- 1 -(Courtesy of Sergio Hare. Used with permission.) Sergio Haro Creative Spark Essay II- Draft III December 9, 2004 Through the Ruins of What Once Was Thunder roars all around. Black clouds veil a dying sun. Yet, the storm is not falling from above but raging from below. The thunder is the cracking of gunfire and the clouds, smoke rising from the rubble of what once was. With the roar of a lion, planes, looking like angels in the heavens, drop death upon a city. The buildings that were homes are now corpses, stripped of their flesh and left gaping. With the earth erupting in hatred, Wladyslaw Szpilman sits upright and continues to play Chopin’s Nocturne in C sharp minor. The bombs rain unrelentingly. Everyone runs, except for Szpilman, who is still behind the ivory keys, until a bomb falls upon his office and rips a hole through the walls. Now Szpilman picks up his hat and walks away from his passion. Not disturbed by the blood dripping from his forehead, he calmly smiles as he exits the building. This moment was the first encounter Wladylsaw Szpilman had with the Second World War. It was just the beginning of a terrible tragedy that unfolded for Szpilman. The movie The Pianist is a depiction of this tragedy. At its very core, the movie is a tale of survival. As the German forces systematically eliminated his home, his possessions, even his family, Wladyslaw Szpilman had a force inside of him that kept him going. The Pianist follows Szpilman’s journey, showing his love for the music pulling him through the horror of times. And it was this love that kept him going for the near half decade he spent living hell.- 2 - Through a Window Back to Poland, 1939: a small boy roamed around the Umschlagplatz, an assembly area for the Jews before they were loaded onto cattle cars toward certain death. He was all alone, his mother murdered, his father taken away. The stench of death caught his throat. Finally, he made it through the sea of people packed into this Umschlagplatz. Between him and his life, there stood a German soldier. Courageously, the boy approached the soldier and asked if he could go home to fetch a loaf of bread. The soldier looked down upon this child and nodded. The only thing this soldier told Roman Polanski was “Don’t run.” (“Story of Survival”) Sixty years later, Roman Polanski was finally able to recreate those terrible memories that haunted him and show the world an un-softened portrayal of what happened back then. He found it too difficult to tell his own story; the memories cut too deeply into his heart for him to relive them exactly. “For years [Polanski] searched for someone else's [story] to adapt” (Thomas). A decade earlier he was offered the position to direct “Schindler’s List,” “but turned down the offer to direct it because it was set in Krakow” (Thomas). There is quite a difference between this movie and previous movies about World War II. For one, the movie is very quiet. For a large portion of the movie, Szpilman is alone in the world. On occasion someone drops by to deliver food but for the most part dialogue is nonexistent. The larger difference between this and others is Szpilman is not a hero nor does he exhibit characteristics of heroism. He is not a soldier fighting for his country; he is not a rebel who joins the Resistance and fights from the inside, he is not a- 3 - business man who gives up all he has to save the lives of as many people as he can. Szpilman is a pianist and to that his heart belongs. He is just a spectator of the war attempting not to get caught in violence. The movie keeps a tone similar to that of the memoirs on which the movie is based. Iwo Zaluski, a writer for A Contemporary Review, felt the book was told “without bitterness or judgment, with only a wry sadness and pity for the frailties of human nature.” This is an excellent depiction of the movie itself. The Germans were not the only ones depicted as evil and cruel. No one is free from the grasp of evil deeds. The Jewish policemen readily and enthusiastically gather their people, beating them senselessly and sending them to certain doom. The rich Jews who populate the café in which Szpilman plays seem to have no idea of the suffering that is occurring. The Poles who were supposed to take care of Szpilman fall to greed as well. In one of the flats Szpilman was hiding in, a technician for the radio station was assigned to Szpilman. This technician went around collecting money to provide Szpilman with food but instead kept the money for himself and allowed Szpilman to become terribly ill. However, Szpilman does not judge these people. He does not voice any sentiment toward them. It is more as if Szpilman is in shock and does not know how to react. He is just in awe at humanity and what it is capable of. This attitude is carried on within the movie as Polanski does not focus on any of the violence or cruelty but shows it on various occasions as an ordinary occurrence perpetrated by all. The book has “a straightforward style that smacks of diary rather than autobiography,” comments Zaluski. The movie translates this style perfectly onto the screen. Many of the important events Szpilman watches through a window, his version of- 4 -the movie screen. Through his window, he watches as a German unit storms a building in the Ghetto and toss a paraplegic out of a window because he did not stand for the German officer. Through his window, he watches through his window the uprising of the Jews in Warsaw, and its termination. Later on, he again watches the uprising of the Poles and their eventual capture and extermination. The movie is filmed in a similar approach to Szpilman’s window watching. The movie does not gloss over the images with effects or radically different angles. Its tries to show the audience exactly what Szpilman sees. Often, Szpilman is placed on the edge of the frame, giving the viewer the sense that he is standing next to Szpilman watching the events unfold. The Pianist is a different type of movie. Although the movie follows one man’s tragedy, it differs in that the man is not the focus. As noted, the camera moves beside Szpilman not behind. This is done to provide a collective view on the hell. All other movies focus on an individual story, an individual triumph. The Pianist does not look at just one aspect of World War II. Instead, it focuses on life as a whole. Polanski’s vision was to provide the world with a