The Pianist by Roman Polanski
Why put God into the entry summary of a post about a film about the horrors of Warsaw during the Second World War, as seen through the eyes of pianist, Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish Jew? Essentially because Polanski puts Him at the key point of the film. It's more of a nadir than a climax: Szpilman (pronounced 'Spielmann', more or less) is living in hiding, like a starving animal. He has found a tin of food and is desperately trying to break into it when the noise brings a German officer. The German talks to him and gets him to play a piano, then he brings food (and a tin-opener) saving his life. When Szpilman thanks him, he says "Thank God, not me. He wants us to survive. Well, that's what we have to believe". At the end of the film we find that the German officer's name was Wilm Hosenfeld, and he died in a Russian PoW camp in 1952 - presumably after seven years of hell. "No good deed goes unpunished," as Manda Scott once wrote, presumably quoting someone.
So what's the film about? Szpilman's book was originally called 'Death of a City' (the Polish equivalent of), then later republished as (the German equivalent of) 'The Miraculous Survival', then republished again in English as 'The Pianist'. I would say, from watching the film, that it is about endurance and survival. The death of Warsaw was the background, as was the oppression and attempted extermination of the Warsaw Jews, as was the brutality and corruption of many Germans, Poles and Jews, but in a sense these were just there - you watch with horror as ever more appalling things happen, but for the big events Szpilman wasn't present: that's why he survived. I'd say the film is also about the music. It is there at the beginning, as the Germans shell the radio station, it is there at the end as Szpilman plays a concert in front of an audience of wealthy Poles, and it is there at the key point with the German officer, Hosenfeld.
This is a deeply moving film and I can only recommend that you watch it. The film itself is two and a half hours long, but you may want to leave time afterward to recover.
A final thought. As I wrote yesterday, I am looking for material for housegroups about evangelism - telling the 'good news'. This film brings home just how trivial much of what churches say about 'good news' really is, in the face of Rwanda, Zimbabwe, wartime Warsaw, pick your own hellhole (why do people insist on blaming God for Hell when we insist on inventing it ourselves, again and again?). To be fair, many churches' actions in addressing such situations are far more real than their words. Nevertheless, maybe, just maybe, part of the 'good news' is that when times are desperate, and fear, anger, shame and hatred dehumanise those around us, maybe living in tune with God will mean that we are able to express a flash of humanity in an inhuman world. Of course, no-one actually believes that they will ever sink so low anyway, so that's not much of a selling point ... until it's too late.
Where was God in war-torn Poland?