Hi folks! As I intimated in class, you may turn in an extra credit reading response (prompt questions outlined below) that will replace your lowest reading response grade for the semester. Alternatively, it is also a chance for those of you who did not complete five reading responses to do so with this response.
All reading responses are due along with your final project/essays in Avery 475 on Thursday 28 April (note the extended due date).
Choose a question from below and respond in a 2-3 page, typed essay:
1. The Pianist is based on the real life autobiography of composer Władysław Szpilman, and directed by Roman Polanski, himself a survivor of the Krakow ghetto (Polanski's mother perished at Auschwitz and his father survived the Mauthausen camp). From what you gathered in viewing this film, is the approach any different than that of Spielberg's in Schindler's List? What differences in perspective do you note between the two films, and how do the films represent the individual experience of the Holocaust differently?
2. The Pianist offers a view of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, but the uprising is not the central focus of the film. What is the purpose of this approach to conveying an individual perspective while foregrounding the historical event of the Uprising?
3. Silence plays a critical role in this film, as it has in other documentaries (Night and Fog, Shoah) we have viewed in this course. What is the role of silence in The Pianist, and how does it differ (or compare) to that of other films we have viewed?
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