Mark Murray

English 101
Pianist Analysis Final
15 December 2014
Hope is Always a Week Away
The movie the Pianist is a dark and depressing movie about a musician named
Wadysaw Szpilman surviving the German holocaust. It shows the inhumanity the Germans had
for the Hebrew people. Throughout the movie it follows a pianist through the worlds largest
genocide. The movie plays off an important aspect of human thought: hope is coming. In the
beginning when the family hears that England and France have joined the war everyone was
saying that it will end soon but in the next scene it shows German occupation of Poland. A few
sequences after the occupation scene, the movie follows them into the ghetto where they are
selling all their belongings and then saying that it is only temporary. The last scene that shows
this concept is when the German officer is showing kindness to the pianist and tells him that the
war will end in a few days. Two out of three of these times the estimate of the war ending are
wrong and it shows the belief that human hope can be unrealistic and/or falsely alluring to
believe in.
One of the main plot development tools that emphasize the unrealistic hope humanity has
in the movie is when the war will end. What hindered his family from surviving is hope and
pride. Pride stops the family from leaving all their belongings before the German occupation.
The family not realizing what the Germans would bring was not their fault and no one could
have warned them. The option of leaving before the Germans got there was the only smart idea

but the hopes of Britain and France ending the war fast soon lead to the capture of Poland and
the trapping of all the Jewish people in German occupation. Once the Germans occupied Poland,
the family hoped that they would go on with life.
Germany started out by saying everything would remain normal but as time went on
restrictions for Hebrews got worse and worse. By the time that the ghetto was formed, the
Hebrew people were not allowed in public and when they were they had to wear a shoulder band
with the Star of David on it. In the book (the memoir The Death of a City), Wadysaw Szpilman
explains how they did not have to move to the ghetto because they were already within its
confines but the movie shows differently. In the movie, the family sells everything and moves
into an overpriced flat like Szpilman describes in the book. The family is still grasping to hope as
they move into the flat. The father said I thought it would be worse. This just screams that they
are clinging to hope as their lives are crammed into a ghetto and ruined as they are being called
parasites and disease spreaders. The flat they are crammed into only has two rooms (a kitchen
and a lounge) to which they separate out by gender and sleep on the floors because they do not
have the money to buy beds because they are marked up by scammers that want to take the rest
of the parasite[s] money. They hope all they could to hang on till their judgment day comes
and their building is sent to Umschlagplatz (the assembly area) to be conveyed to the
concentration camp named Treblinka.
Wadysaw Szpilman was pulled aside by the leader of the Jewish police and an
acquaintance. After realizing that he could not also save his family, Szpilman ran until he found
his way into a work detail and found some people he knew to help him blend in. He continued to
work with this group for a while until his escape and rush into hiding by a close friend and
pervious coworker. She hid Szpilman in various places in a ring of Jewish smugglers. Szpilman

held onto hope that he would not get found throughout these times. He endured pain from hunger
and at one point had an inflated liver and gallbladder but survived. The hardest times were still
ahead of him though.

One of the last times Szpilman had clung to hope was when he was found by the German
officer named Wilm Hosenfeld. Hosenfeld had spared Szpilman when he played Chopins
Nocturne in C sharp minor. Szpilman had shown the officer where he was hiding and a few days
later when the Germans were leaving, the officer game Szpilman food and his officers coat and
said that the Russians were coming soon and that the Germans were leaving Warsaw. The
Germans left in mid-December and the Russians did not come until mid-January. The length of
time and expectations given by hope had once again been wrong for it was not a matter of days
but an entire month that it took for Szpilman to be saved by the Russians and out of harms way.
This movie was based off a real mans family and life. His family had all died as a result
of Hitlers final solution and never saw any of his family after the day at the train yard. The
last thing he saw of his family was his father raise his hand and wave goodbye, as if Szpilman
was setting out into life and the father was already greeting Szpilman from beyond the grave.
The movie was showing a great deal of hardship and pain but somehow Szpilman had a way of
dealing with it. Hope was the only thing to keep him going and hope would save him from the
war. Hope was always a week away.