I just saw the movie "The Pianist". I am so freaked out. Afterwards, I went to a mall to try to ground myself back into the current time period. I even looked at shoes, at my beloved Dansko Jade shoes, but I was too emotional to try them on.

I think I'm even more disturbed than when I saw "Schindler's List", because I saw Schindler's back to back with the movie "The Piano". I went from one emotional state with "The Piano", and into a completely different emotional state with Schindler's. Most of the time during Schindler's you could hear people crying. Someone was crying the whole time during "The Pianist".

I wanted to cry, but I couldn't. I think I was too horrified. Adrien Brody gave such subtle performance and Roman Polanski is a genius. I didn't know "The Pianist" was based on a true story. The real pianist lived in Warsaw till his death in 2000. He was eighty eight years old, and had written the story of his life.

Polanski does not paint his characters with black and white strokes. There was so much ambiguity in the movie. There were good jews, bad jews, good germans, bad germans, good poles and bad poles. I mean, he could have. He the director after all, but he didn't.

I am amazed by the will of the human spirit to live on, despite such hardships. I am amazed by how evil people can be, how cruel and how utterly horrifying their actions are sometimes. And what's truly amazing is that people can live on after expreriecing such terrible things, almost as if nothing has happened. The human will to survive to go is so strong, despite all our attempts to kill it.

The tears come now, after I've written all of this. Maybe writing helps me release the emotions that built up as I watched "The Pianist". I feel a need to read this man's story, although it will be a very heart wrenching thing to do. Did music keep him alive? How did he survive into another century, and not go insane?

My own concerns seem so petty to me now. My need for material things seem so blasphemous even, after having watched people scrounge for food and their very survival for 2.5 hours.

Will this movie win "Best Picture" on Oscar night? I don't know. It's such a subtle movie. Roman Polanski's set and depiction of the events in Warsaw during World War 2 was meticulous. I believ Polanski survived the Warsaw Ghetto as a child, and I'm sure this added to the authenticity of the movie.

"The Pianist" won the best picture prize at the Cannes Film Festival, but I think this movie may be too subtle for Hollywood. And Polanski's misdeeds with 13 year old girls doesn't endear him to many people. "The Pianist" is an incredible piece of filmmaking, but perhaps a friend is right. She said that the country is in such an emotional mood right now, that "The Pianist might be too much". She thinks that "Chicago will win best picture because people want escapist movies right now.

She says our current reality of an upcoming war, terrorists scares and our 9/11 post traumatic stress disorder is just too much to deal with, and that "Chicago" is the only light hearted film that lets the moviegoer escape from the real world. She may be right. Too bad. I think in any other year, "The Pianist" and any of the other movies nominated might have won.

I think I'm going to be freaked out all weekend. But it's okay. A great movie does that you sometimes.