SCHINDLER'S LIST
[Spoilers]
A film review by Eric Walker
Copyright 1994 Eric Walker
At some point in a director's life, he may be seized with an urge to make an Epic that will be remembered, he hopes, as his Magnum Opus. He pours his heart and soul into his work, producing a movie that expresses his inner feelings, baring his soul for the world to see.
For instance, in 1980 Martin Scorsese had sunk into a depression, and he felt that his life was nearing its end. So he decided to make one "last" movie, something that would bring all of his emotions and feelings to the surface; it would serve as a cleansing, so to speak. The result was one of the greatest "biopic" dramas ever made: RAGING BULL, a brutal, shattering portrait of a man whose greatest enemy was himself.
Other directors have created their own "epic" films, though not all have been successful: Bernardo Bertolucci's 1900; Francis Coppola's APOCALYPSE NOW; Michael Cimino's disastrous HEAVEN'S GATE; even Sergei Eisenstein's IVAN THE TERRIBLE, Walt Disney's FANTASIA and the legendary GREED by von Stroheim. It's as though the artist is seized by the need to produce something memorable, something that will be remembered even after it disappears from the theaters.
Pauline Kael notes that these personal, shrive-my-soul projects differ from so-called Hollywood "epic sagas," in that they're made with something else in mind besides raking in bucks at the box office:
"This form of gigantism is not to be confused with the producer- initiated or studio-initiated big-budget pictures (CLEOPATRA, DOCTOR DOLITTLE, THE TOWERING INFERNO [or TERMINATOR 2 or JURASSIC PARK, if I might add], and so on). The artist-initiated epic is an obsessive testing of possibilities, and often it comes out of an overwhelming desire to express what an artist thinks are the unconscious needs of the public. It comes, too, from a conviction, or a hope, that if you give the popular audiences the greatest you have in you they will respond. The moviemaker has an idealistic belief that no matter how corrupted mass taste is, people still retain the capacity to receive a vision. These epics try to vault over the film industry and go directly to the public." ("Hail, Folly!" from Kael's "When The Lights Go Down.")
Which brings me to SCHINDLER'S LIST, the story of one man and the Holocaust, from the most "Hollywood" of Hollywood directors: Steven Spielberg.
Spielberg, of course, is the man who earned more money for one Hollywood studio than perhaps any other director. His name is synonymous with God in the land of box-office receipts and account books--so when he announced that he wanted to shoot a drama about the Holocaust that was over three hours long, and in black-and-white, no less, then who was in a position to say no? No one else in Hollywood has the power and influence to get a studio to spend so much money on a film that is almost guaranteed to lose money. In this day and age, how many moviegoers are willing to watch a black-and-white movie? Why risk so much when you could turn in a quick profit filming something like WAYNE'S WORLD 2 or MRS. DOUBTFIRE?
But Spielberg has aspired to be something more than a director of action movies and box-office hits. He wants to be an auteur filmmaker, to produce something that can stand up in the roster of cinema greats like 8 1/2, THE THIRD MAN, THE AFRICAN QUEEN, NASHVILLE--and RAGING BULL, among others.
Spielberg has been trying to grow up, to escape the image of the Disney wanna-be child at heart who can only make light-hearted "family entertainment" movies. His previous attempts at making "adult" drama have met with mixed acceptance at best: THE COLOR PURPLE was a fine movie, but he merely went through the motions with EMPIRE OF THE SUN and ALWAYS, and thus he failed.
The fatal flaw in his movies has been that of character: he has trouble bringing truly "lifelike" characters to the screen in realistic settings. While he's given us larger-than-life heroes like Indiana Jones, or everyday people in fantastic situations (as in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS and JAWS), he's used fantasy as a crutch to escape from the real world. He says so himself when referring to SCHINDLER'S LIST as his true awakening.
But is SCHINDLER'S LIST a true rebirth for Spielberg?
It's a well-crafted movie, and it has many scenes that will stand out in your mind for a long time after it ends. But it only scratches the surface of its characters, including Oskar Schindler himself, and it never lets us see them as real people.
This movie is little more than a World War II melodrama masquerading as great entertainment.
Spielberg's attempt to produce a human-centered "epic" falls into the classic "Hollywood" style of storytelling: it has clear-cut good guys and bad guys, lots of suspense, a lily-white hero to root for, and a happy ending--just like every other Spielberg movie.
And yet, this is still a good movie. The acting is superb, even if the actors' roles are limited; the cinematography fresh and energetic; the use of black-and-white superb; and the editing keeps the story flowing so that we are never bored. As entertainment, it's certainly one of the better films to be released in a year where we've had some very good movies.
But as a character portrait of an enigmatic man, the movie fails. It's based on the story of Oskar Schindler, a Nazi Party member who bucked the system in the heart of Germany's occupation of Poland, and who managed managed to save the lives of over a thousand Jewish citizens of Poland by employing them as laborers in a war-supplies factory. Initially, Schindler supplied the army with basics such as pots and pans, but near the end of the war, out of necessity, he moved his base of operations to central Europe and ran a munitions factory.
Over the course of the war, Schindler became very rich. He didn't have to pay his workers because they were Jews, and he exploited their labors for his personal benefit. But by the end of the war he was a changed man, and he spent his entire fortune in bribes and "favors" to Nazi officials to make sure that his operation, and his favored treatment of the Jews, was never noticed.
What made Schindler tick? What caused him to undergo such a drastic change in his character? Was he really the heaven-sent angel portrayed in the movie?
Of course he wasn't. Very few people in history turn out to be as pure of heart as they're portrayed in the movies. They're far more complicated than this, and rare is the movie that dares to dig underneath and let us understand just why a person does what he does.
SCHINDLER'S LIST does not dig very far.
The story's basic flaw lies in the screenplay, where the characters are not fully fleshed out. Steven Zaillian, the screenwriter, knows how to write characters as plot devices--but he can't give them the "feel" of human beings. He made a similar mistake in this summer's SEARCHING FOR BOBBY FISCHER (which he directed), in which every character had a part to play, but they never seemed like anything more than living plot devices. For example, Ben Kingsley's role as the professional chess tutor was a character of pure logic and no emotion; he existed solely on that level.
Here he plays the role of Itzhak Stern, Schindler's accountant; once again, his character seems to be single-mindedly devoted to one purpose. He is Schindler's conscience, there to serve as a gopher and to occasionally remind Schindler that he could get in a lot of trouble if his true motives are ever discovered. But that's all we know of him, and we never feel any emotion for him as a human being--because here he's not one.
Schindler himself begins the film as a war profiteer. Profit is everything to him, and he bases his cooking-utensil factory on the cheap labor he gets from employing Jewish workers. But he sees the reality of Nazi persecution for himself--and he doesn't even see it up close, the way we do; rather, he only gets a distant glimpse of the slaughter in the Krakow ghetto, from horseback. This, of course, is irony: he's rich and powerful, and this power has come from the exploitation of other people who have no rights of their own.
The symbolic importance of the girl in the red coat is the "marker" by which we can judge Schindler's transformation into a selfless angel of mercy--a complete 180-degree turn, which cheapens and simplifies the actual real-life awakening of Schindler to the horrors of war. Before seeing her, he is greedy and heartless; afterwards, he's an altruistic humanitarian.
The film takes pains to portray Schindler as a good guy: it downplays his casual use and abuse of the women working for him, so that we can easily forgive him of this "petty" fault. Even after the Krakow massacre, he continues to amass wealth and to befriend important Nazi officials--but we know now that it's just a ruse, and that he's doing it to ensure the survival of his "employees." The movie would have us believe that he didn't enjoy wealth and power, because we never see him basking in the fruits of his labors.
Therefore, Schindler is a Good Guy, and everything he does is for the good of his fellow men.
The problem is, people like that only exist in the movies.
Still, Liam Neeson plays this role to the hilt. After turning in a stellar performance in Woody Allen's HUSBANDS AND WIVES, he has managed to land some very choice roles in recent Hollywood movies. His star is on the rise, and he is being showered with praise for this role. He and the other actors turn in good, solid performances, underplaying their roles and never acting preachy or bombastic.
This is a plus for Ralph Fiennes, who portrays the evil Nazi commander Amon Goeth as a true monster. He casually sits on his seat overlooking the Plaszow Forced Labor Camp, shooting Jews because he has nothing better to do. He's heartless and cruel, and while Fiennes could have easily slipped into caricature here, he maintains the character as believable.
Goeth believes, like a true Nazi, that Jews are sub-creatures and less than human. But after he talks with and befriends Oskar Schindler, he gains a soul and a conscience--temporarily. Here the film goes even further to portray Schindler as a pure angel: he inspires pity in the worst demonic dregs of humankind. But Geothe is the Bad Guy, and his fate is inevitable--as we see at the end of the film, when Schindler is rewarded and he is not.
We're also given glimpses of of the Jews themselves, though once again they're portrayed as plot devices, and not as human beings. The Jewish citizens of Poland exist in this film as a prize to be won, either by the Nazis or by Schindler. The movie takes pains to emphasize the fact that no one under German occupation knew whether he would live or die--but because of the conventions of the motion picture, with Schindler as the Jews' guardian angel, we know that their safety is assured. Sadly, this lessens the impact of such scenes as a card game played between Schindler and Goeth, with the life of the Jewish servant girl Helen Hirsch hanging in the balance. We know exactly what's going to happen; likewise, when Itzhak Stern pleads with Schindler for him to take an elderly couple (who obviously can't work in a factory), we know what their eventual fate is.
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