I don't know why I keep doing this to myself. Quarantine is no place for heavy Holocaust-survivor drama. And yet, here I am.Sol Nazerman (Rod Steiger) is a survivor only in name. He sleepwalks through his life, filled with bitterness and guilt for living when so many others had died in unimaginable conditions. Still, his business does well in 1960s Harlem, well enough that he can afford an assistant, the ebullient ambitious Jesus Ortiz (Jaime Sanchez). Ortiz is trying to climb his way out of poverty but Nazerman's relentless misery wears at him. Nazerman's destructive spiral increases as more and more of his trauma comes to the surface, leading to a terrible showdown.
I remember adding this to my queue because it features the first appearance of one Morgan Freeman as an unnamed bystander and I wanted to point out what a baby he was. Readers, I will confess, I fully forgot to be looking for him while I was watching this and totally missed it. And I'm not watching it again. It is fully traumatizing.
Content Warning: concentration camps, the Holocaust, the emotional toll of human misery
The lone silver lining is that this is a rare example of a mainstream film by a prominent director to feature a predominantly POC cast. In particular, Thelma Oliver (now Krishna Kaur Khalsa) was a breathtaking actress who deserved better than being credited as "Jesus's Girl". In a just world, she would have been an A-lister, but she's apparently gone on to be a very well-respected yoga instructor so that's good. Also, Brock Peters doesn't get enough mention as an incredible actor.
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