Some lied when they vowed "Never Again", May 27 2004

In the beginning of the film, the Germans have invaded Poland and the Szpilman family are adjusting their lives to the new ruling of the Nazi Germans. They find their living conditions deteriorate as they are hustled away from their comfortable home to Ghetto and finally to the "melting pot". We see two brothers conflicting with each other as Hendrik, Szpilman's brother did not like the way he supposedly grovel to the authorities and using his privilage as a famous pianist which many Jews may envy. Even Hendrik was ungrateful when his brother freed him from prison. "Are you mad?" Szpilman asked. Hendrik's reply was "That is also my business."

Szpilman's influence was so great that he was spared when his family was sent off to the gas chambers. He lost every one of his family and when he goes back to the Ghetto where virtually all Jews were wiped out, here is a man completely devastated. We see the second half of the movie being akin to The Fugitive where he wriggles away from the claws of ever-suspecting Nazis.

When caught by Captain Wilm Hosenfeld and asked to play the piano, he plays the piano for the first time in a few years he had to be in silence for fear of alerting those around him (in apartment where he lives, he cannot play the piano as to alert everybody around him that there is a hiding Jew). This is one of the most redemptive scenes in the history of film, Szpilman plays the Chopin's Ballade reflecting the ordeal he went through. It is akin to Furtwangler conducting the great Beethoven Ninth in 1942 with battlefield sounds heard from distant.

At this age, where we cannot foretell the conclusion to the Middle East conflict and Americans squandering up their operation in Iraq, the pathetic music of MTV is contrary to music in Szpilman's time. Great music can only be created with great suffering. Gustav Mahler said that if his life flows like a calm meadow, he would not have the ability to compose anything. The classical music age has lost it's Szpilmans, Furtwanglers, Menuhins and the like. When another horrific World War comes, will there be another artist like Szpilman? Time can only tell.

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