The Pianist, directed by Roman Polanski, tells the story of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Jewish pianist, who miraculously survived the Holocaust. Throughout the film, Szpilman's musicality plays a key role in his survival: not only as a means to gain sympathy from others, but also to enable him to cope with the traumatic experiences he encounters. However, music has not always worked successfully for Szpilman as a coping mechanism. In The Pianist, the emotional healing powers of music do not lie in music's ability to escape to alternative, more desirable realities as a means of coping with a stressful situation. Rather, it is music's ability to express emotions and reflect on complex experiences in order to begin to process them, that successfully functions as a coping mechanism for Szpilman, allowing him to free his mind from heavy emotions in order to continue his life. Expression is an effective way of coping because it actively approaches the stressor rather than avoiding it. Active Musical Engagement with Emotional Approach to Improve Well-Being in Liver and Kidney Transplant Recipients by Claire Ghetti discusses effective approach-oriented coping mechanisms, which attempt to understand the situation and reassess the circumstances, and ineffective avoidance coping mechanisms, namely denial and suppression. of emotions. Ghetti then goes on to explain that an example of an approach coping mechanism is emotional approach coping: Emotional expression and processing can function as an approach-oriented coping strategy... The approach pathway which EAC [emotional approach coping] works is not good. understood, but this can relate to self-regulation theory in that EAC promotes clarification and refra...... middle of paper ......c experience, its survival does not depends not only on their physical luck and the people who wanted to help them, but it also depended on their ability to express and understand their experiences in order to come out of them. Works Cited Ghetti, Claire M. "Active Music Engagement with Emotional-Approach Coping to Improvement Well-being in Liver and Kidney Transplant Recipients. Journal of Music Therapy 48.4 (2011): 463-85. ProQuête. Web.Packalén, Elina. "Music, emotions and truth." Np: Indiana University Press, 41-59. The pianist. , Frank Finley. Universal Studios, 2002. Young, David E. "Aesthetic Response as Coping Behavior: An Anthropological Perspective.".