Thoughts while Watching “The Pianist”

I’m a big fan of Adrien Brody. I think he is one of the most intriguing and watchable actors to come along in a very long time. He has the sort of face that is constantly fascinating as it moves through emotions of subtlety and elegance. That’s why I rented The Pianist, the movie that garnered him the honor of being the youngest actor to receive the Best Actor Academy Award. He certainly deserved it.

I had a hard time watching the film and, didn’t finish it, though I probably will tonight. I don’t handle cruelty well. I’ve pretty much avoided all the movies that deal with the Holocaust just for that reason. For one thing, being of half German heritage, the actors playing the Nazis always look too much like family, and also, I just can’t handle institutionalized cruelty. I’m not opposed to violence and can watch Bruce Willis movies in total enjoyment - mostly because I know they aren’t real.

But while I was watching The Pianist the one thought that went through my head over and over was how do people get that way? When the Nazi soldiers were beating and shooting and abusing the Jews, all I could think was “what is going on in their heads, for God’s sake?” But the thing is, I know the answer. They did not regard their victims as human. That’s a cheap excuse but one that has worked for millennia.

I don’t want to get into political discussions in this blog. There are way too many political blogs out there now cluttering up the bandwidth with their opinions. But I do want to comment on polarization because that is not a political issue but rather a human issue.

We are living in an era of extreme polarization. I have a lot of ideas about how we got this way, not the least of which is the responsibility of the media. But the bottomline fact is we, as a nation, are institutionalizing and, worse, accepting polarization. When polarization is extreme it becomes way too easy to demonize “them”. In order to feed our enmity we have to regard “them” as bad, evil, anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-whatever it is we claim to revere. And as the demonization increases so does our inability to see “them” as human. They become the enemy, the bad guys, the ones who cause all the problems and without whom life would be good and we would get our way.

This scares me a lot. We only need to look at history to see what inevitably happens when one group becomes polarized against another group - families divide, wars are declared, persecutions increase, people die. When we polarize and then demonize we lose our humanity, we lose our ability to see “them” as part of “us”.

One of the reasons I am such a staunch supporter and advocate for the Arts in all their many forms is because the Arts can show us what we don’t want to see. Last night as I watched The Pianist I wondered if it would ever be possible for me to become like the Nazi guard who beat Adrian Brody for dropping a load of bricks. That guard (well, the actor who played him) looked a lot like a favorite cousin of mine. It hurt.

I’ve made the decision to leave non-productive, argumentative situations when I see no point in continuing. There is much work to be done in this world and it can’t be done by people who are wasting their time in petty bickering. But I learned a lot through all of this - none of us are that different. None of us. Victor Frankel wrote, “Evil happens when good people do nothing.” We all need to take those words to heart - now more than ever.

Thanks for reading.