Best Picture: # 66
Original Release Date: November 30, 1993
Rating: R
Runtime: 3 hours, 15 minutes
Director: Steven Spielberg
Quick Impressions:
I anticipated that watching Schindler’s List with my twelve-year-old might be difficult because of her age. Since she’s so young, I had considered carefully pre-screening the film, preparing her for difficult scenes, asking her to close her eyes at certain moments. None of this proved necessary. We just watched the movie. She handled it fine.
At one moment, she did respond in outrage when she realized the Nazis were lying, that they had no intention of returning carefully labeled possessions to their owners. Incensed, she demanded, “How can they just steal all their stuff?”
“Well,” I told her, “they’re going to kill the people.”
Stunned, she croaked, “What?”
“If they’re taking them out of the Ghetto,” I explained, “then they’re taking them to a concentration camp. Most won’t come out.” She hadn’t realized that. Seconds later, she got angry again when she saw that the Nazis were forcing Jewish people who cooperated with them to “sort through the stuff.”
Then she got quiet. Among “the stuff” we saw human teeth.
One enormous strength of the film for which director Steven Spielberg won his first two Oscars is that it’s very easy to understand. (I mean that the plot is easy to follow. We can see for ourselves what is happening during the Holocaust. Much harder to understand, of course, is how such things ever could have happened.)
In a twist I didn’t see coming, the one who had trouble watching Schindler’s List was me. To be honest, I’ve been looking forward to the 90s Best Picture winners, and now that we’re watching them, they’re filling me with torment. In the 90s, I was in high school, and I went to the movies all the time with my parents and my sister. I remember that time so vividly. Until recently, it seemed accessible through conversation, part of a still-continuing timeline. But now my mother is dead. That conversation is over.
We’ve already watched Schindler’s List, Forest Gump, and Braveheart, and I haven’t known what to say about any of them. (Frankly, I’m not sure my opinions about anything matter. Six million Jews and six million others were killed in the Holocaust. What do you think, Sarah? Why on Earth should anything I say about that matter?) I’ve also gotten behind in reviews because I’ve been scrambling to finish proofreading my next novel. (I’ve been indecisive there, too. Every decision seems too weighty to me lately. Do I want to use a semi-colon? The whole idea sends me into a panic. Suddenly I’m J. Alfred Prufrock.) (Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?) (Also, why did I hyphenate semicolon?) Fortunately, the book is finally done. (Writing the dedication to my mother yesterday took me forever, too. I have no idea why. I know I have a mother, and I know I love her. I was even on TV yesterday saying so. It must be true. Yet it practically took longer to write the dedication than the book!) What does any of this have to do with Schindler’s List? Nothing! That’s the problem.
The Good:
This is the worst write-up of a movie ever! I should do movie reviews on YouTube and begin them by yelling at the camera, “Well, for the life of me, I really don’t know why you should listen to what I have to say about anything!” and then stalking off. (I can’t decide yet if I would eventually come back, or if that’s just the end, surprise!)
My mood suddenly seems to have improved a bit, so I guess I will pull myself together and write something about Schindler’s List, a story about people in circumstances much more adverse than mine. (It doesn’t seem very virtuous to complain about being alive in the face of tragedy of this scale. That’s why I have such a problem knowing what to say. I want to say, “Just watch the movie! Spielberg has more valuable thoughts on this topic than I do!”)
What I like best about this story is the idea that Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) isn’t a good man. As the film opens, he’s selfish, greedy, careless of people, opportunistic, and promiscuous without concern for whose feelings he hurts. But it doesn’t matter if he’s a good man. All that matters is that he does good things. In the film, he’s a dynamic character. He does change eventually…to a degree. He learns to value human life. As for the rest of his flaws and failings, they don’t really change. The film even admits freely that his marriage failed, his subsequent businesses failed. But so what? He still saved the lives of 1,200 people. If someone saved my life, I wouldn’t care about any of his failings. The great part about Schindler’s story is even if he had later regretted his actions and failed at every single thing he attempted every day until he died, he still saved the lives of the people on that list. Nobody is good. It doesn’t matter. The world doesn’t need heroes. As long as we ordinary, flawed people make choices to help others (even if only sometimes), evil never wins. Good things come from good choices, not good people.
Schindler’s brand of non-heroic heroism is so comforting because he doesn’t even have to agonize over difficult moral dilemmas. Is it the right thing to save a human life if you can? Of course, it is! In the beginning of the story, Schindler’s entire scheme is to hire Jewish financial backers because he needs money, and they have it and are under duress. He wants to use Jewish workers for his factory, too, so he can pay them in trade. He intends to take advantage of people, but he admits he’s much better at charming the right people than doing any of the work, so he hires Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley) to run his business. And because of Stern’s influence, Schindler does good accidentally. He’s tethered to good (for his own selfish purposes) and for much of the movie, he haphazardly saves people (sometimes not even aware that he’s doing it).
Then there’s Amon Goeth, tethered to evil, who spends most of the movie haphazardly murdering people (aware of his actions, but performing them for no real reason). He’s a nice foil for Schindler but a thoroughly despicable human being. I also find him the most captivating character in the film, probably because Ralph Fiennes gives such a nuanced, Oscar-worthy performance. (It’s too bad he couldn’t have won the Oscar that year. I also love Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive, though. He gives a totally different kind of performance, also deserving.)
At one point, my daughter observed of Goeth, “I feel bad for him in a way.”
“I don’t,” I said with surprising bluntness for me. I don’t feel bad for Goeth, not at all. And this is very strange because I like most people, and I’m almost always sympathetic when someone is suffering (which Goeth clearly is). I’m really a fan of giving people the benefit of the doubt (because I recognize that I’m quick to form character judgments, so I prefer not to be whimsically vindictive on the off chance that I’m wrong). But I find I don’t have pity to waste on Goeth.
As I said to my daughter, “There are plenty of people to feel bad for who have weaknesses but don’t kill humans for sport. Feel bad for some of them before you waste your pity on this jerk.”
I mean, it’s really so easy not to shoot people for spot. None of us comes forth from our mother’s womb Yosemite-Sam-style, guns blazing. Granted, Goeth probably comes from a background of abuse, and he’s certainly being taken advantage of by the Nazi party. He clearly has some mental health issues and seems conflicted and tortured. But who doesn’t have problems? I’m frequently conflicted, often distraught. But I cannot imagine trying to blow off steam by picking up a rifle and hunting humans for sport. I said to my daughter, “So many of us try to do good and wrestle with various issues and fall short. Those who torture and kill for sport are at the bottom of my list of people to feel bad for.”
(And yet I like Hannibal Lecter. I’m not very consistent—another reason I try to stave off my vindictive rages. Of course, Hannibal Lecter is a fictional character. That does make a difference. Though I feel this goes without saying, I’ll say it. The Holocaust was real and horrific, and the real-life counterpart of the character played by Fiennes was a Nazi war criminal who tortured and killed innocent people.) (Taking a stand against the Holocaust seems a little obvious, but I’m wearied by all the virulent anti-Semitism I’ve encountered online over the past couple of weeks. These things should go without saying, yes, but I’ve decided that it never hurts to say them, anyway.)
If anything, Goeth’s habit of picking off concentration camp residents with a rifle makes him look like an incompetent torturer and a poor marksman. Surely a better shot would make a game of pretending to try to shoot the same people from a distance and always missing. That’s more effective as torture and requires more skill with a gun. What Goeth does is lazy and clumsy on top of everything else.
Now I realize that Goeth is a troubled person whose thoughts have been poisoned by Nazi propaganda. Perhaps his frequent, random killings are performative, meant to illustrate a contempt for Jews that he simply doesn’t feel deep down in his heart. (I realize Nazi propaganda described Jews as sub-human, likening them to dogs or rats. The thing is, I wouldn’t torture and kill animals at random either. In fact, I’ve been known to remonstrate with mice and ants, desperately trying to convince them to leave our house before harm comes to them.) But I would have far more sympathy for someone who killed because he was “just following orders,” than for someone who went out of his way to torture and kill extra people, too. There are enough broken people in this world who need and deserve love. Goeth doesn’t deserve love (not from me, anyway. Now, as a Christian, I do believe in a God who loves His creation even when they don’t deserve it. And I am not arguing that Goeth should not be shown mercy of any kind. It never hurts to show anyone mercy. But as long as we’re picking characters to sympathize with in a movie, I personally do not have the emotional resources to worry about Amon Goeth right now, and I resent the loss of all time spent contemplating him. I can’t seem to help thinking about the character, which irritates me because I feel others in the film have a far superior claim on my generosity of spirit.)
I do, however, appreciate the way the chaotic evil of Goeth represents the chaotic evil of Hitler and the Final Solution in miniature. (There’s a moment in the movie when someone in the Ghetto urges others to be reasonable. Why would the Nazis kill them? They need the Jews to be their workforce, this person says. It’s illogical that they would kill them.) Nothing Goeth does makes much sense. He just likes to kill (except he doesn’t like it that much because he’s miserable most of the time). Isn’t Schindler’s early opportunistic hunger for a profit a bit more logical than Hitler’s decision to exterminate a race that could be exploited for slave labor? Goeth’s behavior illustrates on a small scale the tragic absurdity of the Final Solution.
I also love how the movie shows us that good deeds (and good patterns of thought) are infectious. Just as Stern becomes a good influence on Schindler, in turn, Schindler becomes a good influence on Goeth. Even though Goeth is evil, he also helps save the Schindler Jews. He does it mainly for profit, of course. He’s further back on the evolutionary slide to goodness than Schindler. He’s also motivated by friendship for Schindler and a very selfish kind of faux love for Helen. Perhaps with more time, Goeth could become a better person (but I highly doubt it).
As I said earlier, the film makes its points pretty clearly itself. I’m not sure that I have much of value to add. Spielberg’s choice to present the story in black-and-white lends an air of period authenticity (and also makes possible the use of more jarring scenes—extreme violence, blood, people jumping into sewers and latrines—without descending into the kind of unpleasantness and gore that would make audiences look away if they saw such things in color. Because of the use of color at the beginning and end of the film, we also get the idea that we’re being told an important story. We’re joining in remembrance, participating in a ritual. Janusz Kaminski’s cinematography also won an Oscar, as did the memorable score of John Williams.
Best Scene/Best Scene Visually:
Without a doubt, the strongest scene in Schindler’s List comes right at the end. The scene in which Schindler’s factory workers and their descendants come to place rocks on his grave in memorial is so stirring because it’s real. It was a brilliant touch to pair the real-life Holocaust survivors with the actors who played them in the film. We see a man and think, “He’s a real person. He survived this.” Then with him we see the child actor who dropped down into the filthy latrine desperate for a hiding place. In the same instant, we know that the character’s story is true, and we remember the story (of the real man) because the movie has already presented it to us so vividly.
Another film with a similarly effective curtain call is the 1974 Murder on the Orient Express. In that film, we see a murder being committed and appreciate the significance of the ritual. Then we get a curtain call in the form of a toast. That, of course, isn’t nearly as moving as this moment in Schindler’s List because Murder on the Orient Express doesn’t give us the real historical people (even though the plot is loosely based on the Lindbergh kidnapping). The ritual aspect is similar, though.
Because of Oskar Schindler’s actions, six thousand people were alive (when the movie was filmed) who otherwise would have died or never existed at all. I can’t fathom making such an impact on the world. Watching this made me wish that I could do so much good. (It also made me think, “How on earth can there be Holocaust deniers?” That boggles the mind.)
Best Action Sequence:
This movie suddenly becomes intensely suspenseful and impossible to turn off when one of the trains that’s supposed to be heading to Schindler’s factory gets diverted to another destination through (perhaps) a clerical error. An earlier scene perfectly sets up the intensity of the moment in the showers. (This shows, I think, that Goethe would be a more effective torturer if he deliberately missed with the gun more often, not that I’m advocating such reprehensible behavior. I just see him as a failure even at villainy.)
This is one sequence that gives Schindler the rare pleasure of behaving like a traditional hero. He comes in and saves the day here—for the people who are at Auschwitz by mistake. (But what about all the others?) Knowing this is a true story, we found it nearly impossible to believe that the episode resolves in the way that it does.
We were also very moved by the tragic story of the man who makes a point of expressing his gratitude to Schindler fairly early in the film.
Most Oscar-worthy Scene, Ralph Fiennes:
I love the film’s exploration of Goeth’s infatuation with Helen (Embeth Davidtz), his maid. The scene where Goeth rebukes Helen for trying to seduce him as he insults and gropes (and ultimately attacks) her should be more disturbing than it is. The thing is, movies (and life) give us scenes like this a lot, so I’m a bit desensitized to them (which I find disturbing).
“Boy,” I told my daughter as Goeth mused aloud, trying to decide if Helen did or did not resemble a rat, “he sweet talks a woman about as well as Mr. Darcy.”
In his scene with Helen, Goeth is vulnerable, and we can see that he’s suffering. But you know who else is vulnerable and suffering? Helen! I find I feel no pity for Goeth, but his scene with Helen does remind me of one aspect of later Best Picture winner Twelve Years a Slave that I particularly enjoyed, the idea that slavery damages not only the slave but the slaveholder. You shouldn’t own another human being, not just because it’s bad for them. It’s also bad for you. It is damaging to your psyche.
What confuses me here is that in Twelve Years a Slave, I did feel some sympathy for Michael Fassbender’s character. By no means was he a good person, but his agony made me pity him. I simply have no pity for Goeth. His habit of arbitrarily murdering people because he’s in a bad mood is simply too off-putting to me. That’s not weakness. It’s abuse of power.
Perhaps even better played is a key scene between Fiennes and Neeson. Goethe says drunkenly, “Control is power. That’s power. ” (My daughter pretended to applaud, mocking him.) Then Schindler says, “Power is when we have every justification to kill, and we don’t.” (I marveled, “He’s very easily swayed. He must be rabidly insecure. ‘I love killing people for no reason.’ ‘Well, I’m Liam Neeson, and maybe you shouldn’t.’ ‘Okay!’”) Goethe’s early attempt to behave like Schindler is also dishearteningly fascinating.
What I find most intriguing about Goeth is his genuine affection for Schindler. Given the way their relationship begins, I would have expected them to become enemies, not friends. (Of course, Schindler candidly tells Stern early on that his one and only strength is making friends with the right people, not being able to do anything else. It’s ironic that he accomplishes the one great achievement of his life by making friends with Stern.) Goeth doesn’t just tolerate Schindler; he likes him a lot. He’s practically in love with him. He clearly admires him and wants to be like him. And when Schindler is briefly imprisoned, Goeth actually stands up for him and goes out of his way to help him. I wish I understood Goethe better, and I don’t like that impulse.
Of course, one of the film’s most brilliant flourishes is that even Goeth can be manipulated into working towards good things sometimes.
The Negatives:
I wish the film spent a little more time on Stern. Ben Kingsley is a good actor, and Stern is someone who both does good deeds and inspires good deeds throughout the film. I wish we saw more complexity from him. Good men are complex, too. I’m sure of it. Then again, what sort of complexity do I want from Stern? When your enemy is trying to commit mass genocide against your entire race, he makes it pretty easy for you to be the good guy. Whatever character flaws or weaknesses you have hardly matter as long as you’re willing to work against such massive evil. I just feel some resentment that Goeth (the evil torturer) comes across as the more complex and fascinating character than Stern (the man who not only does but incites good). I find it enraging that Goeth is such an interesting character because I don’t feel he deserves my time. Truly figuring him out would take far more thought, but he doesn’t deserve that much of my mental energy. I’d rather think about the people who didn’t make it out of the camps alive, or even the people who did. Then again, maybe I’ve been conditioned to view Goeth as a fascinating, complex character when he’s actually just morally weak, easily led, and lazily vicious.
My daughter had trouble getting into the movie because she found Schindler such an unlikeable protagonist. The film clearly sets him up for a pronounced change of heart, but it does take him quite some time to begin to realize that the people working for him are human beings, not just an impressive headcount. I also noticed that toward the end of the film, Neeson’s accent seemed to become more pronounced at moments. (Actually, fairly late in the film, I suddenly noticed that he was doing a German accent, which I had not noticed at all up to that point. I don’t know if his accent actually changed, or if I was just strangely inattentive.)
Overall:
Schindler’s List is an excellent movie about responsibility and the value of good choices. Near the beginning, Schindler is thrilled to have so many employees on his payroll. He finds his own value in noting how many people work for him. By the end, he recognizes that each name on the list represents a person, a human life. He stops thinking about how powerful he looks on paper and starts acting like a leader, taking stewardship of the good work that is already being done in his name and actively trying to save the lives of as many people as possible. To me, the only slightly unfortunate thing about the film is that Ralph Fiennes’s compelling performance brings more attention to his character than the character deserves in the face of such catastrophic human suffering. Everyone should see this film.