Schindler’s List

For this month, I had a few ideas of what I wanted to do, but I decided I would dedicate this month to the great Liam Neeson. Let’s start with the 1003 classic, “Schindler’s List.”

Oskar Schindler would have been easy to understand if he’d been a predictable hero, fighting for his beliefs. Seeing that he has cons – drinking, gambling, womanizing, being controlled by greed, and wanting an upper-class life – makes his life a problem.

This is a man who saw his opportunity at the beginning of World War II and moved to Nazi-controlled Poland to open a factory and hire Jews at wages they could barely live off of.  He wants to become a millionaire. Roger Ebert said in his review, “By the end of the war, he had risked his life and spent his fortune to save those Jews and had defrauded the Nazis for months with a munitions factory that never produced a single usable shell.”

Why did he change? What happened to make him change from a villain to a savior? Thanks to Steven Spielberg’s film “Schindler’s List.” it does not try to answer that question. Any possible answer would be too easy, which would not keep the mystery of Schindler’s life. Ebert noted, “The Holocaust was a vast evil engine set whirling by racism and madness. Schindler outsmarted it, in his own little corner of the war, but he seems to have had no plan, to have improvised out of impulses that remained unclear even to himself. In this movie, the best he has ever made, Spielberg treats the fact of the Holocaust and the miracle of Schindler's feat without the easy formulas of fiction.”

The runtime is a little over three hours and like all great movies, it seems too short. It starts with Schindler, played by Liam Neeson, a tall, strong man with an intimidating presence. He dresses in expensive suits and frequently goes to nightclubs, buying caviar and champagne for Nazi officers and their women, and he likes to get his picture taken with the top brass. He wears a Nazy party emblem proudly on his button. He has perfect black-market contacts, he can find nylons, cigarettes, and brandy: He is the right man to know. The police are happy to help him open a factory to build protected cooking utensils that army kitchens can use. He is happy hiring Jews because their wages are so low, and Schindler will keep getting rich that way.

Schindler’s skill is in bribing, scheming, and conning. He knows nothing about running a factory and finds Itzhak Stern, played by Ben Kingsley, a Jewish accountant, to handle that side of the business. Stern moves through the streets of Krakow, hiring Jews for Schindler.

Because the factory is a protected war business, a job there may guarantee a longer life.

The relationship between Schindler and Stern is made by Spielberg with a large delicacy. at the beginning of the war, Schindler wants only to make money, and at the end, he wants only to save “his” Jews. We know that Stern understands this. However, there is no moment when Schindler and Stern clearly say what is happening, maybe because saying some things out loud could cause them to get killed.

This delicacy is Spielberg’s strength throughout the film. Ebert mentioned, “His screenplay, by Steven Zaillian, based on the novel by Thomas Keneally, isn't based on contrived melodrama. Instead, Spielberg relies on a series of incidents, seen clearly and without artificial manipulation, and by witnessing those incidents we understand what little can be known about Schindler and his scheme.”

We also see the Holocaust vividly and terribly. Spielberg gives us a Nazi prison camp commandant named Goeth, played by Ralph Fiennes, who is a subject of the stupidity of evil. Ebert said, “From the veran da of his "villa," overlooking the prison yard, he shoots Jews for target practice. (Schindler is able to talk him out of this custom with an appeal to his vanity so obvious it is almost an insult.)” Goeth is one of the weak hypocrites who upholds the idea but makes himself an exception to it. He preaches the murder of the Jews and then chooses a pretty one named Helen Hirsch, played by Embeth Davidtz, to be his maid and falls in love with her. He does not find it evil that her people are being murdered, and she is spared because he has an affection towards her. He sees his personal needs as more important than right or wrong, life or death. Ebert pointed out, “Studying him, we realize that Nazism depended on people able to think like Jeffrey Dahmer.”

Shot in black and white on many of the actual locations of the events in history (including Schindler’s original factory and even the gates of Auschwitz), Spielberg shows Schindler dealing with the evil of the Nazi system. Ebert noted, “He bribes, he wheedles, he bluffs, he escapes discovery by the skin of his teeth. In the movie's most audacious sequence, when a trainload of his employees is mistakenly routed to Auschwitz, he walks into the death camp himself and brazenly talks the authorities out of their victims, snatching them from death and putting them back on the train to his factory.”

What is amazing about this film is how completely Spielberg tells his story. The movie is perfectly acted, written, directed, and seen. Individual scenes are skillful in art direction, cinematography, special effects, and crowd control. Ebert credited, “et Spielberg, the stylist whose films often have gloried in shots we are intended to notice and remember, disappears into his work. Neeson, Kingsley and the other actors are devoid of acting flourishes. There is a single-mindedness to the enterprise that is awesome.”

At the end of the film, there is a heavily emotional scene, involving the actual people Schindler saved. We learn that “Schindler’s Jews” and their descendants today number about 6,000 and that the Jewish population of Poland is 4,000. The obvious lesson would be that Schindler did more than a whole nation to save the Jews. That would be too easy. The film’s message is that one man did something, while in the face of the Holocaust, others were damaged. Ebert said, “Perhaps it took a Schindler, enigmatic and reckless, without a plan, heedless of risk, a con man, to do what he did. No rational man with a sensible plan would have gotten as far.”

Ebert noted, “The French author Flaubert once wrote that he disliked Uncle Tom's Cabin because the author was constantly preaching against slavery.” “Does one have to make observations about slavery?” he asked. “Depict it; that’s enough.” And then he added, “An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.” That would describe Spielberg, the author of this film. He shows the evil of the Holocaust, and he tells an incredible story of how it was stolen by some of its planned victims. Ebert said, “He does so without the tricks of his trade, the directorial and dramatic contrivances that would inspire the usual melodramatic payoffs.” Spielberg is not present in this film. However, his restraint and passion are seen in every shot.

This is one of the most emotional films out there. Especially the ending with the breakdown, which you can see the emotions to it. A man who once was torturing the Jews tried to save them, but it didn’t work out the way he wanted. I do recommend this film, but this is a film that you may not be able to watch in one sitting. You might have to watch it in parts with the length of the film. Currently, it is streaming on Prime, so you can see it on there. Check it out and see for yourself.

Next week I will look at a terrible remake of a classic film in “Liam Neeson Month.”