director
Steven Spielberg
screenwriter
Steven Zaillian
based on
the novel by
Thomas Keneally
producers
Branko Lustig
Gerald R. Molen
Steven Spielberg
cinematographer
Janusz Kaminski
music
John Williams
editor
Michael Kahn
cast
Liam Neeson (Oskar Schindler)
Ben Kingsley (Itzhak Stern)
Ralph Fiennes (Amon Goeth)
Caroline Goodall (Emilie Schindler)
Jonathan Sagalle (Poldek Pfefferberg)
Embeth Davidtz (Helen Hirsch)
Malgoscha Gebel (Victoria Klonowska)
Shmulik Levy (Wilek Chilowicz)
Mark Ivanir (Marcel Goldberg)
Béatrice Macola (Ingrid)
Andrzej Seweryn (Julian Scherner)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 197m
u.s.
release: 12/15/93
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
other steven
spielberg films
reviewed on this website:
- a.i.:
artificial intelligence
- amistad
- catch
me if you can
- close
encounters of the third kind
- e.t.
(special edition, 2002)
- jurassic
park
- the
lost world: jurassic park
- minority
report
- munich
- saving
private ryan
- the
terminal
- war
of the worlds
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In the past, Steven Spielberg
has frightened us with B-movie stuff that we could laugh off:
sharks, spiders, raptors. Schindler's List, his overwhelming
new movie about the Holocaust, may well be the most frightening
movie ever made. Everyone who sees it will take home at least
one indelible image of horror. For me, the image is of a Jewish
hinge-maker in a labor camp who displeases a Nazi commandant.
The Nazi orders the man to make a hinge, timing him by stopwatch.
When the hinge is finished, the Nazi remarks that the man has
made only a handful of hinges all day. So the hinge-maker is
dragged outside to be shot. We've been watching Jews killed left
and right, randomly, so we cringe in anticipation of another
murder -- but the Nazi's gun won't fire. The scene, which seems
to go on forever as the man expects to be shot and the gun keeps
misfiring, is agonizing.
Spielberg, the king of candied entertainment, the Hollywood Peter
Pan, has finally grown up. Watching Schindler's List,
I had to remind myself it was a Spielberg film: The very
words "Spielberg film" have become synonymous with
"sweet, escapist, insignificant." This movie is none
of the above. Yet it isn't a dour lump of suffering, either.
In a shocking reversal, a master of cinematic toys has tackled
the most hideous subject of the century and emerged with a genuine
work of art. Who could have guessed? Some of the thrill of Schindler's
List derives from Spielberg's shock at himself, his surprise
at the level of candor he turns out to be capable of. Except
for three small lapses in judgment, the film is a triumph of
restraint and intelligence, the definitive Holocaust drama.
The hero of the movie (and of Thomas Keneally's 1982 historical
novel) is a paradox. Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), a German
industrialist and Nazi party member, comes to Krakow in 1939
to capitalize on the developing tragedy. At first, Schindler
views the Nazis neutrally: If they can help him, he helps them;
one hand washes the other. But he finds that when dealing with
Nazis, you might wash their hands but yours come away bloody.
With the help of Jewish accountant Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley
in a striking performance), Schindler the war profiteer sets
up a supplies factory, employing Jews as unpaid workers. It's
slave labor, but at least the Jews, as "essential workers"
in the war effort, stay clear of the death camps. Stern is quite
aware of this, even if Schindler isn't at first.
Stern, in fact, becomes Schindler's conscience in a process of
awakening that begins during the liquidation of the Krakow ghetto.
Sitting mightily on horseback, gazing down at the chaos, Schindler
spots a little girl in a red coat (the only bit of color in the
black-and-white frame) wandering through the crowd. Spielberg
and screenwriter Steven Zaillian don't hype this wake-up call
too much, but the point is clear: Drawn into identification with
this lonely, anonymous girl, Schindler sees the Jews as actual,
suffering people, not cheap labor. And he launches a conscious,
aggressive plan to save as many of them as possible, losing his
fortune in the bargain.
Liam Neeson, a robust actor who's been fascinating in many bad
movies as well as good ones, fills out a deliberately hollow
role. Spielberg realizes that to overanalyze Schindler's motives
would strip him of his mystique. (Many who knew the actual Schindler
never figured him out.) Schindler the philanderer, drinker, gambler,
and Nazi associate is uniquely qualified to be Schindler the
savior: His Nazi cronies aren't likely to peg him as a closet
Gandhi. Neeson's slyness in the role also suggests that Schindler
loves outfoxing the Nazis for its own sake. After a string of
pristine heroes, Spielberg gives us a richer breed of hero --
one who can be selfish, hedonistic, even objectionable, but no
less heroic. Neeson's key contribution is his confident charisma,
augmented by his bullish physique. His Schindler is a man who
knows he can get away with anything.
Not long before seeing Schindler's List, I attended the
Wang Center's screening of the Indiana Jones trilogy.
Aware that Spielberg's Nazis in Schindler's List would
be realistic, I paid close attention to how he handled them in
the Indy films. They were comic-book skunks, largely objects
of ridicule; there was even a gag in Indiana Jones and the
Last Crusade featuring Hitler himself. I doubt that Spielberg
would attempt such a joke now. The Nazis in Schindler's List
are terrifyingly human. Not that we identify with them; we see
them as people deformed by hatred, who otherwise have recognizable
traits -- they haven't landed here from another planet. Spielberg
has discovered the banality of evil. These Nazis aren't lurid,
hissable villains; they're hearty, presentable, fun-loving guys
whose idea of recreation is killing Jews. Spielberg stages their
obscenities without editorializing -- the acts speak for themselves.
These are true monsters.
One such monster is Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), a commandant
who arrives at the Plaszow labor camp and establishes his authority
by executing a forewoman in front of her workers. For amusement,
Goeth sits up in his balcony and picks off prisoners with his
rifle. (Disturbingly, Spielberg's camera takes the point of view
of Goeth aiming at his victims randomly, in effect forcing us
into complicity with genocide for a moment.) Fiennes, a British
actor unknown to Americans until now, gives a shattering and
amazingly layered performance. He understands the true horror
of Goeth: not just that the Jews live or die according to his
whims (which vary from moment to moment), but that he doesn't
even enjoy it much; he's not a sadistic caricature --
he sees himself as a guy doing a job, who would really rather
not have to be here in frigid Plaszow executing Jews,
if not for the troublesome fact that they exist. Goeth is appalling,
but Fiennes manages to locate his humanity, the glimmers of kindness
or tolerance that make him all the more appalling when he chooses
to deny them. After Schindler has told a drunken Goeth that real
power is when you have every reason to kill someone but don't,
the audience's relief is enormous when Goeth actually entertains
this advice -- for a few hours. He's as frighteningly capricious
as a tornado; the concept of mercy bounces off him.
Generally, Spielberg's direction is strictly meat and potatoes
(though sumptuously photographed by Janusz Kaminski), never regressing
to his trademark dolly shots or sense-of-wonder angles. The filmmaking
is gritty, hand-held, journalistic, and beautifully compact;
the movie's three hours and fifteen minutes feel like fifteen
minutes. Spielberg does, however, get a bit fancy -- and offensively
so -- in the editing of a scene in which Goeth brutalizes his
servant (Embeth Davidtz). Spielberg and editor Michael Kahn (whose
work is otherwise unimpeachable) bounce us between three scenarios:
Goeth abusing the woman, two prisoners being married, and Schindler
dancing with a woman. Intellectually, the contrast is readable,
but it's distracting, with intrusive transitional cuts. Goeth
has kept this woman alive because he feels something for her,
but what? Is it love? Does he see her as sanity in the midst
of annihilation -- does he hate himself for the part of him that
is trying to reach out to her, the human part of himself he must
then squelch through sadism? If any scene needed to be straightforward,
it was this one. Perhaps, though, Spielberg didn't want to get
too deeply into Night Porter territory.
I also didn't warm to the finale, invented for the movie, in
which Schindler breaks down because he feels he could have saved
more Jews. Stern reminds him that he did everything he could;
it's as if Spielberg thought we needed reminding. This
emotional display comes out of left field (it's certainly out
of character for Schindler as Neeson plays him for most of the
film), and is jarring and beside the point; Schindler, surrounded
by people who have real reason to despair, has no right to weep.
Spielberg does have the tact to pan across the faces of the workers,
most of whom are unmoved by Schindler's tears -- they're worried
about finding their families. The emphasis should be on them,
not Schindler. And the coda, shot in color, with actual surviving
Schindler Jews being led to Schindler's grave by members of the
movie's cast, verges on self-congratulation. These people come
on for a cameo, and we realize we hardly know most of them as
individuals. Again, the emphasis here is wrongly on Schindler,
on the Jews' enduring gratitude to the great German. He was
a great man, no question, but the title is Schindler's List,
not Schindler.
Still, overall, Spielberg keeps his head and focuses on what
matters, and if Schindler is a bit too overwrought at the end,
his presence is welcome elsewhere. Schindler is no Indiana Jones,
swashbuckling through Krakow and kicking Nazi ass. His weapons
are deception and an unerring business instinct. (Only a die-hard
capitalist could convince the Nazis that he wants to divert little
girls from Auschwitz not because he cares about them,
but because their tiny hands are ideal for polishing the insides
of shells.) This is the hero as bullshit artist. Spielberg must
sense that without Schindler's snake-oil charm and bullheaded
optimism (you just know he's a man who doesn't know the meaning
of the word "nein"), the film would be too relentlessly
horrifying.
Schindler's scenes give us
respite from the hell of the ghetto and the camps. Big-shouldered
and shrewd, Schindler can take care of himself while moving among
the vipers; we know he'll take care of his workers, too. Yet
the nonstop cruelty in the camps shows us how limited Schindler's
power is next to a random bullet to the head. Fittingly, Spielberg's
final image is of a road paved with Jewish gravestones. Schindler's
List is equal parts rage and hope: a tribute to those who
did what they could (Schindler was far from the only Holocaust
samaritan), with a howl of anguish at its core. If Spielberg's
reflexes as an entertainer get the best of him near the end,
compelling him to hype Schindler as a saint, that doesn't seriously
mute the film's cumulative impact. Spielberg is a new filmmaker
here. Plunging into the darkest chapter of recent history, a
subject so nightmarish it defies comprehension, he uses his considerable
resources to heighten whatever understanding we could possibly
have of the Holocaust, and at God knows what emotional cost.
Spielberg has painted his masterpiece with his own blood.
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