March 24, 2003

YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE A GENIUS TO RECOGNIZE A MORON: THE OSCAR FOLLIES

by Rita Kramer

        And Sunday night’s Hollywood demonstration of self-love and mutual congratulation provided plenty of opportunity.
        Perfect bodies in gorgeous gowns under artful coiffures—with nothing under all that hair. They are ignorant, uneducated, innocent of the least idea of history, but they know one thing—how to read lines. Unlike real actors, they have no acquaintance with form or tradition in dramatic literature, but they have a lot of experience in registering cheap emotion for the cameras. And they really pile it on in their annual trade show cum love-in, encouraging each other by means of applause and standing ovations to think the most infantile utterances are profound statements of political significance.
        Most of it is so jejune as to be beneath notice, like Michael Moore’s pathetic tantrum. Name-calling is a rather primitive means of argument, and his attack on the President was more embarrassing than impressive. The act that did make an impression—a sorry one—was by the actor who played the lead in “The Pianist.” If ever there was an opportunity lost, that was it.
        The film tells the story of a Polish Jew, a famous pianist, who survives the Holocaust and lives to play again. At the end he is rescued by a German officer who responds to his music by recognizing their common humanity. Although there are some highly effective background scenes of Nazi persecutions, the character and fate of the hero himself are somewhat problematic. He remains passive throughout his ordeal, never commenting, never blaming, and seeming to suffer mainly in worrying about his fingers, the instruments of his musical prowess. He never does anything to resist. He hides, and his outstanding characteristic is fatalism. If he learns anything in the course of his wartime experiences, we are never told what it is.
        I suspect that a good part of the film’s ecstatic reception by reviewers and now by the film community is that it is a cop-out. The main character is not depicted as particularly Jewish; he is more of a generic sufferer. “You see, everyone suffered in the war.” It’s the same choice that was made in the stage and screen versions of Anne Frank’s story, which “universalized” her fate and left audiences with her belief, stated in her diary, that down deep people are really good.
Of course she wrote that before she wound up at Bergen Belsen, but that part of the story is not in the play or movie. We’re supposed to feel uplifted at the end. Something about the triumph of the human spirit. Yes, well…
        In the case of “The Pianist” the distortion is in the encounter between the hero, if one can call him that, and his German fellow music lover. The movie gives you no reason to suppose he is anything but the usual Nazi, but after all only human, and despite everything capable of being touched by Art. In fact, the real officer (the film is based on a memoir by Polish pianist and Holocaust survivor Wladyslaw Szpilman) was quite unique—an anti-Nazi long before he ever met Szpilman or heard him play. But Hollywood loves a sentimental message. Ann Frank believed in the goodness of mankind, and Nazis can be transformed by the power of music. (A thoughtful discussion of this and other aspects of this film appeared in the New Republic of March 17, 2003: “Schindler’s Liszt,” by Michael B. Oren, p. 25).
        Of course, such subtleties are beyond the ken of your average brilliant movie actor, and even if one were to have thoughts that went somewhat against the grain of that herd of independent minds lecturing us about peace (they didn’t even know enough history to hear the echo of “peace in our time”), it would take a brave man or woman indeed to voice such thoughts instead of reciting a litany of thanks and expressing one’s humility and love for one’s mother. So the actor in question prattled on about his feelings in a stunning display of narcissism, clutching his little gold statue in striking obliviousness of the nature of the drama in which he’d been cast, and finally thinking of the nature of the evening at hand, said, “Whether you believe in Allah or God, may he watch over you, and pray for a peaceful and swift resolution to this war.” He couldn’t have said anything more suited to win him a standing ovation from his peers, and he got it. Everyone’s good at heart, we’re all the same, no one’s worse than anyone else, and war is a bad thing.
        Too bad he didn’t have the guts, or the historical perspective, to remind his audience that the film they had just honored was about the consequences of not facing up to evil, not stopping it before it stops you. But a statement like that, although it would have made history in Hollywood, would not have gotten a standing ovation.

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