The Pianist: The Story Of Wladyslaw Szpilman

These people existed in non-intersecting worlds: a teacher in a German village school and a talented, world-famous Polish pianist. The Second World War doomed them: one – put on Nazi epaulets and become a murderer, and the other – to get the stigma of a ‘subhuman’ and be killed. Their paths crossed in the burning fire of the Warsaw uprising, and the meeting saved both of their destined fate. The story of Wladyslaw Szpilman revealed to me that this is not only the story of Wladyslaw Szpilman, neither it`s the story of his savior, Wilm Hosenfeld, this is the story of humanity. The stories of these people, the great pianist and the great savior, show that human nature is a desire for life, but only that human being is able to remain a man in inhuman conditions, who has a goal and has love inside.

The brilliant psychiatrist Victor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor, who at the same time managed to keep hundreds of people from suicide, wrote “Man`s Search for Meaning” in just nine days. For the sake of argument I will give a quote from his book: “Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.” Wladyslaw unconditionally proves these words. All the time he was saved by his love of music, all the time the pianist played his imaginary piano. He was led by love and hope that one day he would be able to touch his lovely instrument again. That is, a person needs a passion, a fire inside that can warm him in the most severe frosts of life.

In the second argument, it is worth paying respect to the man who saved Wladyslaw at that moment when the pianist had already said goodbye to his life. A person is a person when he truly loves something. Unfortunately, the film does not reveal fully the image of this kind-hearted man. In fact, Wilm suffered from the atrocities of fascism on Polish soil, he tried to help everyone he could help, he made forged documents, pulled people out of concentration camps. In one of the letters to his family, he wrote: “We do not deserve mercy; we are all guilty. “. He was led by love for humanity, he did what love inside told him. He was supposed to kill a hiding Jew, but instead, he listened to his heart once again. So, love helps to show the best sides of human nature.

To sum up, a person never knows what fate is hiding around the next turn. A simple teacher can go against the conditions of life and remain a man with a capital letter; an outstanding pianist can lose everything, except hope for the future. Human nature is the desire to survive and the desire to save others, and these desires must be full of love and meaning