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Even before its release, reports in the media called
"Schindler's List" a shoo-in for any number of awards. Later, after a
pre-release screening of this latest Steven Spielberg movie, olocaust
survivors (some of whom claimed to have been on the list to which the
movie's title refers) proclaimed that the film exactly depicted how
things had been nearly 50 years ago in Eastern Europe.
In the months since its release in December 1993, "Schindler's List"
has indeed garnered many awards, and hundreds -- if not thousands --
of others have joined in citing this film as being so true to life
that anyone could learn from watching. Here, we are told, is the
final answer to those who "deny the Holocaust."
Once its veneer of political-correctness is stripped away, however,
"Schindler's List" can be seen for what it is -- a failure both as a
movie and as a record of a historical event. What is surprising is
the extent to which it fails.
Director/producer Spielberg worked on "Schindler's List" for ten
years, starting soon after finishing "E.T.: The Extraterrestrial" in
1983. Spielberg learned about the Holocaust from his grandparents,
who, according to Spielberg, "constantly spoke about the Holocaust"
even though they were not affected by it personally. He now says,
"I've been preparing for this film my whole life," although he
alternately claims to have discovered his Jewishness during the
making of the film.
While Spielberg has made a few films that did not catch the public's
imagination ("1941," "Color Purple," "Empire of the Sun," "Hook"), he
still rates as one of the most successful directors of all times:
"Jurassic Park," "E.T.," "Jaws," "Close Encounters of the Third
Kind," "Raiders of the Last Ark" (another film with Nazi bad guys),
the "Back to the Future" trilogy, and "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?". His
films have out-grossed even those of his contemporary, George Lucas.
If any director could make a film about the Holocaust and manage to
combine realism and popular appeal, it should have been Spielberg.
Spielberg, who also put his own money into its production, is a
filmmaker at the top of his form, dealing with a topic near to his
heart. Rather than telling a story with universal meaning, however,
Spielberg has instead made what can only be called a "Jewish" film;
that is, a film by Jews, about Jews, and for Jews to use against
non-Jews.
"Schindler's List" claims to portray the story of German
businessman Oskar Schindler (played by Liam Neeson). Schindler is
less interested in why the war is being fought and who is winning
than he is in the enormous profits to be made. To increase profits
even further, he hires only Jews from the nearby Krakow ghetto, the
cheapest labor available. Because of his lack of aptitude for the
nuts-and-bolts of running a business, Schindler relies on a Jewish
accountant, Itzhak Stern (played by Ben Kingsley, who also played the
title role in HBO's "Murderers Among Us: The Simon Wiesenthal
Story"). As time goes by, Schindler becomes protective of "his" Jews,
so much so that when the order is given for the Jews to be deported
to camps (which will mean the removal of his, he spends virtually
every penny of his by-then tremendous fortune to save "his" Jews from
being sent to uschwitz and elsewhere, even going to the extent of
relocating his factory and bribing officials to retain possession of
his Jews. In the end, Schindler has little left but his car and the
clothes on his back. (He even gives his clothes to one of his workers
before driving off to escape the advancing Red army.)
Spielberg peoples his story with Nazis who drink to excess, whore and
womanize at every opportunity, offer and accept bribes as a natural
part of life during wartime, follow orders without question, and cut
every corner that will make their lives easier. The really bad Nazis
-- that is, those who give the orders rather than merely carry them
out -- are just as likely to kill a Jew as look at him. While it is
normal for filmmakers to caricature individuals, and to portray
peripheral groups in a monochromatic way, Spielberg presents all
Nazis in a more perfunctory fashion than a biker gang in a B movie.
Virtually the only time German is spoken in the film is when someone
is barking orders. Schindler's character speaks only English (with a
British accent).
A small break in this monotonous racial landscape comes during the
clearing of the ghetto, when a German soldier sits at an abandoned
piano, playing Mozart beautifully as his comrades seek out and
slaughter Jews who hide to avoid relocation. The message is the same,
though: no matter how cultured they may appear, non-Jews cannot be
trusted.
The completely amoral mold in which Spielberg forms his Nazis gives
rise to a scene in which Schindler, taking pity on the Jewish maid of
Plaszow camp commandant Amon Goeth (the film's Evil Nazi), tells her
that, in spite of her fears, she will not be killed because Goeth
gets pleasure from her presence; the others are killed because they
neither please nor displease him.
Spielberg's treatment of Nazis (and, by extension, Germans) is only
marginally less masterful than his portrayal of other groups, notably
the Jews. While Spielberg goes to great lengths to expose the
audience to Jews -- including flashing close-ups of Jewish faces on
screen while calling out Jewish names -- there are few clues as to
what motivates anyone to do anything. Stern has a few anxious moments
now and again, but usually he simply works at whatever task is at
hand. In many ways the best-understood of Spielberg's characters is
Goeth's Jewish housekeeper, Helen Hirsch. Even here, we come to know
her predominantly through her fright, which seems to be her only
emotion.
So flat are Spielberg's characterizations that even his protagonist,
who it might be argued we are supposed to understand better than most
others in the film, is never clearly delineated. As the film begins,
Schindler gives every appearance of being an ardent Nazi who is never
without his swastika party lapel pin, albeit one whose only
motivation is to make suitcases full of money in the wartime economy.
As the film progresses, his character undergoes a change of some kind
for reasons that are never adequately explained, so that while his
outward appearance and mannerisms remain much the same, he gradually
comes first to view his Jews as more than interchangeable ciphers,
and eventually as equals. Toward the end of the film Schindler goes
so far as to admonish a rabbi for not beginning preparations for the
Sabbath on a Friday evening, something his Jews have not been allowed
to do since they left the ghetto.
At the end, Schindler's character is spending money to save Jews with
a fanaticism at which we can only wonder. One is left thinking that
this new behavior was part of Schindler's basic character, and would
have taken place without any external influences. The Jews themselves
do little or nothing to effect the change, just as they do next to
nothing to save themselves. Thus, although the theme of the film is
"Jews must be saved," the plot is "this Catholic (Schindler) saved
some Jews from the olocaust." The subtext, then, is that the Jews
themselves were helpless. In comparison, George Bailey in "It's a
Wonderful Life" is a piker next to Oskar Schindler; Bailey learns
nothing more than to appreciate and celebrate his own life, while
Schindler gets to appreciate and celebrate Jewish life. To
gild the lily, in the end Schindler torments himself by recalling how
much more he could have done to save Jews.
What caused the Schindler character to change so extensively and so
quickly? In the absence of other information from Spielberg, one is
left to contemplate the possibility that Schindler has gone mad,
risking everything (including his life) to save people he barely
seems to acknowledge for much of the film.
Spielberg's portrayals of German atrocities against Jews are as
unvarying as his characterizations. For Spielberg, Germans are people
who shoot Jews. Nazi soldiers line up Jews seven deep so that one
rifle bullet will kill them all at once (when the bullet kills "only"
the first five, two more pistol bullets are used to dispatch the last
in line), then when clearing the ghetto, Nazi soldiers spray bullets
around as if they cost nothing. Goeth shoots Jews with his scoped
rifle if they move too slowly around his Plaszow camp, or at close
range with a pistol to the head. At some level, Spielberg must have
realized that all this shooting was too much to be believed, so for
"comic relief" he includes a scene in which a Jew is hauled out of a
building to be shot. His executioner, Goeth, who seems perfectly
capable with weapons in other scenes in the film, cannot get his
pistol to fire and seems befuddled as to how it operates. While his
two assistants gawk at the pistol as if they had never handled a real
one before, Goeth switches to his backup pistol, which also misfires.
This brief interlude thus serves as the film's miracle, as well.
Nearly half of the movie was filmed with hand-held cameras, to
heighten the sense that "Schindler's List" is cinema verite.
Likewise, virtually the entire film is in black and white, which
lends it a "documentary" quality. It is also an effective device for
presenting the story; the film starts in color, then, as the lot of
the Jews deteriorates, the colors disappear, not to reappear until
the end of the movie when we see that Jews have survived their
ordeal.
It might be said that for a high-budget director such as Spielberg to
use black and white was a gutsy move, except for the fact that once
seemingly committed to the black-and-white screen, Spielberg loses
his nerve, apparently losing his faith in the audience, and part-way
through the film resorts to colorizing the overcoat of a young girl
as the camera follows her lonely journey through the Krakow ghetto
during its evacuation. Later, we see the same colorized coat on the
girl's small corpse, being carried away. For Spielberg to utilize
such a trick in attempting to steer the audience's emotions betrays
both an insecurity about his subject, and a cynicism about how
audiences will react to it.
Spielberg also shows his lack of faith in the audience by including
gratuitous nudity. Lots of it. There are enough bare, young female
breasts decorating German boudoirs to satisfy most modern moviegoers.
Spielberg leaves nothing to chance, however, and in what otherwise
could have been one of the films most gripping scenes, has the camera
linger voyeuristically on Helen Hirsch, as she pulls off her blouse
in the undressing room before entering the shower at irkenau. In
addition, there is a large "selection" scene at the Plaszow
concentration camp at which dozens of men and women run around naked.
In spite of the film's R rating, Spielberg is pushing to have high
school students view it.
Hollywood is not known for its accurate depictions of
historical events. "Schindler's List" is no exception. Only someone
with a twisted worldview or some sort of mental disability would
expect a Hollywood production to be faithful to events as they
occurred. Thus, we do not expect Spielberg to deal with questions
such as whether or not Schindler was working as a Zionist agent.
(Mark Weber will deal with this in a forthcoming issue.) Likewise, we
do not expect Spielberg to introduce any ambiguities into his
examination of Schindler's character by dwelling on his postwar
behavior, including the shabby way he treated his wife. Avoiding
issues such as these make it easier to tell the story, but they do
nothing to enhance the film's historical accuracy.
"Schindler's List" the movie is based on Thomas Keneally's book of
the same name, which is clearly presented as a work of fiction, and
indexed by the Library of Congress as such. From this novel, writer
Steven Zaillian created the screenplay from which Spielberg shot the
movie -- which we are now told is virtually a documentary of what
actually happened. To its credit, Universal Pictures goes no farther
than advertising the film as "based on a true story."
This is correct, up to a point. There really was an Oskar Schindler
who was married to a woman named Emilie. There was also an Amon
Goeth, a factory by the name of Deutsche Emailwaren Fabrik,
and a camp by the name of Plaszow. Most everything else is made up,
or altered to fit the needs of the story. One good example is that
whereas the film's Schindler is penniless at the end of the war, in
reality he had piles of money when he went into hiding.
Regardless of whether "Schindler's List" is fact or fiction, there
are a number of scenes that cannot be explained, and indeed,
Spielberg makes little effort to do so. During the relocation of the
Jews to the Krakow ghetto, for example, Spielberg introduces a bag of
gold-inlaid teeth into the area where the luggage and belongings are
being sorted. How and why this collection found its way to the heart
of the city is a mystery unless we are to believe that one of the
Jews had it in his luggage, but that is clearly not what Spielberg
intended to imply. Later, at the Plaszow camp, Spielberg shows a pile
of burning corpses so large that a conveyor belt is required to add
new bodies to the top, the implication being that bodies burn like
cord wood, which of course they do not. Also at Plaszow, a team of
German doctors, their white coats accessorized with stethoscopes,
conduct a "selection" to see who is healthy enough to live and who is
to die, only they are so incompetent that they did not know to keep
the healthy inmates and "select" the unhealthy. After such scenes,
Spielberg demolishes any remaining pretensions he had to technical
accuracy by depicting a crematory chimney at uschwitz spewing smoke
and flame, which crematories are specially constructed not to
do.
Spielberg also blurs the line between fact and fiction by referring
to factual matters in a fictional way. For example, he has Stern use
the phrase "special treatment" as if it could only mean "death," even
though Schindler has previously used the word in a completely benign
context. Lice and typhus are also mentioned as if they were minor
inconveniences, and not the life-threatening scourge they are.
On the three-hour-long canvas on which Spielberg presents what
is being called the latest in a string of "ultimate" answers to the
"deniers," the larger story of an overall policy to exterminate
Europe's Jews is relegated no more than a few moments toward the end
of the film, almost as an afterthought. In "Schindler's List," a
irkenau shower room turns out to be a shower room after all, and not
the gas chamber it is rumored to be in an earlier scene in the
women's barracks (in the movie, Birkenau is referred to as
Auschwitz). Director Spielberg, who can make spaceships, aliens, and
dinosaurs seem real and even lifelike, not only fails to show us a
credible Nazi gas chamber, he seems to suggest that the wartime
rumors of gas chambers were just that -- rumors.
Spielberg presents his version of the extermination of Europe's Jews
obliquely in the closing minutes of the film through two transparent
contrivances. The first is an impassioned but uncharacteristic speech
by Schindler to his workers, in which he alludes to the fact that
many of their friends and family have been killed. (This scene comes
after the scene in which Schindler seems unaware of the ominous
"secret" meaning of the term, "special treatment.") The second is a
question by Stern, put to the lone Soviet soldier who "liberates" the
factory in Czechoslovakia where Schindler's Jews have been working:
out of nowhere, Stern asks the Soviet officer if there are any Jews
left in Poland. There is no explanation as to why he would ask such a
question, but the implication is that the only way a Polish Jew could
have survived was if he had been one of Schindler's Jews. More to the
point, the audience is expected not to question why Spielberg had to
employ these awkward expositions to deal with a subject that is
claimed to be the most documented event in history.
At the same time, Spielberg avoids repeating other common olocaust
claims: Germans do not use babies for target practice or throw them
out of windows for fun, people are not forced to stand for hours
naked in freezing weather, people are not tortured, there are no
medical experiments, and no one throws himself on the electrified
fencing to commit suicide.
"Schindler's List" also contains several surprising scenes: Jews are
shown before the war as being prosperous, so much so that Schindler,
a man who prides himself on being accustomed to the better things in
life, is impressed at the finery he inherits by taking over the
apartment of a Jewish family after they are relocated to the ghetto;
in the Plaszow camp, men and women routinely commingle, and the
inmates conduct a Jewish wedding one night after work; Jews are shown
cooperating at virtually every level in the process of oppressing
their own people; young Jewish men engage in black-market activities
(in a Catholic church!); and in the ghetto and the camp, Jews
unaccountably have hundreds of previously prepared hiding places when
soldiers come to round them up.
It is clear that "Schindler's List" has won its acclaim not
because of its artistry but because of its politically-correct
content and message. Spielberg has used the publicity surrounding it
to set himself up as a kind of guardian of the Holocaust story.
Events have shown, however, that the more light is thrown on the
Holocaust story, the more people will ask questions about it --
questions that neither Spielberg nor this film can answer.
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