Summary
Suddenly, the family hears a car outside, and the Szpilmans turn off all their lights. They look across the streets as Nazis go into the adjacent building and conduct a raid. They watch a group of Nazis force a family of Jews to stand in an apartment across the street. When an older gentleman cannot stand, the Nazis pick up his wheelchair and throw him out the window.
A group of Jews are led out into the street outside and the Nazis tell them to run. As they run away, the Nazis shoot them. The Gestapo gets in a car and drives away, running over some of the men as they go.
The scene shifts to Szpilman playing piano at the restaurant, when Halina runs in to tell him something. She tells her brother that the Nazis are hunting people in the streets and have taken Henryk.
Szpilman goes out into the street and sees Heller, the Jewish policeman. He asks Heller if he's seen Henryk, but Heller tells him he hasn't. "Can you help us?" Szpilman says, but Heller says it will cost him money. He begs Heller to help him, but Heller ignores him. Szpilman watches as an old man engages in some clownish antics, much to the amusement of some children and the Gestapo standing there. He then sees a man dropping a can of food on the ground and trying to eat it off the ground.
Suddenly, he sees Henryk get pushed out of the jail. Henryk scolds Szpilman for asking Heller for something. As Henryk eats some soup at a nearby kitchen, he tells his brother that the Nazis are planning to send them all to labor camps and closing the small ghetto.
Szpilman runs into his journalist friend and Majorek. He tells them he's trying to get a certificate of employment for his father, and his friend tells him that Majorek can get him a certificate. The scene shifts to Majorek at a factory the next day, handing Szpilman and his father a certificate of employment.
March 15, 1942. We see the Szpilmans working at a clothier, sewing late into the night. "At least we are still together," says Szpilman's father, when suddenly, a Nazi bursts in and tells them all to go out into the yard. When Szpilman tries to ask him a question, the Nazi strikes him in the face.
Outside, the Nazis select Henryk and Halina from a lineup, and tell the rest of the group to collect their things and report back there. When a woman asks what is going on, the Nazi in charge shoots her in the head.
Szpilman and his other family members gather their belongings and Szpilman apologizes to his family members, saying that he had hoped the certificates would save them. "Let's just hope that Henryk and Halina will be better off," Regina says.
In August of 1942, Szpilman and his family are brought in lines to wait to be sent to the labor camps. They see a woman sobbing nearby, and Szpilman goes to find food. A man speaks to Szpilman's father about the fact that they are all getting sent to their death. Suddenly, Mrs. Szpilman spots Halina and Henryk and they come running towards the family, clearly having left where they were to be with their family. "Stupid, stupid," Szpilman mutters to himself.
A woman nearby keeps saying, "Why did I do it?" and sobbing, which leads Halina to ask a man nearby what it is that the woman regrets. She smothered her baby while they were hiding, the man tells her. Szpilman asks a man what he's reading and the man tells him he's reading the lines, "If you prick us do we not bleed?" Shylock's famous monologue from The Merchant of Venice.
A little boy walks around selling caramels, and Szpilman's father pools together the family's last 20 zlotys to buy one. He cuts the caramel into tiny pieces and distributes the pieces to his family members. Later, as they walk to the trucks to be taken to the labor camp, Szpilman tells Halina, "I wish I knew you better."
As they get brought to the trucks, Heller spots Szpilman and pulls him out of the throng, telling him to run. He calls to his family and waves to them, as Heller urges him to make a run for it. He does, pushing a cart of dead bodies with another man.
We see the Jews getting pushed onto the trucks to be taken to the labor camps. The scene abruptly shifts to Szpilman walking through the streets alone, sobbing. He goes to the cafe where he played piano, which has been destroyed, and meets the man for whom he used to work, hiding under the stage. Szpilman gets under the stage also, and tells his old boss that everyone else has been sent away. The man tells him that he's bribed the police, who will tell him when it's all over.
Eventually, Szpilman manages to leave the ghetto, for the first time in two years, with a large group of men. In the city, Szpilman works taking down the wall around the ghetto. While working, he spots a singer and an actor he knows, and wants to talk to them, but another worker warns him that non-Jews are hanged for helping Jews.
Analysis
The film does not hesitate to show horrific scenes of violence perpetrated by the Nazis. We see Szpilman's father getting hit in the face by a Nazi, then Szpilman trying to help a child crawl beneath the wall of the ghetto while getting beaten by Nazis. In a particularly horrific moment, interrupting a family dinner, the Szpilmans see the Nazis throw a wheelchair-bound old man out of a fourth-story window. These images, unflinching and disturbing, show the full extent of Nazi terrorism, their ruthlessness and complete lack of humanity.
Throughout all the hardship that Szpilman faces, there are tiny moments of joy and levity, even if they may be hard to come by. In the midst of finding out about Henryk's arrest, Szpilman sees an older gentleman doing a comic dance to the amusement of the children around him. Szpilman's face, which seems like it has gotten stuck in a dismal expression, cracks into a small smile, as he sees the human joy that can still survive such brutality.
No amount of small pleasure can save the family from their fate, however. Even though Szpilman thought that he could save his family from getting sent to the camps by securing them work certificates, no sooner have they started working for a clothier than the Nazis round them up to be sent away to the labor camps. No amount of preparation can save the family from the horrific events that are inevitable in Nazi-occupied Poland.
In this section of the film, we see the Szpilmans share their final meal together as a family. Using their final 20 zlotys, the family buys a caramel from a small boy selling them to people in line to be taken away to the camps. Taking a small razor, Szpilman's father cuts up the caramel, already very small, to give to everyone. It is at once a pitiful and beautiful image, of a family sharing a small amount of sweetness on the eve of being sent away to their demise.
In a shocking moment, Szpilman is given a chance to evade expulsion by the Nazis, when Heller yanks him out of the crowd and offers him a second chance. This blessing is a tragic one, in that it completely separates him from his family, all of whom will surely die at the labor camps. Szpilman is given a chance to start anew and avoid the horrors of the concentration camps, but he must do so alone. The image of him walking through the empty streets of the Warsaw ghetto sobbing evoke the tragedy of the situation, and the pain that Szpilman endures.
