Summary
Szpilman sees two Nazi guards standing outside the hospital, and lighting the dead bodies on the street on fire. Time passes, and Szpilman remains in the hospital, growing a scraggly beard and pretending he is playing the piano to pass the time.
One morning, Szpilman notices that Nazi soldiers are torching all the surrounding buildings. He runs out of the hospital just in time to avoid the fiery blaze as they turn their blowtorches towards his hideaway. He sneaks out a back door and climbs over the wall, limping into the now-destroyed ghetto.
He goes in search of food until he finds a can of vegetables. All of a sudden, he hears soldiers outside and tries to hide, climbing the stairs of the dilapidated building. He climbs to the top of the attic and pulls the ladder up after him, when suddenly he hears piano music coming from downstairs, someone playing Moonlight Sonata.
That night, as he struggles to open a can of vegetables to eat, Szpilman is apprehended by a Nazi soldier, who asks him who he is and what he is doing there. Szpilman tells him he was a pianist, and the Nazi leads him into the next room, where there is a piano. He asks Szpilman to play.
Szpilman sits down at the piano and plays. The Nazi sits down and listens to his playing, and when he is done, asks Szpilman to show him his hideout. Szpilman shows him his attic space, and the Nazi leaves. Left alone, Szpilman weeps.
The Nazi, whose name is Hosenfeld, comes back the next day and throws Szpilman a parcel of food. Szpilman asks him what the sounds of shooting are, and Hosenfeld tells him that the Russians are on the other side of the river, and that he will only have to hold out for a few more weeks. Szpilman eats the bread and jam that the Nazi has brought him ravenously.
One day, Hosenfeld brings Szpilman a large selection of supplies and tells him that the Nazis are retreating. "I don't know how to thank you," Szpilman says, to which Hosenfeld replies, "Thank god, not me." Before leaving, Hosenfeld gives Szpilman his coat, and asks him what he will do when everything is over. "I will play piano again," Szpilman says. Hosenfeld asks for his name, which Szpilman tells him, and the Nazi says he will listen for him on the radio.
One morning, Szpilman hears jaunty music playing on the radio of a passing truck and goes downstairs to investigate. On the street, he sees people walking towards him and runs to them, but they mistake him for a German soldier and shoot at him. He retreats into a building, as the Russians shoot machine guns at him. Holding up his hands, he insists to the soldiers that he is Polish, and they believe him, asking, "Why the fucking coat?" "I'm cold," he replies.
Some time later, we see a group of Poles walking past imprisoned Nazis. One of them belittles the Germans, cursing them for taking away his violin. Hosenfeld is among the Germans, and stands to ask the violinist if he knows Szpilman. "Of course I know Szpilman," the man says, and Hosenfeld asks him to get Szpilman to come and help him. As a Russian guard throws him to the ground, Hosenfeld tells the violinist his name.
We see Szpilman, now clean-cut, once again recording piano for the radio. The violinist who spoke to Hosenfeld comes into the studio and smiles at his old friend. Later, he tells Szpilman about Hosenfeld, but has forgotten his name. Szpilman sits and looks at the sun setting in the distance.
We see Szpilman playing piano with an orchestra in a large concert hall. A title card tells us that Szpilman "continued to live in Warsaw until his death on July 6th, 2000. He was 88 years old." Another tells us that Hosenfeld died in a prisoner-of-war camp in 1952.
Analysis
Relentless Nazi violence sends Szpilman back into the ghetto in which he once lived, but much has changed. As he walks around the place he once reluctantly called home, nearly every building has been destroyed. The ghetto itself becomes a symbol of the vagaries of the entire Nazi occupation; not only have the people that once inhabited Warsaw been completely driven from the city, but the buildings that once held them are shells. Szpilman wanders through a ghost town, the only survivor in a city that has been all but completely destroyed.
After all of the antisemitic violence depicted in the film, it seems that Szpilman's run-in with a Nazi in the ghetto will lead to his certain death. However, in a twist of fate, Hosenfeld asks him to play the piano in the next room to prove that he is a musician, and is so moved by his playing that he works to keep Szpilman alive. The scene in which Hosenfeld listens to Szpilman's playing is a particularly tense one, as we spend the entire song wondering if this marks the final moment of Szpilman's life. Even when Hosenfeld leaves Szpilman's hideaway, it remains ambiguous whether he will keep Szpilman's situation a secret or sell him out.
Playing the piano is what keeps Szpilman alive, but it is also what gives him purpose in the wake of all of the tragedy he has faced. Before Hosenfeld leaves Szpilman for the last time, he asks the pianist what he will do once everything is over. Without skipping a beat, Szpilman tells him that he will play the piano. Although he has faced unimaginable atrocities and hardship, he is unwavering in his desire to play his instrument. When everything else is gone—family, love, home—music is the thing that keeps Szpilman going.
A grave irony occurs in this final section of the film, when Szpilman is returned to society and the Germans are the ones getting rounded up and punished for their crimes. Hosenfeld begs a Polish violinist to send word to Szpilman asking for help, but the violinist is unable to recall Hosenfeld's name when he reports the news to Szpilman. While much of the film has depicted Nazis as merciless and horrifically violent aggressors, by the end of the film, they are rounded up by the Russians and treated as political prisoners. The villains become the victims, and as we learn in the final title cards, Hosenfeld does not live long in the Russian camps.
The film ends the way it began, with an image of Szpilman as an acclaimed and well-regarded pianist, playing for his admirers. He plays beautifully in a lavish concert hall, a star musician, but the viewer knows that his ordeal has assuredly changed his outlook. Szpilman has lost everything and endured some of the most horrific traumas imaginable, but he plays with poise and dignity, seemingly made all the more committed to his artistic craft by his struggle.
