SCHINDLER'S LIST
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1993 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: I have said before that it is
impossible to make a film about the Holocaust that does
justice to the subject. SCHINDLER'S LIST comes as close as
any film could. This is a supremely powerful depiction of
the banality of evil and--for once on film--the seductiveness
of good. I will not rate this film and hence compare it to
other films like STAR WARS. I think this is the best and
most important film I have ever seen.
The people who are most revered by the Jewish religion are the great rabbis and the righteous non-Jews who have risked their lives to save the lives of Jews. Unfortunately, history provides ample opportunity for people to enter the latter category. One of the greatest of that category was Oskar Schindler. He was a real person made famous, or more famous, as the main character of Thomas Keneally's novel SCHINDLER'S LIST, now adapted for the screen by Steven Zaillian and directed by Steven Spielberg.
The Austrian-born Schindler (his home town of Zwittau became part of Czechoslovakia in 1918) was a self-styled tycoon, a playboy, and an aristocrat who early in World War II had a scheme to make money in the recently conquered Poland using Jewish slave labor leased to him by the SS. The Jews would be willing to work for him, he reasoned, because it really was in their best interest to be paid off in tradable goods. Later the reason became that work is preferable to extermination. These Jews are rounded up and sent to Plaszow Forced Labor Camp, so Schindler moves his operation closer to the camp, actually creating a sub-camp to save lives within a camp intended to destroy them. His manufacturing is able to save most the "Schindler Jews" from being ground up in the worst excesses of the Holocaust, but not from witnessing them. So from their point of view we can see both the best and the worst in people of that time. And with Spielberg's startling camera work making extensive use of hand-held cameras for a feel of immediacy, we witness the excesses also--admittedly toned down but still shocking.
At first Schindler's motives are callous exploitation of the condition of the Jews. As he explains, if he is going to get labor he would rather pay the SS for Jewish slaves than hire Poles. "Poles cost more," he says simply. Though Schindler's motives are part selfishness and part humanity, the audience and probably Schindler himself never know just how much of each. And often just when the audience thinks it knows, the rug will be pulled out. After a last-instant rescue of his Jewish accountant, Schindler turns angrily on the poor man asking him "If I were five minutes later, then where would I be?"
I think not even the mammoth documentary SHOAH has more vividly shown the real horror of the Holocaust. Documentaries do not have the latitude to expand on people's personalities and involve the viewer in the lives of the characters to the degree a drama does. We see in the film a situation in which people who want to live have no formula, no possible strategy, that will save them. In our own times even those who claim to know God's will give you a formula for salvation. Nazis would murder people because they were uncooperative and they would murder people because they were too cooperative. There is no way to act or behave that could reliably increase your chances of survival. Schindler sees all this and as one of the few people who can influence Goeth, the commandant of Plaszow, he cleverly manipulates him to save a few lives. Schindler treads a dangerous tightrope always appearing to be acting in his own selfish interest and hiding an ulterior motive of doing good, apparently often hiding it even from himself. He is a living contraction to his own philosophy that war never brings out the good in men, only the bad.
Spielberg's style has been criticized for getting in the way of the storytelling, but I did not find myself at all bothered by stylistic touches. At times he is even fairly inventive. During moments of chaos he will show a montage of apparently random scenes, yet the viewer can pick out scenes to form small sub-stories. Spielberg plays with shadow and light throughout the film. He focuses in on the smoke from a Shabbos candle and later on the smoke and ash of the chimney at Auschwitz. Most of the film is black and white and that helps to build the atmosphere and gives his visual images a sharper edge. When there is violence it really is more shocking in black and white in part because it does not compete with any number of gory color films. Blood is still disturbing when seen in black and white. The use of monochrome also allows Spielberg to highlight a point of attention in a scene much as color was used in ZENTROPA. In a scene of chaos Schindler's eye follows one little girl and so does ours because her red coat is the only piece of color in the scenes. Unfortunately the film stocks are not quite matched and one can always tell when Spielberg is about to use a color effect.
In some ways the script of the film is more subtle than the novel. In an early scene we overhear a small part of a conversation. "They always weather the storm," someone says. In the novel the same phrase is used saying to whom the word "they" refers. However, the meaning still comes across in the film without spelling it out for the viewer. Small details of people's reaction to what was happening and details of what people had to do to survive have never been better depicted in a film.
Liam Neeson's performance certainly will be noticed as the aristocratic and enigmatic altruist, Schindler. But in 195 minutes there is not one single bad performance. Ralph Fiennes's Goeth is a vicious child, killing people like a little boy shoots down plastic Indians. Ben Kingsley as Itzhak Stern is small and mousey, constantly on edge. He is no stranger to stories of the Holocaust having played Simon Weisenthal on HBO's film THE MURDERERS AMONG US. Apparently this gave him the opportunity to begin a relationship with Weisenthal and Holocaust survivors allowing him to prepare for this role.
In the English language words get deflated from over-use. The word "genocide" gets applied to many political situations that fall far short of true genocide. And the word "searing" applied to a drama is also overused. If you want to see a genuinely searing drama or to understand the true meaning of genocide, this is the film to experience. For twenty-one years I have considered A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS to be the best film I had ever seen. I have never said any other film was better in all that time. I do not change that choice lightly, but I now think that SCHINDLER'S LIST is the best film I have ever seen.
Mark R. Leeper
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