Injustice In Roman Polanski's The Pianist

Elie Wiesel has given the listener a wonderful opportunity to feel the intense movement of his speech, “The Perils of Indifference”. His speech is centered around the need for vigilance in the face of evil. Throughout this speech, with which he moved so many, he shared his experience with being sent to Buchenwald, a concentration camp, the treacherous conditions in which they were living, and the way that indifference has separated human beings. He explained, that through anger and hatred a great poem or symphony can be written, because “One does something special for the sake of humanity because one is angry at the injustice that one witnesses.” (Wiesel, 1999/16, p. 78). The three strategies that will be explored throughout this analysis are ethos, logos, and pathos.

Elie Wiesel’s speech “The Perils of Indifference” is a mind opening and emotional speech that prompts the audience to change the indifference that plagues America and many people in this time and age. He expresses to the audience that indifference is the reason appalling and horrifying events, such as the Holocaust, occur and why no one takes immediate actions to help the victims. To get his point across, Wiesel uses his own history and experiences so that the audience can visualize the Holocaust through the eyes of a survivor and to project the feelings of hopelessness and defeat that the victims felt when no one came to end the injustice. In this critique, Elie Wiesel’s rhetorical speech of indifference will show its effectiveness through testimony, emotion, and rhetorical questions; this speech accomplished its goal and without a doubt persuaded most of the audience to call out for change in indifference.

    To start off, it gives them a different way to view the Holocaust than what they have seen before. It uses a lot of metaphor to compare and explain things. In the book they are not people but animals, the Jews as mice, the German as cats,  Poland as pigs, and the Americans as dogs. This is done as a way to explain how the Jews felt to the German. The Americans beat the German, and the German beat the Jews during the war.  The Jews were always insulted and beaten up for no reason. “Give me your I.D. papers - I’m going to blow your brain out.” (pg. 118). Another example is when Vladek would put on the pig mask to pretend to be Poland. On page 64 in the book the picture show him with the mask and saying “You’re a pole like me, so I can trust you… the nazis had me in a war prison… I just escaped.”

Music is intertwined with the identity of Szpilman in The Pianist, and is responsible for restoring the identity of characters in The Cellist. This association is manifested in a poignant scene in which Szpilman plays the piano silently at his shelter. Despite the apparent differences between his past existence as a famous pianist and his present condition as a Jew in hiding, his expression remains as passionate and dignified as when he plays piano under no threat of persecution (The Pianist). His performance establishes the role music plays in preserving his sense of self during uncertain times. Another event emphasizing this relationship occurs several years after his entrance to the ghetto, when Szpilman meets a German soldier in the building where he resides. In response to

Roman Polanski's heartfelt and honorable interpretation of the true horrors of the Holocaust, (based on the memoir of famed Polish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman,) appears at face value as just another blockbuster period piece. Yet it offers so much more. Polanski expertly crafts filmmaking artistry with true life, allowing the viewer to be completely immersed in a time previously known to them only through history books. Upon the first viewing I was restless, overwhelmed and unsuspecting of the sheer weight of what I had previously considered to be another film pandering to an audience of mock sympathy. By watching it a second time, I was fully capable of appreciating the stunning and emotionally demanding story of one man’s (at times, reluctant)

The 2002 film, The Pianist directed by Roman Polanski focuses on the hardships of a well-known, local concert pianist, Wladyslaw Szpilman. Wladyslaw Szpilman is played by actor Adrien Brody, who does an excellent job portraying both the warmhearted side of Szpliman and the desperate struggling side we see later on in the film. The film is based on Szpilman’s book, The Pianist where he discusses true events he underwent during the German takeover of Warsaw. He was one of twenty survivors out of the 360,000 Jewish people killed from Warsaw, Poland. “Passion for Survival in Polanski’s The Pianist” by Diana Diamond

This is noted at the end of the movie where the ghettos in Warsaw were completely destroyed due to the execution of the Jews. Discrimination was a major cultural influence involving the war against the Jews. This shaped society in Warsaw, Poland as the Jewish people were treated badly and even assassinated. The film showed the Jews being thrown out of their homes and killed in the streets. The governments represented in The Pianist were Fascism or absolute dictatorship. This is demonstrated as Germany’s Adolf Hitler held power over Poland after Warsaw surrendered from German bombing. In the economy, Jewish people made a living by constructing buildings, becoming soldiers, and preparing food for other Jews. The economic ideology was socialism, which means that the community owns and regulates production and distribution. Social structures on racism have impacted history by making discrimination laws so history, like the execution of the Jews, won't repeat

The film portrays the most complex view of Hitler I have ever seen. Bruno Ganz plays Hitler as a violent and seductive tyrant with brief moments of kindness, which makes his brutal nature all the more terrifying. The film, like The Lives of Others, has a very cold and neutral color pallet, which reflects the tyrannical environment that surrounds Hitler. Nearly all of the film takes place in the bunker with plain and empty cement walls, and military generals wearing dark green uniforms. In one of the many scenes that contains Hitler’s outrage, Hitler sits at his desk with the camera behind him. We see his army generals stand behind the desk with the tight cement walls pressing against them giving Hitler complete control at the head of the frame. The tight framing in the film emphasizes the power and control that Hitler had. His presence dominated the frame similar to how he dominated Germany during World War

In the movie, Amon Goeth, the commandant of the Plaszów camp, sits on his balcony and shoots Jews with no reason to. During one of the early scenes, a young girl yells, “Bye Jews, bye Jews!” as the Jewish are rounded up into the Kraków ghetto, showing that the hatred of the Jewish is learned and accepted by both young and old. One person can convince many others that their way is the right way and the only way.

Considered Nazi Germany’s most successful propagnda film, Jud Süß (1940) suceeded in fostering greater anaimosity towards Jews through the guise of entertainment. The film contained a melodratic narrative and relied on existing prejudices towards Jews. The central antagonist, Oppenheimer, is a sexually and morally deviant Jew who corrupts the naive Duke of Wûrttemberg to enrich himself and the Jewish community.

Holocaust is one of the most dreadful and unforgettable time in human history. This event of a huge genocide has become the topic of many films; and “The Pianist” is one of the films.“The Pianist” is a historical drama directed by Roman Polanski. The movie is based on the true memories of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Jewish pianist who had survived from the Holocaust. The movie describes how Wladyslaw Szpilman manages to escape from the Ghetto and survive through the massacre of Jews in Poland by luck. The most surprising scene in the movie is when a German captain, Wilm Hosenfeld, help Wladyslaw Szpilman by bringing him food and not letting other Nazi officers find him. The director himself, Roman Polanski, is a survivor of the Holocaust as well.

World war II in Germany was a dull time for the Jews, hence they were discriminated against by the germans. Ethnicity plays a big role in this movie because it is the reason that the Jews are locked away in the concentration camps. The movie is a representation of “Political Power becomes Personal Authority” (Nichols, 2010, P.275) in the sense that Aldorf Hitler took advantage of the vulnerable Jews. This essay will discuss the differences between the Jews and Germans during WW II through race and ethnicity. This will be supported from examples in the two scenes chosen, book vocabulary, as well as the formal and social content to analyze the scenes.

The Pianist is a film directed by Roman Polanski that took place in Poland, in the year 1939, and was based on the autobiography of Wladyslaw Szpilman. Szpilman was a Polish-Jewish pianist that played live on the radio in Warsaw. The story follows Szpilman as he and his family struggle to live through the German occupation of Warsaw in World War II. Szpilman and his family are forced to adapt to the new rules and discrimination of the Nazi regime. They are later forced to move to the Warsaw ghetto with the rest of the Jewish population, which was over 400,000 people(United States Holocaust Memorial Museum "Warsaw"). After a few years, Szpilman’s family was put on a train going to a concentration camp, however a Jewish police officer saved Szpilman and let him escape. The film then tells of the harsh times Szpilman spent in hiding in the Warsaw ghetto and the people that hid and fed him. Wladyslaw Szpilman was played by Adrien Brody, who won an Oscar for his amazing performance in the film. The Pianist demonstrates the timeline and conditions of Warsaw through German behavior towards the Jews, subtleties in the background, and the change in mood through the color tones.

Constructed from Wladyslaw Szpilman’s memoirs, and directed by Oscar winning director, Roman Polanski. The Pianist, is a movie about a Polish Jewish radio station pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman and his family during the second world war. Szpilman is forced into the Warsaw Ghetto, and is later separated from his family. Stoicism the ability to endure an unpleasant or difficult process or situation without giving in. In The Pianist, Polanski used cinematography with a touch of sound to depict Stoicism in various forms and in various scenes.Throughout the movie, Szpilman, his family, and the Polish Jewish population have had to endure the hardship that a world war entails. Throughout the course of the movie, the Germans are shown trying to end Jews, not only physically, but mentally by belittling them, and trying to eliminate their human spirit. Bringing the jews to believe that they too are not fit to exist as a race. Nonetheless, the Jewish people endure and soldier on, synonymous with a quote from the bible many of them hold so dearly “he that endures to the end, shall be saved.” -Matthew 24:13. In The Pianist, Polanski vividly display the theme of the Stoicism through cinematography, lighting, and sound.

Additionally, Hitler despised kids. We see this when Hynkel dries his hands precisely in the wake of having touched one. Charles Chaplin has put in his film various references to the acts of the Nazis. We discover inhumane imprisonments, Gestapo, the attack of Austria or specialist exasperated by Hitler.