  Looking over the winners at tonight's urlLink Golden Globe Awards , I can't help but think that these awards are nothing but posturing by columnists to get in the good graces of A-list actors. Now granted, Jack Nicholson is one hell of an actor; and granted, I haven't seen urlLink About Schmidt yet (I hear it's a great movie, and yes, I plan to get out to see it...tomorrow actually), but it is tough for me to believe that Nicholson could do as much with his character as Adrian Brody did with Wladyslaw Szpilman in urlLink The Pianist (and I'm not saying this because I saw Brody do a miserable turn in the equally miserable urlLink Six Ways to Sunday ). The Pianist was the best Holocaust film I have ever seen; Brody's ability to capture the slow deconstruction from a well-to-do, misunderstood gentleman to a man without his mind, lost in a wasteland, holding a jar of pickles to be more sacred than anything else possible...it was the most gripping moment in the most gripping movie I've seen in ages, possibly ever.
However, I tend to believe that people are tired of the Holocaust, and that everyone wants Spielberg's urlLink Schindler's List to hold the title, and everything after it is just fighting for second place...including urlLink Life is Beautiful .
Since this blog isn't about The Pianist , I don't want to get too much into it, but I believe that it didn't win a Golden Globe and won't win an Oscar because in the end, there is no hero. Oskar Schindler was a hero; he stars in a movie where we see someone working through the atrocities of one of the worst moments in the history of mankind; even though his country was on the side of evil, he fought for good. The same can generally be said about Roberto in Life is Beautiful ; a father working to make the Holocaust as care-free for his son is a man we can admire, so we leave the theatre on an up, in a movie that ends on a down.
However, no such hero exists in The Pianist ; we want Spizlman to be that hero, but after missing the train to Auschwitz, his goal becomes to do nothing more to survive, and in fact we want him to do nothing more. When he is given the choice to work for the Jewish Police, we want him to do it, even though we know he would thus be a tratior to his people, and it would just be an elongation of his imminent death sentence. He grows old, frail, and tired in front of our eyes, and his weaknesses are evident, even though he is strong enough to stay alive.
Thus, when he survives, we are relieved, but cannot be excited; he is just one man who was as lucky as he was adept. The traditional hero must grow out of hardship and flourish...Spizlman has no choice but to grow within his hardship, and fight for nothing more than survival; the status quo of what he had. In the end, he is nothing more than alive and able to continue what he was doing...considering the circumstances, I consider him a hero.
But I can't emulate Spizlman unless I am ever in that same situation, and no one wants to put themselves in that situation, even briefly. Last year, I was impressed with the addition of urlLink Memento in the Best Picture catergory at the Golden Globes. This year, I was shocked that urlLink Y Tu Mama Tambien (one of my urlLink favorite movies ) was left off the Best Foreign Film catergory, much less Best Picture overall. It's most likely the frank sexual nature of the film that kept voters away, but a movie so well-liked and well-reviewed across the world should receive even a mention from the Hollywood Foreign Press. I look forward to the Academy Awards in two months, and the opportunity to see the other well-regarded films this year; it looks like a great slate of films will be up for the show. However, I hope that the boys' club of Hollywood will work to make sure the best film, and not the best film with the most likeable or marketable actor, will win. 
