Lucas Versantvoort / November 14,
2014
Reviewing a colossal film like Schindler’s List is interesting even
today, because in our culture - with its countless positive reviews and
numerous Academy Awards - it enjoys something close to legendary status, being
perceived as the ultimate in cinematic depictions of WWII and ranking among the
very best films ever made according to Imdb. It's almost like it's in bad taste
to criticize the film, because in doing so you'd automatically offend the Jews
the film is in honor of. But what if the film itself is guilty of that very
crime?
The
year is 1939. After Germany subjugates Poland, Jews are being relocated to
Krakow. Enter shrewd businessman Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) who aims to use
the cheap labour force of Jews to turn a profit. He hires functionary Itzhak
Stern (Ben Kingsley) to handle all administrative affairs, he befriends the
Nazis and all is well… until he witnesses the Krakow massacre from a nearby
hill. He notices a little girl in red moving through the chaos and is profoundly
affected. This spurs him into action, though he is careful to not risk his
friendship with Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes). Through careful diplomacy, his
friendship with Goeth and Stern’s bribery skills, Schindler is able to save his
workers and increase their living conditions. He effectively risks his own life
trying to save the Jews working under him and many more. Finally, after having
as many Jews transferred to his factory in Zwittau-Brinnlitz, Schindler is
forced to flee due to the rapidly approaching Soviet army. That night, the Jews
he saved have all gathered outside the factory and give him a letter saying
they don’t think he was a criminal. They also give him a ring with a quote from
the Talmud, saying that “he who saves the life of one man, saves the world
entire.” Schindler is humbled, but he nevertheless breaks down, regretting his
selfish, luxury lifestyle and believing he didn’t save enough Jews. He leaves
with his wife and the next morning, the ‘Schindler Jews’ relocate to a nearby
town and a shot of them walking towards the camera shifts into color as the
film moves transitions to the present, as the present day Schindler Jews go to pay
their respects at Schindler’s grave in Israel. 
It’s
not hard to see why Schindler’s List
was such a moving experience when I first saw it in my teens. It was basically
my first major Holocaust film and the brutality displayed is still hard to
watch even today. The acting is also quite good. The film is anchored by Neeson
giving one of his better performances and Fiennes who is menacing as the evil
(but ultimately stupid) Goeth. The film – being a Spielberg epic – also
impresses from a technical standpoint: the B&W cinematography by Janusz
Kaminski transports you to Poland in 1939, composer John Williams pulls out all
the emotional stops in his violin-focused score and the production design is
impressive. It’s a film that astonishes in terms of scale and the ease with
which Spielberg manages to immerse us into this particular time period.
And yet
for all its many qualities, there are some damning critiques out there, several
of which I fervently agree with. For one, Schindler’s
List isn’t really a film about the Holocaust. It’s not even really about
the Jews. Essentially, it’s about Schindler who becomes The Hero and saves
Jews. This is reflected in what director Stanley Kubrick reportedly said when
questioned about List: “Think that’s
about the Holocaust? That was about success, wasn’t it? The Holocaust is about
six million people who get killed. Schindler’s
List is about 600 who don’t.” It’s not a coincidence Kubrick stopped
production on his own Holocaust film in 1995 after the success of Schindler’s List when it came out in
‘93. He deemed an accurate portrayal of the Holocaust to be beyond cinema’s
grasp and moved on.
Another
thing that bugs me is that the few Jews who stand out (like Helen Hirsch) don’t
die. Instead, Spielberg teases us with the prospect of their deaths, only to
provide a last-minute rescue. Though the film does portray the random brutality
of the Nazis very well, this kind of teasing feels very manipulative.
There
aren’t a lot of well-written Jewish characters in the film either. The ones
that are given a moderate amount of screen time are Stern and Helen Hirsch, but
Stern (save for the moment he subtly influences Schindler’s thought process by
talking of Goeth’s cruelty, thus being the root cause of his eventual decision
to save as many Jews as possible) is mostly a static background figure and
Hirsch’s only function is to be Goeth’s object of desire. Speaking of Goeth,
he’s about the only interesting German in the film and that’s only achieved by
writing him as the slightly morally complex antagonist, in this case a
perverted man who is driven more by money, power and lust than by Nazi
ideology, hence Schindler’s ease in bribing him. The rest of the Germans might
as well be faceless monsters who kill without a hint of remorse.
I also can't help but
feel Schindler and Goeth are a bit underwritten. Schindler makes the
biggest change, but I think it occurs too quickly. It's really Stern
monologuing about Goeth's cruelty and the girl in red dying that convert
him, but I can't help but feel that's too easy for a man who moments
ago was fine with using the Jews forced into Krakow as slave labour.
Maybe he was truly oblivious to the brutality his friends the Nazis inflict upon the Jews? Goeth is obviously supposed to be the complex villain, but save for his infatuation with Helen Hirsch, he mostly remains a greedy man lusting for power. Not only that, but Schindler bribes and manipulates him quite easily, so it only makes him less threatening as the film goes on.
Also of
note are the ways in which artistic license has been taken. For instance, the
‘girl in red’ didn’t die, but survived and later wrote a memoir. Also, Stern
didn’t put the famous list together; a certain Marcel Goldberg did. Why does
the film change this, you ask? Because apparently, Goldberg wasn’t exactly a
shining beacon of altruism himself, as he took bribes from people and exchanged
some people’s names with theirs. Artistic license being taken is common in
film, but in a Holocaust film you’re quickly entering some ethically dubious
waters. Why these changes were made is obvious. The filmmakers have an agenda
to push and a film to make that has to make sense.
The girl in red dies so Schindler’s crisis of conscience propels him to become
a beacon of altruism; Goldberg is replaced by Stern, because it would’ve
muddled the plot. Adding another Jewish accountant who isn’t solely a victim
doesn’t fit within the ‘Jews as victims’ trope present in List and would’ve added new narrative themes to the story and made
the whole thing more (needlessly?) complex. From a practical standpoint, this
makes sense, but in the end you’re still rewriting history in order for your
film to work and for it all to make sense.
But here’s the snag: the Holocaust is an event marked precisely by an inability
on our part – and particularly the survivors’ part – to make sense of it. In a
way, it is beyond comprehension. Yet, Schindler’s
List is a film firmly rooted in traditional narrative conventions
and has to make use of A-B-C plots and logic in order to be considered a
success.
 |
| Bold filmmaking or tasteless kitsch? |
One of the
most damning objections to List has
to do with the infamous ‘shower scene’, when the Schindler Jews are
transported, by mistake, to Auschwitz. They and the viewer expect the worst
when they’re forced to undress and enter a large shower room, only to have all
tension dissipate when actual water emerges. After this ordeal, Schindler finds
out about the mistake and has them brought to his factory in Brinnlitz. My
problem is the uselessness of this scene. This scene could’ve been cut out and
the story wouldn’t have changed; the Jews would’ve still eventually arrived at
Schindler’s factory. So why is it here? Simple, so that Spielberg and co can
say their film didn’t ignore the countless gassings, for what is a Holocaust
film if it doesn’t refer to the gas chambers? But that’s my problem, the
Schindler Jews eventually survived, which makes the Auschwitz sequence nothing
more than a detour, a suspenseful scene categorically similar to Indiana Jones
narrowly escaping a huge rock. Not exactly an ethically considered portrayal of
the gassings, if such a thing is even possible.
There are
countless other critiques like the above floating around, many of them dealing
with whether or not a ‘good’ portrayal of the Holocaust is even possible,
whether or not Spielberg transformed something as inexplicably horrific and
complex into a Hollywood spectacle, etc. At first, Spielberg tried to find other directors (Polanski, Scorsese, Wilder), since he wasn't sure he could do the material justice. Perhaps he was right... Of course, one can leap to Spielberg’s
defense and say that out of all the possible Holocaust stories to tell, he
chose this one, perhaps because it presented him with an opportunity to portray
the horrors of the Holocaust and still have there be a light at the end of the tunnel.
By choosing one story, you automatically (perhaps unfairly) ignore others. But
then new questions rapidly emerge. Is this then even a film about the Holocaust
and the Jews anymore? Should Spielberg have even made it, knowing he’d have to
shift attention onto the character of Schindler and away from the Jews and what
they have endured? Is it even ‘right’ for a film about the Holocaust to have a
light at the end of the tunnel, a happy end, when the Holocaust is marked by a
certain endlessness, the impossibility for the survivors to process and come to
terms with the event, the struggle to put the hell they experienced into words?
Is it even possible or ethically justifiable to attempt a (cinematic) portrayal
of the Holocaust, like the aforementioned shower scene?
Questions,
questions… It seems that despite all the success the film has enjoyed, it’s a
love it or hate it affair. Either you think it’s a harrowing, emotional
masterpiece or you think it’s a severely misjudged portrayal of an unportrayable
event. In terms of ratings, I can’t even begin to imagine how to rate a film
like List, let alone a film about the
Holocaust. What a film like this requires isn’t even a review, but a full-blown
analysis…which is what this review is quickly turning into. The point of this
review isn’t to neatly sum up the film’s pros and cons and give it a nice
number from 1 to 10, but to perhaps renew one’s perspective on a film that
enjoys legendary status, but should be seen as more (or should I say, less) than ‘the final word on the
Holocaust’ suggested by its rating on Imdb. It goes without saying that this is
far from the first review to cast List
in a critical light and it’s true my opinions have been influenced by a course
I followed in college, but I think in this case it was a positive influence.
After having first seen List in my
teens, I saw it as this towering achievement, but the more essays I read, like
Hansen’s ‘Schindler’s List is not Shoah’, the more I realized I needed to
seriously reevaluate my opinion of List.
And it’s not a matter of one having to learn how to hate Schindler’s List, but a matter of ethics, a matter of questioning cinema’s role and its capabilities
(or lack thereof) in portraying something like the Holocaust.
The article by Miriam Hansen: http://criticalinquiry.uchicago.edu/uploads/pdf/Hansen,_Schindlers_List.pdf
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