While viewing The Pawnbroker (1964), I actually commiserated with Sol Nazerman. I agree that his aloof attitude toward others may be harsh, but the distressing events that he witnessed greatly impacted his personality. To see his own two children and wife pass away in front of him due to the Nazis’ inhumane behavior undoubtedly altered his experience of life. The specific scene where the three men try to rob the pawnshop and Rodriguez punches Nazerman made me feel sympathetic toward Nazerman. The vivid memories, depicted by the recurrent flashbacks, relentlessly haunt Nazerman and have become an indelible part of his life. The fact that he has alienated himself from other people, including his assistant, Jesus, makes it rather difficult to get through him. You cannot easily speak to him, in other words. He has absorbed so much bitterness and has already witnessed so much pain that he couldn’t care less about the people around him. For instance, Jesus greatly admired Nazerman and wanted to be like him, but Nazerman didn’t even care about him. What I found ironic was in spite of Nazerman’s traumatic experience, he still decided to live in such a dreary region: the slums in the city.
Moreover, Nazerman’s phlegmatic behavior can be seen when he refused to give the money to the three men robbing the shop and just wanted to die. Essentially, Nazerman had lost his desire to live and became detached with the rest of the world. An instance that demonstrates this is when Ms. Birchfield tries to get close to Nazerman. To her dismay, Ms. Birchfield was coolly treated by Nazerman and was rejected by him. Also, the scene in which the prostitute exclaims, “Look, look” makes him recall of his wife unclad in the jail cell. This scene agonizes Nazerman because he remembers how is innocent wife was mistreated by the vile Nazis’. In addition, this film showed to me how a traumatic event can drastically change one’s life.
Also, the fast motion of the flashbacks played an important role in the film. Even though the viewer could barely see the flashbacks (due to it vanishing rapidly), it illustrated the connection between his past and present. All his flashbacks are the cause of his misery. Nazerman cannot forget what had happened in the past and because of this his present is affected negatively. He dissociates from the people near him and has completely lost faith in life. Without his family, Nazerman feels empty and has lost interest in others. When we see Nazerman piercing his hand near the end of the film, we see how he desperately wants to cease living. Even Rodriguez doesn’t fulfill Nazerman’s wish of dying. Instead, Rodriguez states that Nazerman will die when the time comes and that he will not be the one doing the killing. It’s as if there is no way out for poor Nazerman; he’s just there to continuously suffer from the traumatic moments of his horrible past.
The many ethnic groups depicted in The Pawnbroker (1964) were Hispanic, African, and Jewish. These ethnic groups relate to one another in the sense that they all have endured certain hardships through the course of their lives. For example, the Nazis’ hatred toward the Jews are responsible for the state Nazerman is currently in. Then, Jesus feels slighted when Nazerman says that Jesus means nothing to him. The African American in the film who was being beaten also suffered a tragic fate. Furthermore, when Nazerman feels that not just Africans but all the other around him are “scums,” we observe a racist attitude. Later on though, Nazerman learns that the money Rodriguez makes comes through prostitution. As a result, Nazerman wants nothing to do with this because he remembers the humiliation his wife’s been through in the concentration camps. This causes a confrontation between Nazerman and Rodriguez, who threatens to kill him.
All in all, Nazerman has lost touch with reality and his depressing past is constantly reminded of through the use of the film’s sequence of flashbacks. There is no apparent happiness in his life, as seen through the gloomy ending of the film. Now that Nazerman has lost his good assistant in the pawnshop, he feels even worse. Nazerman fails to let go of the past and as a result is tormented by it. I just felt that the movie seemed so depressing and wished that there could have been some uplifting scene to cheer me up.
