Summary
The Nazis line up Szpilman and the other Jewish workers, and pull some of them out of the group, telling those workers to lie down. He then shoots each one of them in the head.
Later as he is working, Szpilman notices that Majorek is working there, after Majorek whistles at him. They eat a meal together later, and Majorek tells Szpilman that he's sent a journalist to follow the trains taking people to the labor camps. He tells him that the trains always return empty, and no food is getting sent to the camps. "They're exterminating us," Majorek says, adding, "It won't take them long. We are sixty thousand left, out of half a million, mostly young people, and this time we're going to fight."
Suddenly, a whistle blows signaling for them to get back to work. The noise startles Szpilman, who drops some bricks down. A Nazi guard calls him over and whips him brutally, before telling two workers to drag him away. The two workers nurse him back to health and plot a way to get Szpilman a better job, gathering building supplies for the workers.
In the middle of his work, the workers are rounded up by the Nazis in the rain to be counted. The Nazi officer tells them that he has good news, that there will no longer be treating the workers so cruelly, and that one Jew of the group will be allowed to go into town daily and collect three kilos of potatoes and one loaf of bread back for each of the workers, suggesting that they can make money off of this venture.
As the winter sets in, Majorek and Szpilman begin work carrying potatoes back for the workers. They smuggle guns in in the process, which they are keen to keep hidden from the Nazi officers while they sort the potatoes. While they march alongside the wall one night, Szpilman throws a gun over to the other side, to the resistance fighters.
One night, in the sleeping quarters, Szpilman asks Majorek to help him get out into the city. "It's easy to get out, it's how you survive on the other side that's hard," Majorek tells him. Szpilman tells him that he plans to go live with Janina Godlewska and Andrzej Bogucki, the singer and actor he saw while working on the outside of the ghetto last summer. "Would you try and make contact?" he asks Majorek, and Majorek agrees.
The next day, a Nazi guard demands to look through Szpilman's bag of potatoes and bread. When he goes inside, he does not find a gun, but a bunch of rice, threatening to shoot Szpilman if he lies to him ever again. Hastily, Szpilman pulls the guns out of the bag, relieved they were not discovered.
Later, Majorek tells Szpilman that his friends no longer live at the address Szpilman has, but he can tell him where they are. A Nazi guard walks down the line and whips the Jewish workers, saying it's his way of celebrating New Year's Eve, and the workers march away, singing an anthem of resistance.
The next day, Majorek shakes Szpilman's hand as he prepares to escape. He wanders out of the gate without struggle and finds himself alone in the city. That night, he convenes with Janina and follows her into her apartment building. Weeping, she embraces him and welcomes him into the apartment. Inside, he greets Andrzej, who tells him they do not have much time.
Andrzej interrupts Szpilman in the bath to tell him that they have to hurry, as Germans are hunting down people in the city. Over a meal Andrzej tells Szpilman that he will be looked after on the other side of town by a man named Merek Gebczynski. "You'll stay there tonight, then we'll find you somewhere else," he says.
They go to Gebczynski, who leads him to a hidden quarter where he will be sleeping, a small fireplace in a storeroom. He tells Szpilman that he has to sleep there that evening, but that he will be moved to his own flat near the ghetto wall the next day.
The next day, Gebczynski and Szpilman ride the trolley, and Szpilman goes towards the front. They safely make it to the flat, where Gebczynski draws the curtains and tells Szpilman to leave them open during the day. Gebczynski shows him some food in the flat and tells him that Janina will bring him food twice a week. Before he leaves, he gives Szpilman a paper with an address for where to go in the case of a major emergency.
Szpilman puts the address in the lining of his shoe and reclines on the couch. Suddenly, he hears a fight between a couple next door; the wife is playing the piano and accusing the man of not listening to her. Szpilman smiles at the sound of his instrument, when a bomb goes off outside.
Time shifts forward to April 1943, as more fighting takes place outside. Szpilman watches from his window, as men shoot at one another and bombs go off. One day, he sees a bomb go off which knocks down the wall to the ghetto. Afterwards there is a great fire, which Szpilman watches from his apartment. He sees men jumping from burning windows, and sits waiting to hear what is going to happen.
One day, Janina brings Szpilman food and looks out at the fallen wall. Szpilman tells her that he regrets not staying and fighting with the resistance, but Janina insists that he ought to just be proud of them, that the men who fought back died with dignity. "Now the Poles will rise. We are ready," she says.
Later, Gebczynski comes to the apartment and tells him he has to leave, as the Gestapo have found their weapons. "They've arrested Janina and Andrzej," he tells him, and urges Szpilman to make a run for it. Szpilman wants to stay, and shakes Gebczynski's hand as he goes.
Analysis
A great deal of the film is dedicated to showing the violence, ruthlessness and incomprehensible evil of the Nazi Gestapo. Every time the viewer thinks that perhaps Szpilman has escaped the horrors of living under Nazi rule, something horrific occurs. Director Roman Polanski does not shy away from explicitly showing the intensity and disturbing reality of life as a Jew under Nazism, often creating shocking scenes of abrupt and horrific violence.
It does not take long for Szpilman to tire of life inside the walls of the ghetto, and dream of escaping to the city. After he begins the risky work of smuggling weapons in with the daily potato ration, Szpilman goes to Majorek in the middle of the night and asks for help. Majorek tells him that escaping is easy, but that surviving on the outside is the difficult part, but Szpilman is determined to return to Warsaw and reclaim his sense of independence.
The film is shot in drab and muted colors, a reflection of the poverty, desperation, and poor conditions of living in the ghetto. Throughout this section of the film, we see images of huddled Jewish workers dressed in tattered clothes, exhausted and overworked. The lighting remains blue and stark, never warm or golden, to reflect the difficulty of living in the ghetto. Polanski creates an atmosphere of deprivation and shabbiness in the visual world of the film.
Szpilman manages to escape from the ghetto, but on the outside he faces new challenges. Helped by his non-Jewish friends and their allies, Szpilman must keep a low profile, sleeping behind shelving units in storage closets and discreetly waiting out the war in a small flat. When he is delivered to his own flat, he admits to his rescuer, "Sometimes I'm still not sure which side of the wall I'm on." While he has been rescued from the horrible conditions of the ghetto, Szpilman is isolated from his community, forced to live in hiding and to constantly fear being discovered.
Szpilman's escape also brings him great regret once he sees the struggle breaking out between the Jewish workers and the Nazis in the ghetto. He sits safely in his flat, watching as bombs go off and buildings burn, and when Janina comes to visit him with food, he tells her that he should have stayed and fought. Thus we see that Szpilman is torn between his desire to remain safe and his desire to fight alongside his people for liberation and resistance against the Nazis.
