The Pianist

The Pianist is a 2002 biographical war drama film directed by Roman Polanski who as a boy growing up in Poland watched while the Nazis devastated his country during World War II. The film is based on the true story of a Polish-Jewish musician Wladyslaw Szpilman (5 December 1911 – 6 July 2000) who spent five years struggling against the Nazi occupation of Warsaw.

In the 1930s, Wladyslaw Szpilman (Adrien Brody) who born to a wealthy Jewish family was known as the most accomplished piano player in Poland. The Szpilmans have a large and comfortable flat in Warsaw which Wladyslaw shares with his family. While Wladyslaw and his family are aware of the looming presence of German forces and Hitler's designs on Poland, they are convinced that the Nazis are a menace which will pass and that England and France will step forward to aid Poland in the event of a real crisis.

In September 1939, a German bomb rips through a radio station while Wladyslaw plays live on the air and shattered his naivete. As the German grip tightens upon Poland, Wladyslaw and his family are selected for deportation to a Nazi concentration camp. Refusing to face a certain death, Wladyslaw at last deciding to escape and goes into hiding in a comfortable apartment provided by a friend. However, when his benefactor goes missing, Wladyslaw is left to fend for himself and he spends the next several years dashing from one abandoned home to another, desperate to avoid capture by German occupation troops.

WLADYSLAW SZPILMAN

In August 1944, Polish resistance mounts the Warsaw Uprising, attacking a German building across the street from Wladyslaw's hideout. A tank shells his apartment and he is forced to flee and hide elsewhere as fighting rages around. Over the course of the next months the city is destroyed and emptied of the population and Wladyslaw, entirely alone, searches desperately for shelter and supplies among the ruins. Until one night, he is discovered by the Nazi officer, Captain Wilm Hosenfeld (Thomas Kretschmann), who learns that Wladyslaw is a pianist and asks him to play on the grand piano nearby. The decrepit Wladyslaw plays "Ballade in G Minor", which moves Hosenfeld, who then helps him survive, allowing him to hide in the attic of an empty house and regularly brings him food.

WILM HOSENFELD

When Russian army draws closer to Warsaw in January 1945, Hosenfeld gives Wladyslaw a final parcel of food and his overcoat to survive for a few more days when the Russian army will liberate him soon. He asks Wladyslaw of his surname, which sounds exactly like "spielmann", the German word for pianist and Hosenfeld promises to listen for him on the radio. Shortly afterward, Wladyslaw sees Polish partisans and overcome with joy, goes outside to meet his countrymen. Seeing his coat given to him by Hosenfeld, they think he is a German and try to kill him, before he can convince them he is Polish.

Newly freed Poles walk past an improvised Russian prisoner of war camp and Hosenfeld is among the prisoners. The Poles hurl insults at the Germans through the fence but when Hosenfeld hears that one of the Poles is a musician, he goes to the fence and tells him that he has helped Wladyslaw and asks him to ask Wladyslaw to return the favor, before a Russian soldier throws him back down on the ground. The Polish musician visits Wladyslaw and takes him to the site but they have vanished. Wladyslaw is unable to help Hosenfeld, but he returns to play piano for the radio station.

At the ending of the film, it tells Hosenfeld died in a Soviet Prisoner-of-War Camp in 1952 and Wladyslaw lived to be an old man, dying in Warsaw at the age of eighty-eight.

Movie Trailer:

      

Chopin Ballade No. 1 in G minor, Op 23

Por Una Cabeza

"Por una cabeza", meaning "by a head of a horse" in Spanish, is a popular tango song composed in 1935 by Carlos Gardel and Alfredo Le Pera. Gardel was the composer and Le Pera the lyricist.

The lyrics of the song talk about a compulsive horse-track gambler who compares his addiction for the horses with his attraction to women.

It has been performed by numerous tango orchestras and is commonly featured in films and television. Tango scenes with "Por una cabeza" appear in Planet 51, Schindler's List, Scent of a Woman, Delicatessen, True Lies, All the King's Men, Bad Santa, Episode 37 of Nip/Tuck, Episode 9 of Sweet Spy, the beginning and ending credits of I'm Sorry, I Love You, and the CSI: NY episode "Down the Rabbit Hole", and in the movie "Frida" (Salma Hayek), Gardel is heard on a radio singing it. It is also quoted in David Del Tredici's "Good News! Nilda is Back" (from the song cycle Miz Inez Sez).

世界の中心で、愛をさけぶ

Socrates in Love, also known as Crying Out Love, In the Center of the World (世界の中心で、愛をさけぶ Sekai no Chūshin de, Ai o Sakebu) is a Japanese best selling novel written by Kyoichi Katayama which was published by Shogakukan in April 2001 and aired on August 26, 2006 in Japan.

A seventeen year old Sakutaro Matsumoto stands on the red earth of Australia (Ayers Rock, so called the center of the world) under its blue sky. The colored sand runs through his hands and a tear appears on his cheek. An enduring devotion and heartbreaking loss of the love of his life, Aki Hirose, to leukemia. No matter how hard he cried out for her and she will never ever come back again.

Time flies, it's 2004 and he has been living in a world trudges through everyday existence without her for seventeen years, as if half of him died with her since then. One day, the last tape of Aki's audio diary  suddenly unearthed, leading him returning to his  hometown in the south to see his old high school for the last time before it's demolished and where he first met Aki.

A bittersweet tale of young love story unfold through his memories ... ...

“It’s not the parting or the absence that’s sad.

You love them, and that’s why saying good-bye breaks your heart.” - Kyoichi Katayama

世界の中心で、愛をさけぶ

(在世界中心呼喚愛 - Crying Out Love In The Centre Of The World)

朔と亜紀

I can tell by the tears that my heart's in a crush

And it's just as I feared – that it never will hush

If it wasn't to be then why can't I break free?

If the truth wasn't spoken – why was I so broken?

I don't live without you – I still think about you

And I can't live with you – with this negative view

And I know exactly where it all went wrong

For my love for you was… far, far too strong

My love was so strong that it had to go wrong

And then I took a road that became far too long

And I can tell by the tears, I'm a fool to remember

But I know by the years that I can never surrender

Song From A Secret Garden

Secret Garden is an award winning Irish-Norwegian duo playing New Instrumental Music, also understood by some as Neo-classical music. It became famous in Korea by being featured in the drama 젊은이의 양지 in 1995.

Secret Garden has released a Dreamcatcher: Best Of album for its tour through Australia and New Zealand in 2004. It reached the top of the Australian New Age charts and the ARIA top 50 album charts.

Love this album as it helps to calm, pacify, peace and serene my heart ... ...