12 years ago, or so, an 'A' level student told me I 'absolutely must' watch the film 'Schindler's List'. Being told this by a 16 year old nearly 60 years past the event pulled me up short, so I watched the film.

Moving, or what? To this day, I cannot watch the final scene, featuring the descendants of the survivors, without blubbing. I feel myself welling up just thinking about it.

Since then, three violinists have turned up to rehearse the wonderful violin piece by John williams that features as the theme music for the film.

The latest, tonight, is one of the loveliest 17 year olds I have met in a long career dominated by wonderful young people.

Every time one of these kids plays this piece with me, I cannot help but contrast the life they (and I) have with the short and brutalised lives depicted in the film, of those who did not survive the Warsaw ghettos. It affects me deeply, every time.

Am I just being a pathetically sentimental old softy?

Steve

Yes, but join the club!! I blub at anything - especially when I see animals suffering (on documentaries or in real life. - I'm on tenterhooks at the moment as I've had collared doves nesting in one of the trees in the garden, and the chicks fledged a couple of days ago. Just earlier this evening I heard a scrabbling on my kitchen roof, and a bird shrieking but when I got outside I couldn't see anything so I'm terrified something has maybe caught one of them and I'm feeling horribly sick just thinking about it. And unfortunately the it's the kind of sound I have heard before from a bird being tortured by a cat.)

Yes, but don't worry about it...

I have still not seen the film... but even the music is moving.

Steve, have you seen The Pianist?

Very good. Another must see.

Well, if you are, join the club. It's the most incredibly moving film (except, perhaps, for The Pianist) and brings a lump to my throat every time I see it. The music certainly is wonderful - so sad and evocative of the sufferings of an entire race and a whole continent but somehow with a suggestion of hope for a better future. John Williams is such a gifted composer and the film is Spielberg's greatest masterpiece. If only people would heed its warnings.

I have seen the film several times and heard the music many times and still cry every time I hear / see it.

I've seen it once, and although I didn't listen out particulary for the music (I was too absorbed in the story), the film was a masterpiece. I usually don't cry at all at movies/books/etc, but this one had me nearly in tears.

No, I haven't. Given my reaction to Schindler's List, are you sure I should?

What's the Pianist like? I've heard people talking about it but I've never actually seen it!

It's a fantastic film. I was totally rivetted by it and have watched the whole thing several times. So many of the details in it are true, as I got Spielman's memoirs after seeing it. Incredible ,well deserved Oscar winning performance by Adrien Brody and brill direction from Polanski.

The Pianist is about (you guessed it) a Jewish pianist. He lived in Poland but when the Holocaust began, he and his family were persecuted. He nearly got sent off to a concentration camp but got away at the last moment, and was able to survive, though barely. I watched it quite a while ago and some of the details are mixed up with Schindler's List, but it was a great film nonetheless.

I'm just learning the Schindlers List theme for Grade 7 violin - I love the music too!

I think most musicians are the emotional type - I know I can cry fairly easily at the strangest things if they move me (happy and sad).

It is being in touch with your emotions that helps to make you a good musician who can really get inside the music you play. If you are a "cold" personality my experience is you play in a "cold" manner, no matter how well you are taught.

So, cry on all - it's good for us really!

PS If Schindlers List is set for Grade 7 - will we hear tales of blubbing examiners I wonder?

There are a couple of really emotional musicals that really move me - Fiddler on the Roof and Les Miserables. I can't stop the tears especially in Les Mis - "God on High", the barricades, "Empty Chairs" and the ending. Even when our local school did the show last year it was amazing and made me cry the same as when I had seen it in the West End 15 years ago!

It's a brilliant book - I've just finished it (yesterday!). It has only recently been published as the pianist was at one point saved by a German. I haven't seen the film yet though.

Oh it's just so heart-tugging......

My 12 year old son is playing it and I just about manage to accompany and sob at the same time.

I cry at the oddest things, always have done. Barely a day of TV or music goes by without a few tears in the eye, from Casualty to He's having a baby..... The most embarassing thing is that, as a little one, I used to cry at the end of Black Beauty, Lassie, and - wortst of all - at the end of the Flintstones when Fred got locked out!

And, yes, I did cry in the Pianist. Fantastic film, and I noticed that the DVD is now on offer in Smiths, so if you havn't seen it, it's one to get and watch over and over.

Heehee, when I was about 8 I got emotional at the end of Free Willy.


Wow The Pianist sounds terrific, I must get it. I've never heard or seen Schindlers List but I've just remembered that I have a piano arrangement of it in one of my massive books. Woo! *rushes to piano to play the lovely music*

Wow it's very nice!

I havent seen the film, but will do when i get the chance. My two friends did the duet for gcse ensemble piece ( violin and piano) and they both said they HATED the piece and that it was 'horrible' but when i did the page turning for them at the actual recording, the music i heard wasnt 'horrible' but so moving i nearly cried...

When we studied the Holocaust in history at school, we watched just a tiny section of this film, and the teacher told us that if we didn't want to watch the scene (it was one of the most brutal ones) then we could leave the room. Many people did, but the music got me the most I always get teary when I hear it

I find the music really touching, we used this music for a dance production cinerella, and it was the funeralof cinderella's father.

Well, you probably WILL cry, but you have to see it - an amazing film and wonderful music, which you will doubly appreciate as a pianist.


Ooooh you temptress...


I cry easily but i'm never sure if I manage to put my emotions over terribly well in music... maybe when I get better technique-wise and am less worried about hitting the right notes I will be able to relax and communicate better! I am easily moved... sometimes I can't even watch quite funny films if I am in a sensitive mood and I know that one of the characters is going to get humiliated, I have to stop the video... very silly probably.

I get moved by books too.

Talking of musical films that move me, in a totally and utterly different way, Hilary and Jackie always makes me cry. I think it hits me even more because my dad had MS. I remember seeing it in the cinema with a musical friend, and Ellie and I turned to each other at the end and both had tears pouring down our cheeks.

Schindler's List is the only film that I have ever properly cried at (and by proper crying I mean fulling sobbing for ages after the film finished- I think I was still going 1/2 an hour later). And the music always makes my eyes water. We had to go to the Holocaust exibition at the Imperial War Museum when I was in year 10 and all I could hear in my head as we were walking around was that theme tune.

The Pianist is very good as well!

You absolutely have to hear it in context and played on the violin. You will understand why it grabs so many of us.

Steve

Yes, when played well the violin is one of those instruments that can really tug at your heartstrings and be soulful, I'm sure the music is beautiful on the piano but it's a real violinist's piece (if you have the skill for it - sadly I don't)

Having read the book after watching the film the once...I have it recorded...can't watch it again because so many scenes still stand out...Yes,I was crying my eyes out all the way through...but I will never forget the little girl in the red coat, and the red coat scene after...
Schindler rejecting the girl who wore no make up the first time pleading to him to save her parents,when she put on the panstick and wore something seductive her parents were saved,all the awful shootings and when Goeth continually shot at the man,but the gun didn't go off...and the manicure scene...the rape scene... the shooting of the lady architect...did you know Goeth was married with 2 kids and highly educated? But that is what power does to you...

I could go on.One film I can never watch again.

As for the music...well...I'm afraid to say the scenes stay with me rather than the music.

And what was the Bach piece being played when they were clearing out the Ghetto?

Schindler was not a good man put into context. What were his motives? Was himself and the people he saved the same? Outcasts?

The film started him out as a monster and ended him as a saint. No doubt the reality lives somewhere in between.

Schindler was not the reason this film causes so many of us, you included, to be so upset by it. To that extent, his role was peripheral.

I never doubted for a second that I would be able to write this when I posted my original, so: tt gives me great hope for the future that so many people, and so many young people for whom the events depicted took place 50 or so years before their birth, have been so affected by the portrayals in the film. In a way, the music is incidental. On another plane, it is so evocative.

Steve

Hello Steve

Since I last posted I've been on google.

"....gives me great hope for the future that so many people, and so many young people for whom the events depicted took place 50 or so years before their birth, have been so affected by the portrayals in the film."

Yes,but...I see things on a wider scale....certainly no pun intended as I'm deadly serious. People as individuals,but people as a mass whole?

I have no hope.Does it change the course of History?I think not.

Stalin: "A single death is a tragedy,a million deaths is a statistic."

I don't generally get emotional watching films but I have to admit Hilary and Jackie really got to me. I taped it when it was on TV and I found some parts of it almost impossible to watch. Another film I found really moving was Amadeus, particularly when Mozart's body was unceremoniously dumped into a pauper's grave.

I see what you mean. People as a mass whole take a long time to change. They do, change gradually, otherwise our (UK) island would not support 50 million or so people living in comparative peace. The EU would not have formed. The United States would still be disunited.

I think a monster like Stalin in not typical of humanity.

Did Schindler change the course of history as a whole? Probably not. Did he change history for those he saved? Definitely. Did what he did make him a saint or a perfect person? Doubtful! But he still saved lives, whatever his motives or character faults.

I agree with you, Steve. Stalin was a monster.

It's one of those cliched things to say, but it's true - you may not be able to help everyone, but we can all help someone. If we all gave up hope when someone somewhere did something evil no one would have had any hope for hundreds of years.

I may not change the world by being to my friends, or lending the little girl down the road a recorder, or being pleasant to the check out girl, or being on good terms with my neighbour, but I can change (in some small way) my part of it and their part of it for the better.

Brilliantly said, Sarah. If the whole world lived like this, it would be a better place.