuoso Janusz Olejniczak, and other musicians in the soundtrack are Emanuel Ax and Yukio Yokoyama (piano), Yo Yo Ma (cello), and Vadim Brodsky and Pamela Frank (violin). The music however, no matter how glorious, didn't keep my interest throughout this rather overlong film. Not only does the film need editing in length, but some of the cuts are peculiar, and don't flow well.

It's an uneven tale of Chopin's relationship with novelist George Sand and her children, and Chopin's destructive self-obsession that turn the family into the ultimate dysfunctional scenario. The scene about the chicken leg versus the breast meat descends into the absurd and humorous, and though I realize there are people as silly and petty as how Chopin is portrayed (and I know little about his history), 134 minutes of this sort of petulance gets very boring.

Piotr Adamczyk plays Chopin with a remarkable physical resemblance, and Danuta Stenka fares the best in the thankless role of George Sand, as she tries to keep the sun revolving around Chopin, while keeping her children from doing something unhelpful, like committing suicide.
Filmed in Warsaw, Paris and Majorca, the cinematography is nice (by Edward Klosinski), with a lot of meadow scenes and wildflower picking.
If this film resembles Chopin's life, then perhaps it is best to just listen to his music. Self-absorption tends to become exceedingly tiresome...and one wants to yell at the screen "get over it !".