Good can sometimes be snatched from the clutches of evil: Schindler's List

“The list is an absolute good. The list is life.”
-Ben Kingsly as Itzak Stern in Schindler’s List


Films about the holocaust are important for two reasons: they serve to remind us of the horror that humanity is capable of, and they show us dreadful suffering on an individual level. Everyone knows that six million Jews died in the holocaust (and that’s not including other groups that were exterminated. Jehovah's Witnesses, Gypsies, Gays, communists, trade unionists, the disabled and the mentally retarded were also targeted). When we hear a number that large it is difficult to understand, or connect with it. Six million. It’s just too big for comprehension. But, one story can touch us. Anne Frank touches us, and brings home the horror of it all. This is because we can put a face to one little girl. We can empathize. The story of the Schindlerjuden serves the same function.

Schindler’s List is the story of one man, and the difference he made in the lives of eleven hundred others. Before we get into any real analysis of the film, let’s look at the history of Holocaust movies:

There have been a lot of films that have touched in some way on the holocaust. They run the gamut from the Bizarre (Night Porter, with its strange sexual sadism), to mediocre melodrama (Jacob the Liar, with Robin Williams badly miscast), to the touching and funny (Life is Beautiful), to the sublimely beautiful (Schindler’s List); and of course the myriad films based on the Diary of Anne Frank. There have also been moving and difficult documentaries about this subject. Into the Arms of Strangers, The Sorrow and the Pity, and Shoah are just a few worth seeing. Schindler’s List may be the most important of all the holocaust films.

Liam Neeson stars as Oskar Schindler. He is a callous businessman, bent on making a fortune as a war profiteer. He purchases an enamelware factory (which is in receivership) and uses Jews as virtual slave labor to make mess kits and such for the German army. At his side is his accountant, Itzak Stern (played beautifully by Ben Kingsly). Stern uses the factory as an opportunity to save Jews who would not survive otherwise. He gets old and infirm Jews classified as essential workers so that they can work in the plant.

When all of the Jews are moved into a forced labor camp, Schindler makes a deal so that some can travel outside the gates to work for him. The camp is run by Goeth (pronounced: GURT), played by Ralph Fiennes. Goeth is a sadistic, evil, hateful person. He is also a deeply conflicted man. While he hates Jews, he finds himself attracted to one. In an important scene, in which he confesses his need for this woman, he tells her: “you’re not a person. Not in the strictest sense of the word.”

Goeth amuses himself by shooting people from his balcony, when he is bored. He beats and brutalizes without warning. He kills without reason, and without conscience. Goeth is a perfect metaphor for the Nazi regime as a whole.

Eventually the labor camp is closed, and its residents are slated to be shipped to Auschwitz. Schindler uses his fortune to “buy” 11,000 Jews. Everyone believes that he is planning to use them as slave labor in an ammunition factory he is building. Actually, he has undergone a change. The genius of the film is that we never see that “a-ha” moment when Schindler changes his ways. Instead this is a slow, incremental journey. Oskar Schindler managed to save one-thousand-one-hundred Jews from death. At the end of the film he weeps that he did not do more. He looks at his car, and wonders why he didn’t sell it. For its value he could have saved ten more people from torture and death.

Steven Spielberg chose to film in beautiful black and white. I believe that black and white looks somehow more real than color photography. In this case it was the perfect( perhaps the only) choice. The cinematography in Schindler’s List is gorgeous. Spielberg also chose to insert a few flashes of color. During the liquidation of the ghetto our eyes are drawn to a little girl in a red coat. We watch as she tries to escape, and hides. We will see that red coat again; and when we do it will be crushing.

The acting in this movie is some of the best of the last thirty years. Ralph Fiennes personifies evil, and we never have one moment of doubt that he is what he seems. Ben Kingsley (who was so moving in Gandhi, and so Frightening in Sexy Beast) is the perfect choice for Stern. I can think of no other actor who could play this role as well. Kingsly gives us no melodramatic sentimentality, but rather gives us bare bones reality. Neeson understands the inner workings of his character, and plays so many scenes with his eyes.

Schindler’s List is a moving and powerful film. It can lead you to tears, and in the end, perhaps to joy. This movie should be required viewing for school children around the world.

Spielberg's Survivors of the Shoah foundation is working to combat hatred and ignorance. Packaged with the DVD of Schindler's List is a card to use when sending a contribution to the Shoah foundation. Please consider helping this wonderful cause.

A final note:

I recently wrote a negative review of The Passion of the Christ. To understand why I hated that movie, compare it with this one. In Schindler’s List we see real people undergoing real brutality, and it hurts us. In The Passion of the Christ we see a badly drawn Jesus, in a plot less film, undergoing over the top violence. That can have no effect on us. Schindler’s List is everything Mel Gibson’s Grand Guignol gore fest is not.

Nathan Tyree