Upon watching The Pawnbroker, I saw a completely different side of New York. Compared to the bright, banded neighborhoods seen in The Brother From Another Planet and West Side Story, the neighborhood of Sol Nazerman was gritty, grimy, dirty, and suffering. Purely from a visual point of view, the Harlem in The Pawnbroker was in shambles. The black and white color, use of shadow and used in the film further enhanced the bleakness of Harlem. This provides a contrast to the bright, colorful, idealized West Side. Additionally, the people in the neighborhood were different as well. In The Brother From Another Planet, Harlem’s inhabitants were mostly black. We see in The Pawnbroker, that Harlem was made of latino, black and white. I personally felt that there was more of a sense of content and community in Brother. The inhabitants in The Pawnbroker seemed to look in improving their situations, trying to make money, in both legal and illegal ways. Additionally, the use of reggae music and the use of jazz gave a different feel to the neighborhood. Harlem in Brother did seem impoverished, but gave off a welcoming, community like vibe. The Harlem in the Pawnbroker was cold and violent, outwardly showing the struggles of the people. The portrayals of Harlem in the two films were vastly different, as each was trying to convey different messages.
The film also related the neighborhood of Harlem to the Concentration Camp Sol experienced. Using the graphic, sudden flashbacks of Mr. Nazerman, the images of Harlem blend with the memories of the concentration camp. When the prostitute was baring her breasts to Sol, he experienced a flashback of his naked, suffering wife. When she said “look,’ he remembered looking at the female prisoners in camp, and the guards yelling at him. The horrors that he tried to conceal for so long resurfaced by watching the actions of his community. The way the music, flashbacks, and facial expressions meshed really captured the horror and stress Sol was experiencing. Harlem and its people became a trigger for the flashbacks. In this way, the two ghettoes/areas are almost one in the same. Though vastly different, the people of Harlem and the prisoners in the concentration camp experienced suffering. The concentration camp was a home to atrocities, leaving permanent mental scars on Sol. The people of Harlem, black, Latino or white, also suffered, either from corruption or from their social status. The suffering Jewish and the suffering Harlemites looked the same to Sol. These series of flashbacks led to the breaking of Mr. Nazerman, forcing him to show the emotion that he tried to ignore.
Additionally, I felt the film had some undertones that touched upon more than just suffering. The main premise of the film tried to create parallels between Jewish and Black ghettoes, as seen by Sol’s flashbacks. We see though vastly different situations that suffering was the same either in Harlem or Europe, bringing on horrible memories and corruption. However, I felt that the film had Christian imagery, as mentioned by Hirsch. The killing of a man named Jesus (H sound) to save a Jew and the self-wounded hands was pretty interesting to me. The suffering of Christ was another image of suffering I took away from the film. The Pawnbroker really showed the long term effects of pain and suffering.
