Thoughts about Schindler's List, mostly
Firstly, I'm just a bit peeved that some people - you know who you are - were very indiscreet about the last Angel episode in their comments above the lj cut. Some of us are still waiting for the download, folks.
Secondly, travelling to Bamberg and back gave me the opportunity for some more movie watching, which resulted in me being pretentious and writing some thoughts about the film in question.
Watching Schindler's List again, it holds up really well: a great film with a very few blemishes. Not, though, unique in Spielberg's oeuvre, as some people claim; imo, it belongs with Empire of the Sun and Minority Report in the category of films where he offers severely flawed heroes and manages to (almost) restrain his inner sentimentalist.
(This, btw, is no bashing of the joyfully sentimental of Spielberg's movies. I like and sometimes love those, too, with just one exception.)
Part of the reason is undoubtedly the sheer horror of the Holocaust. But it's also due to the main characters. Jim in Empire of the Sun might be a youthful pragmatist and the only one of Spielberg's child heroes who loses his innocence for good, and John in Minority Report is a drug-addicted control freak still traumatized by the loss of his son, but neither of them are as unusual in the "central hero" category as Oskar Schindler. Spielberg introduces him in fragments; we see his hands, his profile, his ties and the money he'll use to bribe. The first time we see a full shot of the man is when he firmly pins on his golden NDSAP (for American readers: the Nazi party) button, which he won't take off again until the very end of the movie. Check it out - it's on every single outfit Schindler wears throughout, and the camera repeatedly calls attention to it.
(Incidentally, the fact it's a golden pin means Schindler joined the party before 1933.)
The next thing we see him do is chumming it up with a couple of Nazi officials, wining, dining and charming them. So here we have him: a Nazi, a war profiteer, and soon an employer of slave labour. Spielberg doesn't make it easy on the audience by giving Schindler an explanatory monologue about how he really loathes the SS types he hangs out with, or that he's intending to save lives. (In fact, at this point of the film, he isn't. One of the beauties of the narrative is that we get to watch Schindler shift his priorities.) The only thing our protagonist has going for him in the eyes of a hypothetical viewer who does not know what he will end up doing might be Liam Neeson's undeniable charm and charisma. But Neeson was and is not the type of actor who gets associated with only heroic roles; he played his share of villains, and he's not associated with a firm action hero persona a la Harrison Ford, or a "man of the people" persona a la Tom Hanks.
One reviewer at the time talked about Schindler's "guilty heroism", and that fits the presentation in the fim exactly. When the first Jew comes up to thank him, he's deeply uncomfortable (and incensed at his bookkeeper, who employed the man); the eviction of a Jewish family from their apartment is cross-cut with Schindler moving in the very same apartment, and enjoying every moment of it; and when the Jews of Krakow are forced to build a road out of the tombstones of the old Jewish cemetary, Schindler is the first person we see stepping on those stones. And then there's the ongoing parallels drawn to the character who can be called the movie's chief antagonist, Amon Goeth (brilliantly played by Ralph Fiennes, who if I'm not mistaken moved into international stardom with that role). The most pointed visual reference is the cross-cutting between both men shaving and preparing themselves for the day, but they're played as counterparts and alter egos throughout.
It would have been easy to present them in a conventional hero versus villain way. Goeth, after all, is a monster, randomly executing people just because he can, whereas Schindler, starting out with the firm intention to make as much money by the war and the slave labour as possible, ends up bankrupting himself to save as many lives as possible. However, the film chooses to go another route by presenting the two men as being genuinenly fond of each other. Though when Schindler musters a blue-eyed defense of Goeth, saying that without the war he'd be a great fellow, he's brought back quickly to reality by Izhak Stern's dry narration of the commandant's daily murdering routine. "He can't enjoy that," Schindler protests, "he cannot enjoy that." But Goeth can, and Goeth does; still, when his pal Oscar is momentarily arrested for kissing a Jewish girl in public, he defends him to his superiors in a scene that eerily paralles the earlier conversation between Schindler and Stern.
What makes Goeth so disturbing a monster are those occasional displays of feeling, as much as the irrational brutality. Schindler is able to talk to him over the sight of dead bodies without twitching, but what floors him is when Amon Goeth suddenly talks about his desire to take the Jewish maid Helene, whom he terrorizes on a daily basis, back to Vienna "and grow old with her". For a director like Spielberg, who used what we call "operetta Nazis" in the Indiana Jones movies, the presentation of Goeth and the other assorted soldiers, officers and guards is all the more unusual.
There is a chilling brief scene in Auschwitz where we see Dr. Mengele inspect prisoners. He's not identified by name except in the credits, and he doesn't hiss and spit; he just very matter of factual asks repeatedly "and how old are you, mother?" or similar questions, and it's enough to convey the horror of what happens here. Some with Rudolf Höß, seen only in one scene with Schindler (when Schindler bargains for the release of "his" Jews); Hans-Michael Rehberg plays him as a tired, low-key bureaucrat, which exactly conveys the "banality of evil" Hanna Arendt described in her reports of Eichmann in Jerusalem. We couldn't be further from the Nazis of Hollywood lore, and it's horribly effective.
On the other hand, the Auschwitz sequence contains one of the few things I find the film at fault for - the shower scene. This was Spielberg actually wanting to have his cake and eat it, i.e. showing the horror of the gas chamber and then offering the happy end of it not having been really a gas chamber this time. I don't care if it has really happened, but that still sits ill with me. Faking the audience out on this particular horror just feels wrong.
Back to the praise. Given that Oskar Schindler and Amon Goeth aren't exactly fitting the archetypes, what about the third main character, Izhak Stern? Who is an amalgan of various employees of Schindler's, but this works because we need one Jewish character to focus on. He's played dignified and stoic by Ben Kingsley, but that very unbreakable stoicism, a foil to Schindler's flamboyance and Goeth's erratic moods, prevents him from being a conventional hero, either. About the most open emotion Stern shows is when he calls Schindler "Oscar" for the first time and asks for a drink. That and the final embrace.
Speaking of which: this was something the original reviews criticized - Schindler's "I could have saved more" breakdown at the end. I had no problem with this - it works very well as an emotional release after all that tenseness. What I do have a slight problem with is the next scene, after Schindler is gone: the Russian officer telling the liberated Jews that there is a city "just over the hill", the song "Jeroshaloym" in the background and the lot of them wandering towards the horizon. I realize why Spielberg wanted to use it as an ending - Israel as a symbol of hope for the survivors. The happy ending, their new home, their promised land. Unfortunately, especially in this day and age, you can't help being aware that their promised land was full of people who had lived there since almost two millennia and had no intention of moving. And that endless years of vicious bloodshed with both sides claiming the righteousness of victimhood were in the making.
(The double guilt reflex of being German: first about the Jews, and then about the Palestinians paying for the Holocaust they had nothing to do with.)
The very last scene was slightly different than I remembered from the cinema, i.e. the names were removed. You still see the actors from the film and the surviving characters they portrayed walking side by side to Oskar Schindler's grave and leaving a stone there, but the letters saying who is who weren't there anymore. Interestingly, Spielberg doesn't hold it there for the final credits, which run over an earlier scene - the road with the tombstones, which we have seen Schindler walk on. Which brings us back to the greatness of the film again - the fact that it does not cheapen the tragedy, nor the ambiguity of its heroes.
Secondly, travelling to Bamberg and back gave me the opportunity for some more movie watching, which resulted in me being pretentious and writing some thoughts about the film in question.
Watching Schindler's List again, it holds up really well: a great film with a very few blemishes. Not, though, unique in Spielberg's oeuvre, as some people claim; imo, it belongs with Empire of the Sun and Minority Report in the category of films where he offers severely flawed heroes and manages to (almost) restrain his inner sentimentalist.
(This, btw, is no bashing of the joyfully sentimental of Spielberg's movies. I like and sometimes love those, too, with just one exception.)
Part of the reason is undoubtedly the sheer horror of the Holocaust. But it's also due to the main characters. Jim in Empire of the Sun might be a youthful pragmatist and the only one of Spielberg's child heroes who loses his innocence for good, and John in Minority Report is a drug-addicted control freak still traumatized by the loss of his son, but neither of them are as unusual in the "central hero" category as Oskar Schindler. Spielberg introduces him in fragments; we see his hands, his profile, his ties and the money he'll use to bribe. The first time we see a full shot of the man is when he firmly pins on his golden NDSAP (for American readers: the Nazi party) button, which he won't take off again until the very end of the movie. Check it out - it's on every single outfit Schindler wears throughout, and the camera repeatedly calls attention to it.
(Incidentally, the fact it's a golden pin means Schindler joined the party before 1933.)
The next thing we see him do is chumming it up with a couple of Nazi officials, wining, dining and charming them. So here we have him: a Nazi, a war profiteer, and soon an employer of slave labour. Spielberg doesn't make it easy on the audience by giving Schindler an explanatory monologue about how he really loathes the SS types he hangs out with, or that he's intending to save lives. (In fact, at this point of the film, he isn't. One of the beauties of the narrative is that we get to watch Schindler shift his priorities.) The only thing our protagonist has going for him in the eyes of a hypothetical viewer who does not know what he will end up doing might be Liam Neeson's undeniable charm and charisma. But Neeson was and is not the type of actor who gets associated with only heroic roles; he played his share of villains, and he's not associated with a firm action hero persona a la Harrison Ford, or a "man of the people" persona a la Tom Hanks.
One reviewer at the time talked about Schindler's "guilty heroism", and that fits the presentation in the fim exactly. When the first Jew comes up to thank him, he's deeply uncomfortable (and incensed at his bookkeeper, who employed the man); the eviction of a Jewish family from their apartment is cross-cut with Schindler moving in the very same apartment, and enjoying every moment of it; and when the Jews of Krakow are forced to build a road out of the tombstones of the old Jewish cemetary, Schindler is the first person we see stepping on those stones. And then there's the ongoing parallels drawn to the character who can be called the movie's chief antagonist, Amon Goeth (brilliantly played by Ralph Fiennes, who if I'm not mistaken moved into international stardom with that role). The most pointed visual reference is the cross-cutting between both men shaving and preparing themselves for the day, but they're played as counterparts and alter egos throughout.
It would have been easy to present them in a conventional hero versus villain way. Goeth, after all, is a monster, randomly executing people just because he can, whereas Schindler, starting out with the firm intention to make as much money by the war and the slave labour as possible, ends up bankrupting himself to save as many lives as possible. However, the film chooses to go another route by presenting the two men as being genuinenly fond of each other. Though when Schindler musters a blue-eyed defense of Goeth, saying that without the war he'd be a great fellow, he's brought back quickly to reality by Izhak Stern's dry narration of the commandant's daily murdering routine. "He can't enjoy that," Schindler protests, "he cannot enjoy that." But Goeth can, and Goeth does; still, when his pal Oscar is momentarily arrested for kissing a Jewish girl in public, he defends him to his superiors in a scene that eerily paralles the earlier conversation between Schindler and Stern.
What makes Goeth so disturbing a monster are those occasional displays of feeling, as much as the irrational brutality. Schindler is able to talk to him over the sight of dead bodies without twitching, but what floors him is when Amon Goeth suddenly talks about his desire to take the Jewish maid Helene, whom he terrorizes on a daily basis, back to Vienna "and grow old with her". For a director like Spielberg, who used what we call "operetta Nazis" in the Indiana Jones movies, the presentation of Goeth and the other assorted soldiers, officers and guards is all the more unusual.
There is a chilling brief scene in Auschwitz where we see Dr. Mengele inspect prisoners. He's not identified by name except in the credits, and he doesn't hiss and spit; he just very matter of factual asks repeatedly "and how old are you, mother?" or similar questions, and it's enough to convey the horror of what happens here. Some with Rudolf Höß, seen only in one scene with Schindler (when Schindler bargains for the release of "his" Jews); Hans-Michael Rehberg plays him as a tired, low-key bureaucrat, which exactly conveys the "banality of evil" Hanna Arendt described in her reports of Eichmann in Jerusalem. We couldn't be further from the Nazis of Hollywood lore, and it's horribly effective.
On the other hand, the Auschwitz sequence contains one of the few things I find the film at fault for - the shower scene. This was Spielberg actually wanting to have his cake and eat it, i.e. showing the horror of the gas chamber and then offering the happy end of it not having been really a gas chamber this time. I don't care if it has really happened, but that still sits ill with me. Faking the audience out on this particular horror just feels wrong.
Back to the praise. Given that Oskar Schindler and Amon Goeth aren't exactly fitting the archetypes, what about the third main character, Izhak Stern? Who is an amalgan of various employees of Schindler's, but this works because we need one Jewish character to focus on. He's played dignified and stoic by Ben Kingsley, but that very unbreakable stoicism, a foil to Schindler's flamboyance and Goeth's erratic moods, prevents him from being a conventional hero, either. About the most open emotion Stern shows is when he calls Schindler "Oscar" for the first time and asks for a drink. That and the final embrace.
Speaking of which: this was something the original reviews criticized - Schindler's "I could have saved more" breakdown at the end. I had no problem with this - it works very well as an emotional release after all that tenseness. What I do have a slight problem with is the next scene, after Schindler is gone: the Russian officer telling the liberated Jews that there is a city "just over the hill", the song "Jeroshaloym" in the background and the lot of them wandering towards the horizon. I realize why Spielberg wanted to use it as an ending - Israel as a symbol of hope for the survivors. The happy ending, their new home, their promised land. Unfortunately, especially in this day and age, you can't help being aware that their promised land was full of people who had lived there since almost two millennia and had no intention of moving. And that endless years of vicious bloodshed with both sides claiming the righteousness of victimhood were in the making.
(The double guilt reflex of being German: first about the Jews, and then about the Palestinians paying for the Holocaust they had nothing to do with.)
The very last scene was slightly different than I remembered from the cinema, i.e. the names were removed. You still see the actors from the film and the surviving characters they portrayed walking side by side to Oskar Schindler's grave and leaving a stone there, but the letters saying who is who weren't there anymore. Interestingly, Spielberg doesn't hold it there for the final credits, which run over an earlier scene - the road with the tombstones, which we have seen Schindler walk on. Which brings us back to the greatness of the film again - the fact that it does not cheapen the tragedy, nor the ambiguity of its heroes.