There's a scene in the 2002 movie The Pianist in which Adrien Brody's character, the Polish-Jewish pianist Władysław Szpilman, is hiding in the ruins of a Warsaw villa. The Nazi officer who discovers him asks what he did before the war. "I was a pianist," Szpilman stammers. The German points to a battered grand piano and orders him to play something. Szpilman hesitates, sits, lifts his trembling hands, and begins Chopin's Ballade No.1 in G minor.
He plays because it's what's left; not to beg, not to resist, but to hold onto the one thing that still…