Plot Intro
Poland, 1939. Charming, opportunistic businessman Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) is looking to open and run an enamelware factory. Upon discovering that employing Jewish workers is significantly cheaper than Polish ones, Schindler enlists the aid of Jewish accountant Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley) to smuggle Jews out of the newly-established Krakow ghetto and into his factory. As the Jews’ plight in the early '40s goes from bad to worse, and Schindler encounters the psychopathic actions of German commandant Amon Goth (Ralph Fiennes), Schindler realises that his actions have not only garnered him a tidy profit, but also saved about 1000 lives from certain death. Suddenly, his priorities and values start to shift…
Oh my Lord, where do I start with this one?! Schindler’s List is a film that I have always wanted to see because, from what people say, it’s pretty much impossible to criticise. But I also dreaded watching it due to the assurance from basically everyone that it’s so powerful and intense that it makes The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas look like The Little Mermaid.
And these many, many tear-stained people are absolutely right. This is by far the most emotional film we’ve watched on this entire project. The only other film to drive me to tears was How Green Was My Valley, but oddly enough, the plight of late-19th century Welsh miners pale in comparison to the mass murder of millions of Jews. It solidifies the '90s as a more humane period of film-making, in contrast to the self-serving showiness of the '80s, where our actions and our moral compasses are challenged and improved.
Schindler is a fascinating historical figure, made all the more so by Liam Neeson’s nuanced performance- yes, even more nuanced than his performance in Taken! He is portrayed here at first not so much as a villain, nor as a hero. He’s a businessman with ambitions and dreams of profit. He achieves this, through slightly underhand though far from nefarious purposes. The Jews’ persecution is pretty separate from his rise in prominence, and Schindler doesn’t seem to have an opinion on the actions of the Third Reich at all. It’s not until the Jews he has got to know, in particular the infamous girl in the red coat, start to suffer and die that his actions turn from capitalist money-grabbing to heroism at its finest. The beauty of the tale is that his actions (i.e. employing the Jews in his factories) never change- but his intentions do. The film shows that even the most emotionally detached of people can turn into someone to revere.
The intensity of the tale is helped along by Ralph Fiennes’ terrifying take on Amon Goth. A quick Wikipedia search will tell you that Goth was, indeed, the absolute lunatic Fiennes makes him out to be. Goth would train his dogs to attack anyone he chose, kill Jewish servants for trivial reasons such as his soup being too hot, and shoot randomly at Jewish workers from the balcony of his mansion. This, coupled with montages of phenomenal violence and upheaval towards the Jewish people, turns this film into one of the most horrifying depictions of the dehumanisation and inhumanity that was occurring at the time. It’s easy to make a film showing how evil and violent Nazis were, but Spielberg uses Schindler’s List to show how frightened and trapped the Jews were as well. It’s like being right there in the action and there are some sequences that leave you with PTSD afterwards, such as the Jews’ expulsion from the ghettos, or when Schindler’s female workers are accidentally sent to Auschwitz rather than the safe haven of his factory.
There isn’t much more to say about Schindler’s List - like I said, it’s almost impossible to criticise. It’s a magnificent work of art, and a film that helps you grow as a human being due to its uplifting and hopeful ending. Spielberg may be well-known from his Saturday night family movies such as Indiana Jones, Jaws and E.T., but Schindler’s List is a reminder that he delves with equal success into historical dramas - Bridge of Spies and The Colour Purple being other prime examples. Just a couple of pieces of advice before viewing- maintain a suitable stock of wine for those depressing moments, and have an episode of Kimmy Schmidt to watch immediately afterwards.
Highlight
The final scene, in which the real people from the drama, accompanied by the actors who play them, visit Schindler’s grave. It shows, in the most powerful way possible, that after all that death, there was life.
Lowlight
Schindler’s goodbye scene to his Jewish workers after the war ends perhaps goes on a few minutes longer than it should. And it wasn’t enough to get Liam Neeson a Best Actor Oscar (he lost to Tom Hanks in Philadelphia).
Mark
10/10
Owing to a clerical error where we accidentally started the film halfway through (what film is split across two discs these days?!), we opened the film on a harrowing scene where Jewish corpses are being hurriedly burnt in one of the concentration camps.
This will sound cold, but stay with me. At this point I felt very little. It’s one of the problems with how to represent the Holocaust artistically. It is simply too overwhelming. Our brains cannot quite comprehend it. I was taught about this period of history thoroughly at school. One teacher ended up crying as he explained the specifics of what happened. Another teacher told us (in a tone I’ve never quite forgotten) that in her opinion, the Holocaust has cast a shadow that will outlive our generation today.
It remains one of the most incomprehensible periods of modern history. A civilised, Western country that in photographs seems quite similar to us, here, today - that suddenly turns on an entirely innocent segment of their population and begins systematically murdering them. So as I saw the familiar images of mass death and horror, I thought ‘this film isn’t going to affect me’.
We quickly realised the mistake, and flipped back to the beginning. And here’s how Spielberg is clever (and it is clever). He uses Schindler as a fixed point, but he ensures that we recognise people throughout. It’s how you make the horror of the Holocaust real, so it actually affects us. And he goes back to where it’s just (‘just’) anti-semitic graffiti in the street. And then slowly through the film, we see it getting worse and worse. Each stage is accompanied by groups of oppressed Jews saying to each other ‘well it can’t get worse’, with the horrific irony of us knowing it does. We see wealthy Jews who clearly thought their money would save them being ushered brutally from their houses into the ghettoes. We see children hiding in the concentration camps in toilets and under floorboards.
Paul has talked about Ralph Fiennes and pointed out everything I’d want to say - except I’d add that his brutality acts as a metaphor for the Nazis brutality overall too. It’s a film steeped in symbolism, almost entirely in black and white, with simply a candle’s wick being in colour, and the final scene (which I’ll come to). Schindler is a great central figure, acting for purely commercial reasons before he comes to realise just how awful a situation he’s immersed in. All the acting is stellar, and there’s some really exceptional moments. I’d also shout out to Ben Kingsley who proves that his extraordinary performance in Gandhi was no fluke.
It’s brilliantly written, helping you to understand just how these people’s lives were turned upside down almost immediately, after a long, quietly-sustained, campaign of hatred. The feeling of dread threads throughout. Every moment a scene begins, someone watching it in our living room would mutter ‘oh no’. You didn’t know what was coming despite the fact you do know what was coming. One scene critics complained about was were a group of Jewish women were ushered into the showers at a camp, having heard rumours about the ‘Final Solution’. They become hysterical, screaming, only for it to be revealed they are actually being showered. Critics complained this was ‘baiting’ of Spielberg, but I’d argue otherwise. It’s representative of the entire uncertainty. No one knows what was happening. This group of women were lucky - we already know many weren’t.
And so to the final scene. I’d spent three and a bit hours being horrified, upset and very moved. And yet (I think in part to my familiarity to the subject thanks to many history lessons on it) I had some slight distance. If it had ended with Schindler’s devastating realisation that he could have (should have) done more, I would have rated it a very good film. But by then introducing a scene where real people that Schindler saved lay stones on the real Schindler’s grave (he was buried in a a sacred Jewish site in Jerusalem), I suddenly connected the dots. This is a real story, meticulously researched and represented. These are real people who actually saw these horrors.
There’s a short film that floats around the internet where the man who ran the Kindertransport, saving thousands of Jewish children from the camps, is at the theatre with his wife. Unbeknownst to him, the entire theatre’s audience is made up of some of the children (now grown) that he saved. When they stand around him, his reaction is entirely of shock, and I dare you to watch it and not end up sobbing.
It was the same here. Suddenly, after hours of torment, hatred and the darkest elements of humanity out on the surface, there were survivors who were saved by someone making the effort to be good. Even Pandora’s Box has hope, after everything else. Reality struck and I ended up sobbing for about twenty minutes after it finished.
Highlight
This is a film that should be seen. Moments such as the wealthy Jewish family being ejected from their home, and the one-armed factory worker being swiftly executed will stay with you. Spielberg even spoke about how he couldn’t bring himself to include everything such as the fact that the SS would throw babies out of windows and then shoot them, as target practice. This film begins to address the darkness of who the Nazis were and still manages to leave us with hope.
Lowlight
I can’t find one. This is a film that has haunted me after for days. Critics accused it of being too emotional, but I can’t help but feel this is a reaction to the shock and feelings they’ve been made to experience by this unflinching piece.
Mark
10/10
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