(USA 1993 195m) DVD1/2
He who saves one life saves the world entire
p Steven Spielberg, Gerald R.Molen, Branko Lustig d Steven Spielberg w Steven Zaillan book “Schindler’s Ark” by Thomas Keneally ph Janusz Kaminski ed Michael Kahn m John Williams art Allan Starski cos Anna Biedrzycka-Sheppard
Liam Neeson (Oskar Schindler), Ben Kingsley (Itzhak Stern), Ralph Fiennes (Amon Goeth), Caroline Goodall (Emilie Schindler), Jonathan Sagalle (Poldek Pfefferberg), Embeth Davidtz (Helen Hirsch), Malgosha Gebel (Victoria Clonowkska), Andrzej Seweryn, Norbert Weisser, Elina Lowensohn, Schmulik Levy, Mark Ivanir,
Steven Spielberg’s film of Thomas Keneally’s praised book is surely the most personal cinematic masterpiece ever filmed, as well as the most universally proclaimed film of its decade. But to call it merely a personal film would seem to be not only disrespectful as, though Schindler’s List may be a flawed masterpiece, a masterpiece it most definitely is.
It has been said by some people that Schindler himself is associated with Spielberg and that this film is his dream project, one which only a director of his standing would be able to undertake (yet even so he still tried to persuade Roman Polanski to do it, though he would wait until The Pianist to tackle the Holocaust). Spielberg dares to have his camera as impersonal towards each individual atrocity as it would have been to the robotic Nazis committing them, knowing that this understatement achieves the maximum impact. It may have a few Spielberg touches of sentimentality – the colour transformation at the end to show the real life Schindler Jews is unnecessary and the colour of the flames and the little girl in the red coat is rather gimmicky – but in general he keeps such sentiment away. Here at last Spielberg the filmmaker was comfortable in an adult world, with all the censorables that had been so lacking in his more financially lucrative assignments. That he made his massive hit Jurassic Park in the same year is evident in the fact that certain scenes do have subliminal parallels (one recalls the young boy escaping the Nazis in the Plaszow camp, reminiscent in style to the two kids escaping the raptors in Jurassic). Mind you, Spielberg doesn’t only borrow from himself, but from his favourite directors. In the very first shot he cuts from the extinguished candle smoke to that of a train in Krakow station, which pays homage to two David Lean films (the cut from the matchstick to the sunrise in Lawrence of Arabia and that from the glass slide to the tram in Doctor Zhivago). Other shots recall Kubrick, Kurosawa and even Eisenstein. This is a cinematic royal family of larceny and it works splendidly.
Spielberg has never made a film as complex as Schindler’s before or since, his enthusiasm and commitment to the project also rubbing off on his actors and crew. Liam Neeson can often seem too worthy an actor, but his Oskar Schindler is a masterful performance. There is a wonderfully revealing yet also misleading shot of him peering through his cigarette smoke at a group of Nazis out for a good time, seemingly the unacceptable face of capitalism. It’s Neeson’s greatest performance and Kingsley is equally memorable as the stalwart Stern, the brains behind the enterprise, who allows Schindler to do what he’s good at, “not the work, not the work. The presentation.” Yet both are outshone by Fiennes, whose Goeth is one of modern cinema’s great monsters, all the more so because he’s human, for all his faults. His performance is summed up in one brilliant scene where he lets a boy go with an “I pardon you”, subliminally pardons himself in the mirror, then goes out and shoots the boy, which Spielberg ingeniously doesn’t show, only through the reaction in the face of the passing by Kingsley. Throw in the superb editing, design, photography (recalling the wartime documentaries of the period) and music and Spielberg weaves a horrifying tapestry and document about man’s inhumanity to man and, equally importantly, his humanity in the face of such inhumanity. When watching it again to review it here, at the point where the naked women receive water in the gas chambers, a relative tells me “can you imagine the relief?” I said “no, and nor can you.” All we can hope for is that, for all time, nor will anyone else ever have to.
Now, this is a film that HAS to be debated. Allan, I’m not sure why you call this movie “personal”, for I see no connection of the film to Spielberg except the compassion that he shows towards OsKar Schindler.
This was an exhilarating movie-watching experience for me when I first way it (I still rate it in my top 25 of the decade), but I’m growing more and more distant with years regarding its ethics and politics (Godard has already given Spielberg a piece of his mind elsewhere).
In Shoah, Lanzmann said that he would destroy any evidence of the atrocity that he finds (as photograph or as film), while Spilberg does exactly the opposite by re-creating it. Technically perfect- YES. But the ethical distance that a filmmaker should maintain from history is breached. By Hollywoodizing the horrors of the Holocaust into a superhero movie, he tries to gain easy sympathy while tossing the crux of the whole affair – the horror that lurks in men’s minds – to the wind. No filmmaker – I mean NONE – can re-create the horrors of the Holocaust. Cinema is incapable of that. It is not the women in the shower who get a relief in discovering that it was just water, it is us – sitting safely in the theatre, munching popcorn, imagining falsely that we FEEL how it would be to be “out there”.
I’m open to changes of opinion. I hope someone here convinces me that Spielberg’s ethics are “clean”.
P.S: I would have loved to see how Polanski would have handled it. IMO, his Death and the Maiden is THE ONLY WAY that holocaust movies should be made (on a lighter note, the Kingsley is Polanski’s film is the mirror image of Spielberg’s Stern!).
Great post, JAFB. I’ve always felt the same way about this film. The sequences I like, I like for technical craft (I always recall an early scene with Oskar at the nightclub–the camera moves exquisitely) not as much for heart. I suppose these are also the objections you raise here. As such I agree. I used to partially joke to friends that ‘Shindler’s List’ was Spielberg’s second best film he made in 1993. Which is of course me being quite hyperbolic.
As for the Godard comments you mention: “It is strange, he (Spielberg) had no idea about the Holocaust so he went and looked elsewhere for inspiration. When we don’t have an idea about something, we look first of all within ourselves.” Ouch. To me this explains many of my feelings on Spielberg; which were more clearly shown with his ‘Amistad’. He seems more interested in offering the offenders a chance at redemption at the inadvertent expense of the suffered. I am always drawn to the Rage Against the Machine song, ‘No Shelter’ where they speak of ‘Amistad’ directly:
“Make you think that buyin is rebellin’
From the theaters to malls on every shore
The thin line between entertainment and war
The frontline is everywhere, there be no shelter here
Spielberg the nightmare works so push it far
Amistad was a whip, the truth feather to tar
Memories erased and burned to scar
Trade in ya history for a VCR
….
American eyes, American eyes
View the world from American eyes
Bury the past, rob us blind
And leave nothin behind”
ect.
‘Munich’ seems to me to be his greatest film, as he is somewhat present in the events occurring, or at least he’s partly taking the blame as a Jewish man of a Jewish thirst for revenge. To me it seems the most authentic.
“offering the offenders a chance at redemption at the inadvertent expense of the suffered” – Brilliant. The Anthony Hopkin speech at the end was the nail in the coffin. I almost agree with your opinion of SL being the second best Speilberg film ofthe year 😀
Those were superb lyrics of a song I’ve never heard. Thanks Jamie. I’ll listen to it right away.
Munich, as you say, was a “compensation” for Schindler’s List. For me, Duel is Spielberg’s greatest film.
Glad you like the lyrics. The best thing about that song is it was written for the ‘Godzilla’ soundtrack (the one with Matthew Brodrick) and there is an actual verse that dogs that very film:
“Hospitals not profit full
The market bull’s got pockets full
To advertise some hip disguise
View the world from American eyes
Tha poor adore keep feeding for more
Tha thin line between entertainment and war
fix the need, develop the taste
Buy their products or get laid to waste
Coca-Cola was back in our veins in Saigon
And Rambo too, we got a dope pair of Nikes on
Godzilla pure motherfuckin’ filler
Get your eyes off the real killer”
for anyone else who is unfamiliar here is the song:
(what a guitar player!)
I’ll take Spielberg over Rage Against the Machine any day…
MovieMan – I second that notion.
I guess Spielberg, because he is so successful, is considered part of the “MACHINE”???? I don’t see the connection between SCHINDLER’S LIST and RAGE other than the fact that they thought it would be “cool” to slam Spielberg in their song.
I appreciate Jaime’s input though, and his attempt to make this a multimedia debate!
How can Spielberg NOT be considered ‘part of the machine’? We are talking about the same Steven Spielberg that’s produced two (count ’em two) ‘Transformers’ pictures right? Or is it there another Steven Spielberg I am unaware of that holds much clout in Hollywood?
Well, Jaime, you make the assumption that we all believe there is a MACHINE at all!
But I take your point. I think we are talking about the same Spielberg 🙂
And he is definitely part of SOMETHING!
Sure, there’s a machine – Spielberg’s a part of it and so were Rage, a fact I’m sure they’re aware of: their band might as well be called “Rage Aginst the Machine (From Inside)”. Not quite as catchy, however. Some might see that as subversive and iconoclastic. Others might view it as having your cake and eating it too.
Serge Daney’s masterpiece of film criticism – The Tracking Shot in Kapo – explains brilliantly the attitude that cinema exhibits towards history (“the difference between what’s just and what’s beautiful “), taking into consideration only one single shot in Pontecorvo’s Kapo.
I’m not sure how many such shots Schindler’s List amounts to.
http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/04/30/kapo_daney.html
JAFB, thanks for all these great film links you are posting. I don’t have time to read them all at the moment but in one brief phrase (“the difference between what’s just and what’s beautiful”) Daney has managed to sum up what I’ve been struggling to articulate for a while now – the reason I distinguish between ethics and aesthetics, and why I think they don’t mix especially well (that applies to politics as well, which should be pursued rationally rather than with blind passion, in my opinion). A great movie can, I think, be morally bankrupt or immoral or amoral. I know others here agree with me but again I turn to that phrase: art is what is beautiful (even a certain kind of ugliness can be beautiful) and beauty may be truth, but it’s a very subjective one, our own personal truth which tends to disregard what’s good for other people. It’s the id.
Others “disgree” – though some agree too, of course.
Exactly Movie Man. I want to believe that too. But somehow, I also feel that detaching history from cinema is also no good. As I said elsewhere:
“We are already in an age where the word ABJECTION has lost its meaning and image ethics is a laughable subject. I do believe that filmmaking is not a divine practice placed above real life and it should know its ethical limits. But on the other hand, I also think that filmmaking owes nothing to reality and whatever happens on screen is just a fake vision, where our morality does not apply.”
I just am not able to come to a comfortable midpointlike you’ve stated beautifully
“JAFB, thanks for all these great film links you are posting. I don’t have time to read them all at the moment but in one brief phrase (“the difference between what’s just and what’s beautiful”) Daney has managed to sum up what I’ve been struggling to articulate for a while now – the reason I distinguish between ethics and aesthetics, and why I think they don’t mix especially well (that applies to politics as well, which should be pursued rationally rather than with blind passion, in my opinion). A great movie can, I think, be morally bankrupt or immoral or amoral. I know others here agree with me but again I turn to that phrase: art is what is beautiful (even a certain kind of ugliness can be beautiful) and beauty may be truth, but it’s a very subjective one, our own personal truth which tends to disregard what’s good for other people. It’s the id.”
It’s weird I agree with you on these points, and on matters of subjectivity/objectivity in art appreciation. Yet on this one singular movie we disagree (though I’d add I don’t think I dislike it on aesthetic grounds). Perhaps it’s my more larger dislike (or perhaps ambivalence is a better term) to all things Spielberg.
Anyways, good discussion guys.
Joel, if we can rely on the translation, then you can’t say Daney ‘probably’ meant this or that. Albeit Daney’s convoluted prose is his own worst advocate. But still we can only rely on what he actually said. Also, let us also ditch the red herrings (Elah et al) as they are really starting to smell.
1. Regarding animation, in this Daney is quite clear:
“Worse: for me animated movies would always be something other than cinema. Even worse: animated movies would always be a bit the enemy. No “beautiful image”, especially drawn, would match the emotion – fear and trembling – in front of recorded things. ”
2. Re PF, you have confused my query on animation with my seperate reference to Daney’s agreement with Rivette on the treatment of death in cinema. You alone make the connection with PF and animation. Unless you have contact with the spirit world, you don’t know what Daney would make of PF. [As an aside, does anyone know if Rivette or Godard have a published take on Tarantino?]
3. What you say here doesn’t make sense: “It’s that sort of 60s radical sensibility where apoliticism and conservatism are disregarded as irrelevant and it’s liberalism which is chosen as the “enemy” and attacked. (The folly of this became clear to a lot of people, at least in America, after Nixon was elected in ‘68.)” I haven’t read Griffin’s book.
4. What is modern warfare but an “industrialisation of murder”? What is the carpet bombing of rural villages in SE Asia with napalm and agent orange? It is not “entirely impersonal and systematized”? What is the shooting of tank shells encased in depleted uranium? Which mainstream films “have confronted many of those issues on screen”? When is death not “up close”?
5. Just what is an aeshetic stripped of a moral and philoslophical (ergo political) foundation?
That’s quite an essay, JAFB, and one I’ll have to revisit before fully digesting. Daney writes with great lucidity yet his prose is also dense; what with the double-negatives and associative leaps it will take more than one pass to take in everything he’s saying.
He rather directly addresses what we were talking about below, using the “We Are the World” video as an object. “These are the images I would like at least one teenager to be disgusted by and ashamed of. Not merely ashamed to be fed and affluent, but ashamed to be seen as someone who has to be aesthetically seduced where it is only a matter of conscience – good or bad – of being a human and nothing more.” This is something I agree with in theory as I demonstrated below: that by “othering” one “others” oneself. But what is this conscience – intellectual or emotional? I’m a bit uncertain where Daney falls on that question. At times he seems to be scorning emotional conscience as false and trite. Yet is that really only one sort of emotional conscience he’s rejecting, in favor of a “higher” emotional conscience – the instinctive recoil at death and suffering, which doesn’t need fancy tracking shots or dissolves?
If so, in which case he’s rejecting Pontecorvo’s emotionalism as intellectualism I have to admit that my conscience is mostly intellectual as well. I am very largely desensitized to images of violence, suffering, and death (as an aside, this may in large part be due to the very emotionalism Daney decries; which one can perhaps get “used to” like increased doses of a disease) – so I suppose in Daney’s formulation I should feel guilty. But I’m wary of guilt over such matters, in (ironically) the same way Daney himself seems to be when he calls for more dispassionate, less naive viewings of film (even as he romanticizes viewing too). Guilt seems just like that proverbial tracking shot.
On a more personal level (which was almost always how he chose to look at things) Bergman said something similar in the documentary about his life: that he was guilty over having neglected his children until he realized guilt was a self-indulgent and trivial emotion next to the damage he had done. (Though obviously, I don’t think the culpability is analogous between Bergman and, say, the “We Are the World” audience.) Guilt is a luxury.
Too much to grapple with in one comment. Hopefully I’ll back to make a little more sense of it all.
Yes, a really tricky and dense essay. One has to read multiple lines to even make sense. Movie Man, I think I get your point. “Guilt is a luxury” says it all.
But then, what I think is that Daney’s “guilt” can even arise on a purely emotional level. For a person who has lived a life away from the exploitative manipulation of television and knows more about people than cinema, I guess, these “beautiful” tricks may only be repulsive. Such a person would be able to strip off all the aesthetic trappings and be able to get down to the human element of the film to see if it is all fake or not. Because I know some people who rarely watch movies. But when they do, they know what movie deals with TRUTH and what’s a sham.
On the other hand, for the less fortunate like me who have been trained to cry whenever a violin piece accompanies an image, this guilt, as you say, could arise only on an intellectual level. It is indeed a luxury and is reserved for those who have time to sit down for hours after returning from the cinemas to reflect on what they have witnessed, clear of all the instantaneous effect the cinema hall has produced. I think the TV is the biggest culprit and by defining how people should react to certain images, it has destroyed true empathy. It is irreversible now. People will unfairly be wowed by such beauty irrespective of its truth.
However, as you said earlier, such cold intellectualism runs the risk of squashing true compassion too. For eg, in Godard’s Letter To Jane, I felt, he seems to be over-analyzing what may be a simple gesture of compassion from Jane Fonda. I mean, does it really matter how things get better? Or does the White Man’s Burden be criticized every time irrespective of what good it brings?
Interesting – my sense that would be someone who doesn’t, or rarely, watches movie would actually care LESS about the ethics of a particular shot. I kind of think of Schindler’s List as the perennial favorite of people who begin their praise with, “I don’t usually like movies, but…” I’m not convinced it takes training to evoke tears with violin music, but rather that such “habits” come about because of something innately human in all of us – maybe it’s not a violin for someone else, but there’s still a trigger. We may be Pavlov’s dogs, but primarily in the sense that God or Nature or what-have-you is Pavlov rather than a “system” or “society.” Conventions and institutions arise for a reason, and I’m skeptical as to whether those reasons are really so arbitrary.
Love the other site you linked up to too – it’s the sort of thing I’ve always wanted to see on the internet (where film-writing tends more towards the thematic and textual rather than the formal, an unfortunate tendency given that I think the greatest romance of the cinema is contained by the formal). Didn’t quite have the courage/patience to do it myself – but this is very encouraging.
Hmm, that sounds fair too. But that seems to make SL (and such) all the more exploitative – An American studio, hunting for facets from world history, trying to tap into the audience’s emotional impulses, no matter what it takes.
In “In Praise of Love”, the director talks about proprietorship of history and also expressed the same elsewhere with an utterly anti-American statement:
Most American directors “are like orphans,” he says. “They have no parents, no history. There’s no story, so they have to invent one. I was always accused of doing pictures with no plot. But a picture is first a story, second a story and third a story. The Americans just spread their stories all over the world, hoping that a majority of the audience will buy them the history they don’t have.”
Argh, I’m not sure what way I lean.
And I thought Marx was turgid! I won’t pretend to understand much of what Daney is saying, though I have a suspicion it is his fault and not mine.
Some things he says intrigued me, and if I have got the wrong end of the stock please indulge a doddering baby-boomer:
1. “‘There are things – wrote Rivette – that must be approached with fear and trembling. Death is such a thing and how could someone film such a mysterious thing without the feeling of being an impostor?’ I agreed.” This seems to echo my position on movies such as Pulp Fiction being trash.
2. For Daney animation is not cinema. I sort of agree with him. My thoughts on WALL-E got me into a lot of trouble here a while back.
3. As to guilt, has America confronted its own guilt in cinema – Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Cambodia, Vietnam…? I would say no.
Tony,
I guess Daney is one of those critics who value realism of appearance very much. But I guess he is making the first point with respect to films that claim to capture reality completely (a la Kapo). As for those which insist on reminding the audience about the falsity of it all, I think a different stance is to be adopted. Like Godard (again!) said: “It’s not blood, it’s red”.
And that’s perhaps the same reason he seems to shun animation. I’m not sure about the third point, but would love to hear your argument more elaborately and what others say.
Tony:
1. As JAFB said, I think Daney’s beef is more with films that try to pretend their realistic, not with live-action cartoons like PF (which would probably fall into the category he consigns “Holocaust porn” into, one of disinterest rather than scorn). To be honest, he’d probably be more upset with some aspects of “responsible” films you like, like In the Valley of Elah (although that may be a special case since it puts a lot of the crisis offscreen). It’s that sort of 60s radical sensibility where apoliticism and conservatism are disregarded as irrelevant and it’s liberalism which is chosen as the “enemy” and attacked. (The folly of this became clear to a lot of people, at least in America, after Nixon was elected in ’68.)
(Out of curiosity, as an aside, have you ever read Todd Gitlin’s book on the 60s? I’ve read it several times and found it pretty interesting; I’d be interested to know what you thought.)
2. This is an interesting point: animation vs. cinema. I’m not sure why, but I fully accept animation as cinema WHEN IT’S ANIMATION. Everything from Betty Boop to the Quay Brothers to the Disney classics to Brakhage’s shorts (which are a kind of animation) to WALL-E I see as part of the cinematic history alongside live-action “representative” cinema. BUT I share your and Daney’s antipathy when it comes to animation masquerading as reality, i.e. computer animation, except when used sparingly as in the first Jurassic Park. I think the CGI-zation of cinema in the past 15 years is a colossal blunder and have written about this elsewhere.
3. Americans have confronted many of those issues on screen, but certainly not on the scale of Schindler’s List, I think. But then this is where the Holocaust IS different to a certain extent – the scale and focus of the murder, for one thing (which is why it is more challenging to classify the various American crimes you mention as “genocide”), but mostly what Bobby mentions: the industrialization of the murder, the way it was carried out not as an exception to civilization but as the epitome of it. This was true to a certain extent in Vietnam for example, but the destructive force of the bombs (as in WWII, by the way) could be somewhat disguised by “other aims” – there was the distance of the killing, the fact that it was not “directly” aimed at a person, etc etc. Death from air (not that this was the only form of atrocity in Vietnam) has seldom been able to register the same impression on human consciousness as death up close. The Holocaust was up close – the killers confronted face to face with their victims – yet it was entirely impersonal and systematized. That’s what’s so scary, and why it keeps coming back to haunt us when other genocides have been forgotten or overlooked.
Also, of course, Western media and wealth basically controls the world (though that’s changing somewhat with the rise of China, even as it reflects certain Western values, somewhat warped, back at us) so it’s no surprise that a very Western genocide remains the grisly “gold standard” so to speak. The history of the Jews in the West is familiar to all and thus as a narrative, the Holocaust has more power as well – it seems the gruesome culmination to centuries of persecution and discomfort.
Those are my thoughts anyway.
Also, the passage JAFB quoted is not Daney, but Godard. Love the guy, but he is the epitome of mixing aesthetics and politics (as a result he’s made some very insensitive comments about the Jews and the Holocaust too) and in general I think his ideological views should be taken with a grain of salt.
Thanks for your clarification JAFB.
On the third point, perhaps I am on dangerous ground here and you should know I am an Aussie, I am thinking that yes the Holocaust is a special case (although we need to to acknowledge the West also has a certain culpability in the Armenian genocide, Rwanda, Bosnia, the bloody rule of the Khmer Rouge and other atrocities), Daney’s view that American cinema has no history is off-target. The US has a history that it’s cinema has steadfastly refused to confront: its nefarious role in Latin America, the blanket bombing of Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam in the 60s, the supply of chemical weapons to Saddam, the massive toll of child deaths in Iraq from the sanctions after the first Gulf War, the second invasion of Iraq, and the nuclear annihilation visited on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I don’t think that the holocaust was in anyway a special case. From Cathage to the genocide of Native American tribes, to as Tony pointed out – US -low level, high level mass murder (4 and half million Vietnamanese – Agent Orange). The Nazis just industrialised it, the Henry Ford way.
Just another Film Fan….this is especially for you…
the first two will be in my top 25 for the ’00’s. The third is also devastating.
Why We Fight
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8383084962209910782#
War Made Easy
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9219858826421983682#
Vietnam Holocaust.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1018677197583161392#
they say more than a brief paragraph can.
Why are the Iraqi sanctions so loudly condemned on the left when sanctions against South Africa were encouraged? In both cases you had repressive governments which could have (and did in Saddam’s case) use the embargo as an excuse to withhold goods from the citizenry (especially given he had a way “out” with the oil-for-food program, which was instead massively abused by him and by the UN, though I don’t recall the details of the corruption). I ask sincerely because maybe there’s something here I’m missing: for example, did the SA embargo not extend to vital goods like food or medicine, while the Iraqi one did? It always seemed to me that a containment regime against Saddam was a wise approach, which is one reason the war seemed like such a terrible idea.
Why? Sanctions death toll estimates vary:
Unicef: 500,000 children (including sanctions, collateral effects of war). “[As of 1999] [c]hildren under 5 years of age are dying at more than twice the rate they were ten years ago.”
British Member of Parliament George Galloway: “a million Iraqis, most of them children.”
Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark: 1.5 million (includes sanctions, bombs and other weapons, depleted uranium poisoning).
Thanks Bobby. Would have to check out the films one day. Hope they aren’t one sided like Fahrenheit 9/11 (which I liked anyway)…
Just Another Film Buff – Nope, they are as close to getting the truth unfarnished, in a propaganda heavy society like the US. It’s like a matrix revelation (though I dislike those films). Hypnotic.
Tony, what is relating these deaths to the sanctions and not to the repression of Saddam or to other factors? And what distinguished the sanctions against Iraq from the sanctions against South Africa, in terms of how they were actually designed and how they worked? Why do the same people who supported one oppose another? I’m not saying there isn’t a good explanation for this, just that I don’t know what it is.
Movieman, there is a blog by a high ranking Reaganite, the guys responsible for Reaganomics. Very smart dude. He writes two or three articles per week, and are they the business. He refers to the sanctions against certain countries as prelude of war. So the countries life-blood is extinguished. He even suspects that the recent riots in Iran over their elections were inspired by low-level US intelligence forces, the way that they were done in the early ’50s in that country and also in Africa by the CIA. It’s a brillaint pretext to bring democracy. His name is Dr. Paul Craig Roberts. And he is scathing about Obama and Bush and Clinton. The Cuban sanctions are one of the most dispicable. There may be some difference between that and the systematic racism of the South Africa.
Bobby J; thanks for the mention – do you have a link? As for South Africa, the racism is not an issue. Obviously, the repression of Iraq in particular (and Cuba is a police state too, albeit a more low-key one) is no better, so if it’s an issue of which states we should be “punishing” it’s kind of a wash. The issue is why sanctions against South Africa are not considered brutal towards the population and a pretext to war but in Iraq they are. Aren’t they the same sanctions either way, just applied to different countries? Or was there a fundamental difference between the sanctions imposed – and would a different set of sanctions against Iraq have been acceptable to those who opposed the existing sanctions? That’s all I’m trying to get at – to discern the consistency between the various policy positions.
As for the Reaganite, I find the suggestion that the CIA inspired riots in Iran quite offensive. As if the Iranians themselves have no reason to rebel against an oppressive government, and need the U.S. to stir up trouble. The important thing about the Iranian revolt that some neocons and some Lefties alike didn’t seem to realize was that it was THEIR fight and we had nothing much to do with it, pro OR con. Tony, certainly no friend to the CIA or American activities abroad, with probably agree with me on this, as I remember the stirring tribute he wrote for the women killed by the fascists who rule that country.
I have been trying to find out if either Rivette or Godard had ever pronounced on Tarantino. I can’t find anything from Rivette, but Godard in a rare interview with The Guardian in April 2005 had this to say:
“Nor is Godard especially flattering about the legions of admirers who make reference to him in their own movies or even name their companies after him. Quentin Tarantino, for example, calls his production company A Band Apart, in deference to Godard’s 1964 classic, Bande à Part. ‘He says he admires me, but that’s not true,’ Godard muses, then makes a cryptic remark about the torture and humiliation of prisoners by US guards in Iraq. ‘What is never said about Tarantino is that those prisons we are shown pictures of, where the torture is taking place, are called “reservoir dogs’. I think the name is very appropriate.'”
Great stuff! The full interview is here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2005/apr/29/2
Joel re the Iraq sanctions, I recommend this article by Hans von Sponeck UN Humanitarian Co-ordinator for Iraq from 1998 to 2000, and Denis Halliday, who held the same post from 1997 to 1998: http://www.counterpunch.org/iraqhostage.html.
TOny,
I read the interview a couple of days ago. A terrific interview I must say. Moore also gets it BTW. Thanks for posting it here…
Movieman, you do know that since it’s inception and the presidency of Ike, that the crimes of the CIA have equalled anything done by the KGB and that they had destabilised Iran in the early ’50s to get rid of (with the active cullusion of Britain and with Kermit Roosevelt in charge, nephew of FDR, the ok of Churchill and Ike) of the Democratically elected leader…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat
They, the Iranians – have long memories. Tony Blair was perplexed about why they should be antagonistic to Britain. It was a BBC broadcast that had a coded msg to set off the plot. All this more than documented. These things have been going on for, no matter if the US administration was Right-wing or Left.
Here is a fascinating article – and this comes from someone who studies this on another level and has the sources to back it. This is about the Iranian protests.
http://www.vdare.com/roberts/090621_iran.htm
This is a link to all the other articles, you are curious but you will have to leave all idealism behind. This is the world of Real-Politik:
http://www.vdare.com/roberts/all_columns.htm
it’s a nice healthy dose of alternative thinking, and this guys is a right-winger who’s come to the same conclusions as Noam Chomsky.
PS: the frame you are applying to sanctions won’t fit the reality. The frame is more along the lines of what strategic interests did these countries hold. South Africa – none, except for some left-wing morality. Iraq, a once loyal chieftan disobeying the American Empire. As for Cuba, a “police state”…well, it’s not like Castro didn’t try to go democtratic. But with assasintion attempts (600 plus over the years according to some researchers), CIA infilitration via his sister and terrorist attacks inside and outside to cripple the country. Yep, that might lead to a “police state”.
Thanks Tony, I will check it out.
Bobby J, I’m not sure how this addresses my point. What does the strategic interest have to do with the effect of the sanctions? Or the morality of them, if we’re looking at it from the point of view of why THE LEFT (which is presumably uninterested in these strategic interests) supported sanctions on South Africa and opposed them on Iraq.
As for Castro, total nonsense. His communism may have reared its head after we gave him the finger, but his autocratic tendencies preceeded the covert war against his country. The man obviously had no interest, despite his original proclamations, in democratizing his country. Mind you, I too oppose the embargo – among other reasons, it gave him a great excuse (and now gives his brother a great excuse), as you demonstrated, to hold on to absolute power. And what do assassination attempts have to do with putting homosexuals in concentration camps? I don’t think Kennedy was gay…
Movieman, I’d like for you to point out a revolution in which there wasn’t bloodshed. You may point out the Iron Curtain coming down, and the velvet revolution but that was due to the Soviets standing down and even then, people still lost their lives.
The moment the Cuban’s go democratic, they will find US money privatising and owning their utilities, a far right dicatorships kicking in.
Imagine George Washingtn trying to maintain a democracy whilst having Benedict Arnold’s in the country and a slew of attempts to kill him. Lincoln suspended democratic safeguards and laws during the Civil War.
Do a search for “Operation Northwoods” and you may understand why he didn’t go all democratic. I doubt anyone could and survive for 50 years. The US has systematically terrorising the population for over 50 years including blowing up Airliners. And this from a nation that suffered the Pan Am atrocity.
Have a look at a smidgen of the US CIA operations into foreign countries and you will always see the same pattern. A moneyed elite subjugating into serfdom the masses, a left-wing socialist revolution (sometimes reclaiming their resources (oil, utilities, land-reform) – the CIA coming in under the radar, destabilising the Government. Check out the numerous Middle Eastern, Africian, Asian and South American countries they went into and created genocides (Re: East Timor, Vietnam, Salvador, ect) or assasinated the leaders.
What this has to do with Kennedy, I don’t know? Unless you are saying Castro had him killed? Which would be preposterous.
The difference between the two types of sanctions is that one comes from a moral standpoint, about isolating the leaders of the country, the others are about weakening a country to the point where it becomes easier to take military action. Bush’s pre-emption strategy fused by dodgy dossiers. Since the two world wars, this has been unlawful, but under Bush, not only was pre-emption allowed but also “limited” tactile nuclear weapons.
You may have to read something other than the offically sanctioned myth of the US, from ‘Time’ and it’s like. I suggest the link that I gave and Howard Zinn’s ‘A People’s History of the United States’. Though those documentaries are essential viewing too.
Daney passed away the same year Tarantino made his debut. How’s that for a metaphor?!
For me, Polanski’s THE PIANIST is the greatest film ever made about the Holocaust as it wasn’t really about the Holocaust, but instead about one man’s innate will to survive in the wake of the most inhumane of world events.
SCHINDLER’S LIST is not so tightly focused, and is indeed as much about the Holocaust as it is about a troubled man trying to do a good deed that is also self-serving/preserving as it is about a Jewish director desiring to remind future generations that we can never forget. Despite its unwieldy epic and sometimes muddled multilayered intentions, it is undoubtedly a masterpiece and chock full of unforgettable moments. It also certainly provides a certain catharsis, that JUST ANOTHER FILM BUFF alludes to in the coldest and most damning of terms, ” It is not the women in the shower who get a relief in discovering that it was just water, it is us – sitting safely in the theatre, munching popcorn, imagining falsely that we FEEL how it would be to be “out there”. Relief indeed is what we ultimately feel when it is over…but also repulsion and disgust that human beings could do such things to each other in the name of abstract ideas, perversions, religion or politics.
At any rate, how Ralph Fiennes, the chameleon that he is, has yet to win an Oscar is beyond me. His role here is one for the ages. I will never forget this character, and I will never forget this film.
Memories and images from the actual Holocaust exist somewhere out beyond this film, beyond any film, but one can’t deny for those who did not live through it, Hollywood’s version is now eternally intertwined with the reality – and if that is how future generations will learn about it, learn from it…then so be it. Better there exist “fiction” inspired by fact than no stories of the horrors at all.
David, you’ve expressed your stance perfectly. This one is superb:
“but also repulsion and disgust that human beings could do such things to each other in the name of abstract ideas, perversions, religion or politics”
But the problem is that such things are still being done to humans in the name of religion – the biggest fascist force of them all. That’s where films like SL tend to become complacent and near-sighted. They isolate the Holocaust from today’s world and treat the Nazis as if they were aliens. Resnais’ Night and Fog is one fitting example of the attitude that the new generation must possess towards the Holocaust.
I wrote about Lanzmann’s Shoah once:
“It is not as much important to know what exactly happened as it is to understand what is claimed to have happened should not happen. That is to say, it is not a question of our response to a historical truth as it is of our action to an eternal (and now imminent) possibility.”
Films like SL want to make the Holocaust a historical artifact to be marveled.
And I’ll re quote one line that I wrote about Inglourious Basterds (in defence of both Pulp Fiction and Inglourious Basterds against the likes of Schindler’s List):
“It’s certainly less exploitative to heavily exaggerate a reality that never was than to mildly dress up a reality that was.”
At the end of IB, QT subtly calls all of us Nazis. But we laugh, clap and come out with a smile.
Kudos to David Schleicher for sure! Spectacular talk here David!
JAFB — interesting. Genocide and inhumanity still reign supreme…and films like this do seem to paint a picture that these horrors were only in the past, and that we can never forget them…and as long as we never forget it will never happen again. That does seem to be a very near-sighted approach, as we have not forgotten and it does still happen.
I like how you pulled in QT’s IB to the discussion…that is a film I have debated ad naseum on this site and my own. (Hint: I am a great defender of it). I don’t really have much left to say about it personally, but I like what you say about it.
Yes David and yes to JAFB on his initial point. I was just reading this week about the atrocities in the conflict raging in the Congo since 1996. They have recently estimated that about 6 million have died, while the rest of the world sits calmly idle. Where have we heard that number before?
Your point is well-taken but I would add two caveats.
1) Lanzmann’s right in a sense but, aside from the future imperative, the historical truth is also important. One need not cancel out the other; contemporary genocides and the Holocaust are fundamentally the same in that they involve mass killings of innocent people but they are also fundamentally different. One of the key horrors of the Holocaust is that it occurred in an “advanced” civilization and proved that man’s barbarism is not a function of supposed primitivism and that progress does not necessarily temper man’s inhumanity to man, indeed it may facilitate it. That’s a truth that has to be treated separately from any parallels with other historical or contemporary events. Ultimately, which factor is more important? Ethically, Lanzmann’s would seem to be, because it holds the possibilty of changing the future, it is active rather than contemplative. But I don’t see it as either/or and think both aspects of history must be given their due.
2) This is the more important caveat, because it cuts right to the heart of what Spielberg’s moral achievement really is. Many viewers have felt that the film brings the Holocaust “alive”. Because he works in such a populist format, and facilitates such emotional involvement, the work gets too people in a way more measured works might not. This has the effect of making them feel the Holocaust in an “immediate” sense, not as a distanced historical spectacle but as something raw and real and painful, something that really happened, and hence could happen again. I don’t think the various critiques of the film for its “entertainment” aspect really appreciate this contribution.
MovieMan, one great reply after other. Top Stuff. You have landed at the crux of the disagreement between the two poles of viewer response to SL:
“This has the effect of making them feel the Holocaust in an “immediate” sense, not as a distanced historical spectacle but as something raw and real and painful, something that really happened, and hence could happen again.”
Its detractors, a part of me, feels otherwise (SS’s choice of B&W itself seems to make the Holocaust a thing of distant past, detached from reality). As a mere pampering of bourgeois morality that would soon be forgotten (I had such a devastating experience while watching To Kill A Mocking Bird too, many would agree, but did that “movie” make people more tolerant? I’m not sure). If people really understand the gravity of the Holocaust by watching the sufferers (I wouldn’t really want to equate these sequences of SL to snuff, porn or other such derogatory titles), it is only good for them. But as such, to me, the film does seem to lack exploration – historic, psychological and personal.
On a side note, this is the kind of discussion that I’ve been wanting to have about movies. Thanks MovieMan and everyone. Great stuff.
Here is the crux of the debate: does the film’s visceral effect – which is in part its entertainment value – deepen understanding of suffering, or does it obfuscate it? Perhaps, ultimately, it does both – heightening an immediate emotional identification with the victims, while also deceiving us with the “safety” of the experience. Where we may differ is the emphasis we place: is it on the genuine compassion and empathy which arises in viewers, or the fact that this can arise while they are still enjoying the film? Can one “partially” experience the horror or is that like saying you’re “partially” pregnant – you either are or you aren’t?
Actually, I’m sympathetic to both arguments. On the one hand, if we’re going to talk about the film’s ability to raise awareness and incite compassion, it has demonstrably done just this. To most people, thorny issues about ethical aesthetic representation don’t matter, and a film has to entertain before it can do anything else. By making Schindler’s List entertaining, Spielberg ensured the widest possible audience and engaged the greatest number of people he could. I think, ultimately, that arguments about Schindler’s detrimental effect on viewers are too abstract and impractical – viewers don’t exist in a vaccuum and Schindler has to be judged not against the ideal Holocaust film but against the realities of viewership and the marketplace.
That doesn’t mean, however, that on an intellectual plane these issues don’t have validity. I myself am pretty ambivalent about the ethics of Schindler’s List. As I grow older and see it repeatedly I’m troubled by being “entertained” by a story whose emotional power is drawn from a real mass murder, and I’m uneasy with the emotional manipulation Spielberg sometimes employs, which seems less honest than an approach which reminds us our inability to, on the one hand, experience vicariously the pain of others, and on the other, to experience pain and in any way value the experience (except perhaps as a harsh lesson or as a masochist, if one runs that way).
Yet despite these qualms, I judge a great movie by aesthetics, and also by how thought-provoking it is. An ethically ambigious work may, in this regard, be greater than an ethically sound one. I’m uneasy with the approach Spielberg takes here, an unease which has grown over time. But this unease may actually make me like the film more, instead of less – because it makes it even more compelling and multi-layered.
Personally, I think Allan musta been smoking crack when he came up with this placement. Say what you want about the “sentimental” ending (I happen to think it works well, dramatically (and this is a movie), everything before it is unforgettable. I do believe that there are certain sacred cows in art. You don’t knock Beethoven. Mozart or Bach. Michelangelo and DaVinci were gods. The statue of David is a masterpiece. Ingmar Bergman is cinemas gift and Welle’s CITIZEN KANE is a work of genius no matter how you look at it. Like THE GODFATHER, THE WIZARD OF OZ, 2001 and THE SEVEN SAMURAI, SCHINDLER’S LIST is that indisputably great film that follows you with its imagery and sounds for years after seeing it. I know its Allan’s list, its his opinion. I’ll defend his rite. I, myself, would feel imbarassed to have this film anywhere other than the top 10.
Be embarrassed away, Dennis…it belongs where I put it…
“It belongs where I put it”
Again, you are speaking for yourself. I say it belongs higher. But fair enough, it’s your countdown here. You are the one writing the essays.
Only because you changed your list, it was originally in the 20s, but then again, you change your list by the week…
No I do not change my list by the week. I submitted an original list and then days later re-examined it, modified it, and haven’t altered anything since.
I’ll delve into this film later. For the moment, though: Schindler’s List really rubs our faces in the ethical dilemma or representing suffering as entertainment and the film is, in part at least, entertainment. This is troublesome but guess what, guys – it ain’t the only film that does this! In fact, most films do and in a way Spielberg deserves credit for making it so egregious that we start to be troubled by it (even though I this was not his intention).
And I’m a bit queasy about the notion that the Holocaust is off-limits while other forms of human suffering are not.
Jamie, the problem with SL is not that it has no heart, but that it has too much and runs the risk of being manipulative. I have never had a “cold” experience watching this film and I can be a pretty distanced and desensitized viewer at times. It always wrecks me.
It’s certainly open to criticism but that sort of overwhelming effect has to at least be considered. It’s the sort of catharsis Rage Against the Machine with their whiny lyrics could only dream of.
“Jamie, the problem with SL is not that it has no heart, but that it has too much and runs the risk of being manipulative. I have never had a “cold” experience watching this film and I can be a pretty distanced and desensitized viewer at times. It always wrecks me.”
I think you misunderstood me, or I wasn’t clear enough. What I meant by that was it lacks Spielberg’s heart. The film is full of ‘Hallmark Heart’, and I think it is detrimental to the film.
To each his own… and to say Spielberg>RATM! Blasphemous! lol.
I think we can all agree that the story of Oskars real life widow vs. Spielberg is quite disgusting.
The moment that what looks like black raindrops falling against a white sky appears. The hum of Itzhak Perlmans violin slowly slinking deeper and deeper. Clicking, audible, sounding like a typewriter, no, scissors. The slow pan back of the camera as it reveals the naked women in the wash room as their hair it being cut down to the scalp. The door of the chamber being opened and the fat Nazi women shouting out to move on for cleansing as the naked women clutch onto each other, some frightened, some with tears. I’ll never forget the feeling of my throat closing in desparation, feeling that I’m in the room with them and in that moment where the thought “today is the day I will die” runs through my mind. How many films or directors can put you, or anyone in a moment as well as Spielberg did here. This is a story, a place in history annd a film testament that should never be taken lightly or forgotten. In my mind it is the greatest American Movie of the 90’s. It moves beyond film to become an experience.
Dennis – awesome!!!!!! You have a great knack for stabbing right into the heart of movies and cutting away the “fat” of the debates around them. The violin strings here get me every time I hear them, and the emotions and images come flooding back. It’s about connecting to the suffering…it’s about connecting to the humanity that was destroyed so inhumanely….it’s not about entertainment or artists’ motives….it’s about the connection to the past and the determination to never ever forget what happened.
I don’t think films like this are meant to be documents of history inch by inch, but documents of communal nightmares mile by mile.
Indeed David, Dennis is often quite brilliant, and when it comes to SCHINDLER’S LIST, he has been for years top-rank in conveying it’s essence and attributes.
So late at night, yet already some extraordinary discussion that really has me smiling from ear to ear. Just Another Film Buff again demonstrates his awesome grasp of cinema, (Get over to that man’s site guys and gals!!) and Jamie, Dennis, David Schleicher and Movie Man have fuled the discourse with awesome counterpoints and Godard (and Polanski) reference points. You guys are tremendous.
I believe SCHINDLER’S LIST, which won virtually every Best Picture prize in 1993 from critics’ groups nationwide and abroad has held the stage despite an admitted downgrading of its merits by some. Spielberg’s emotional style is not everyone’s cup of tea, yet the film continues to move on the highest level.
I believe it belongs in the Top 10, where is where it is on my own list. More tomorrow I’m sure.
Though I disagree with Allan’s placement, and am slightly disappointed the film places so low (though initially I expected it even lower, before being convinced otherwise), I like his approach to it here. Acknowledging the flaws but dealing with the film as the virtuoso stylistic piece it is. If we can accept Tarantino’s shallow, glib playacting, in which nothing is at stake and our ethical and moral alarm bells are stuck on snooze – and, by the way, I can and have accepted such – we should be able to accept Spielberg’s troubling if well-intended masterwork, in which emotions and moral senses are engaged and often disturbed. In a way, this is the flip-film to Birth of a Nation, just as noble in its purpose as Griffith’s film was malign, yet both subsume history to entertainment and a certain mythologizing sensibility; and both are virtuoso pieces which tantalize us with their masterful style even as we are disturbed by the content.
This is the tradition Spielberg belongs to – the tradition of the big, visceral, often sentimental, always emotionally rich and stylistically commanding – it’s one of the central traditions of the cinema and I celebrate it even as I critique it. Without it, the movies would be a much thinner field and many of us would not have even come to them in the first place.
Indeed Movie Man; I broached the emotional sweep of teh director in a general sense before. I think I am responsible for ‘convincing you otherwise’ as I was convinced this world make Allan’s top ten.
DAVID SCHLIECHER-IMO I don’t even think its close. THE PIANIST is a film about a man moving through the Holocaust whereas I believe SCHINDLER’S LIST is the audience put IN the Holocaust. However. Where we will agree is Ralph Fiennes. His portrayal as the odious Nazi commandant is the stuff of legendary performance. A man whose heart can turn cold on a dime and a mentality of pure might makes right is psychopathically frightening. He captures in every scene he is in the natural way of thinking true monsters possess. Osxar most certainly had his head up his ass when they denied Fiennes the gold statue in 1993. Like Joe Pesci in GOODFELLA’S, Anthony Hopkins in THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, Sean Penn in DEAD MAN WALKING and Kevin Spacey in AMERICAN BEAUTY, this is a performance for the time capsules. Fiennes is frightening, harrowing, haunting, and unforgettable. One of the purest interpretations of evil incarnate ever done on screen. The moment he examines his fingernails in the bathroom still haunts me.
Dennis – that image of Fiennes just gave me chills.
I suppose in even “larger big picture high level” terms…to put it simply THE PIANIST is about SURVIVAL. SCHINDLER’S LIST is about DEATH. I prefer the survival approach…but you make an excellent point, and you are correct…I don’t think there is another non-documentary film the puts the audience in such direct contact with the overall event as SCHINDLER’S LIST.
I would say ‘The Pianist’ is about the tragedy and the failure of human-kind, whilst SL is about triumph and success. Or as Kunbrick disdainfully put it, Spielberg made a success story of one humanity’s darkest stories.
I still think of it as a masterpiece 95% of the time. I think, I prefer ‘The Pianist’ and ‘Conspiracy’ (starring Brangh and about the meeting that sealed the holocaust).
Actually, scretch that…despite it flaws…it’s the equal of those.
Bobby J — certainly a revealing way to put it and compare the two films — I think agree with you.
I always like to know what Kubrick had to say!
OFF TOPIC: Here are two awesome articles (which agree with my own assessment) that Inglourious Basterds, and perhaps all of QT, is much more ethical than any of these “historical movies” put together.
http://www.thevalve.org/go/valve/article/tarantino_is_an_inglourious_basterd/
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/the-deep-morals-of-inglourious-basterds/
WHOA! Bold statement there! I LOVE IT!
Another source of great writing on this subject is the (now out of print) ‘Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust’ by Annette Insdorf.
Though out of print, cheapish copies can be found on amazon, or in used book stores (I found my copy in one that had multiple copies). I am sure all the top notch cinephiles around here would find it a great source of information on this subject.
This…I gotta read. Thanks a million Jamie.
Years ago I wrote an essay on this very subject, the ethical dilemmas and varied critical reaction to Schindler’s List. I should look it up and see if I can pilfer some old points for the present day!
And is is probably the best article that I’ve about him
“The tragedy of Tarantino”………
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-the-tragedy-of-tarantino-he-has-proved-his-critics-right-1777147.html
My dear SAM, those are kind words you write above. I have, exhaustively, championed this film since I first saw it in 1993 where it took, literally, my breath away. Spielberg uses JURASSIC PARK as his scratching post to sharpen his claws and, using that films same freneticism, applies it to SCHINDLERS LIST. The liguidation of the ghetto sequence is a masterpiece of camera, sound and editing that ONLY a top flight action director like Spielberg can pull off. However, considering he is delving into uncovering his personal roots infuses said freneticism with a blind obligation to dehumanise any tiny iota of humanity in the Nazis that might, amazingly slip through. By doing so the horror level hits a fever pitch and, in that, elevates the sequence and the film into experience. No other director could have made SCHINDLER’S LIST.
I will attest to Dennis’ “championing” this film. When it first came out I remember him saying it was more than a film “it was an event.”
A masterful article on Schindler’s List – The “technical” marvel.
http://www.cineobscure.com/?p=32
DAVID SCHLEICHER-my last comment before bed (have to be at work by 5). Allan’s placement is trobling to me, and me alone as I write this. I don’t go against him, I defend his opinion. As for the film, I don’t necessarily believe that a survivors take ala THE PIANIST can truly give an audience the full spectrum of audacious horrors of the Holocaust in total. What you get in THE PIANIST is one persons account. With SCHINDLER you get the whole thing. The women’s point of view, the men’s desparation in holding things together. Tactics of all kinds for survival, some eventually smiling as they they give up. The death and the luring (the most hideous of all) of infant children to a death they don’t know is coming. And, of course, the people dead on their feet, lead like lambs for the slaughter, because its just to exhausting to fight. Heat, cold, tension, are all experiences THEY went through, and we go through in this film. I like THE PIANIST. I felt SCHINDLERS LIST.
I had The Godfather in the 20s in the 1970s and have had other eclectic films lower down on their decade placements than convention dictates. This cannot be a shock, dennis, NO MOVIE IS SACRED. I had KANE fourth in the 1940s when it seems a given it has to be no 1.
Yes, the selections I have above it may trouble you, but I believe our proctor had the Spielberg even lower on his placement and nothing was said. I believe someone said yesterday under GOODFELLAS that every poll has either SCHINDLER’S LIST or GOODFELLAS as no 1, and that may be the same with our poll as it takes in everyone’s opinion, meaning convention will doubtless win out over diversity, but my countdown is a separate issue and is judged purely on what I saw as the best 90s films when I drew up this list months ago. Besides, I am known for my “screw convention” attitude, there’s a lot more out there than the Tarantino/Spielberg/Scorsese worshipping so-called film buffs (those who feast on Empire and Total Film say) would have you believe. if there are some films that seem to be carved in stone by the finger of Cecil B.de Mille as sacred texts, it’s time people started looking out for the cinematic apocrypha. Not that there’s many of them above, there are some conventional choices, obvious choices, still to come on the countdown. Indeed, I’d say my 90s countdown is one of the most predictable I have done – my 2000s will be less predictable when we get to it, I can tell you that.
Instead of being troubled by its placement, and thinking “he must be bonkers”, wait to see how it plays out and think to yourself “damn, if this is 23, I must seek out 1-22”
Good post, your assertion “No film is sacred (in CAPS)” is quite a side to champion I think. I applauded you in the ‘Goodfellas’ thread for placing it so ‘low’ so I can be introduced (perhaps) to some REAL gems the rest of the way. The ‘low’ placing of this is (a film I like even less the ‘Goodfellas’) is more of the same. Kudo’s (and a tip of the glass).
Dennis…that is why I initially said THE PIANIST is not really about the Holocaust…it is about survival….and in a roundabout way, is about the Holocaust because I think it shows the only way to “overcome” such an ungodly horrific series of events that you have no control over….is simply to survive them. I personally find that a more “uplifting” and emotionally and psychologically satisfying message and thus I find THE PIANIST to be the superior
SCHINDLER’S LIST is all of those things you say…and IS about the Holocaust…the event…and is different beast…and has its own merits…I would not question anyone who prefers Spielberg’s film to Polanski’s. Both are masterpieces in my mind.
When Scorsese decides to make a film on HHDL, it is not the politics of Tibet he is interested in. He merely sees himself in HHDL – as a man caught between (responsibilities of) heaven and (realities of) earth. He does not plunder history, he merely locates himself in it. And also in Taxi Driver, Last Temptation of Christ, The Aviator and Raging Bull. So is the case with Polanski’s Pianist. His Holocaust is just a metaphor. Polanski sees himself in Wladyslaw Spilzman as a person who is unable to do what his heart says, unable to detach himself from the world’s brutal affairs – the same thing Polanski has expressed in every movie since Repulsion. That might be one good reason why both of them turned down the offeres to direct SL. They just couldn’t see a part of them in Schindler.
But Spielberg tries to speak for every one. His Schindler (a stylized Spiderman) is a product of his knowledge and not experience. It is impersonal cinema, IMHO, a la Attenborough’s textbookish biopics.
NOTE: I’m not a troll. One half of me says that SL is the greatest experience I’ve had at the movies and the other half says that it’s only worthy of reproach. Through this wonderful discussion (Thanks to Allan, Sam, David, Jamie, Dennis, MovieMan and everyone else I missed), I merely want to get my stance towards the film right.
Another fantastic comment, my friend!
No no no – I respect your disregard for Schindler’s List, but you’re way off the mark here in your reading of the movie. Schindler IS Spielberg, at least as represented in the movie.
Keep in mind how Spielberg began his career – sneaking on to the Universal lot with a briefcase and a suit, pretending he worked at the studio, while sneaking around and making contacts amongst the actual workers. He was hired by Sid Sheinberg a few weeks before graduating from community college (he never finished his degree) and moved right on to directing a television premiere with Joan Crawford, wooing her with deliveries of Coca-Cola to her dressing room every day (her late husband had been the head of Coke). He was 22 years old at this time.
I’m not saying Spielberg and Schindler are identical – Spielberg never seems to have acted as amorally (profiting off of war, using slave labor) nor as heroically as Schindler, but that’s what onscreen representations usually are, an exaggeration for effect. Nor does Spielberg seem to have been the womanizer Schindler was; and while Schindler abhors the work for the presentation, Spielberg is famous as someone who could probably work on any position in the crew, he’s so competent and knowledgeable.
But in a fundamental sense, Spielberg probably saw a lot of himself in Schindler – ironically, more than he seems to have seen himself in the Jews, which is why Schindler is a more well-rounded, fully-felt character than any of the Jewish ones (though Ben Kingsley is quite good as Stern). He’s always been the showman, a bit of con artist, a grand romanticizer of life, and at heart a sentimentalist. Both men have a strong combination of chutzpah and heartfelt emotionalism.
Spielberg’s is one of the least impersonal oeuvres (at least up until the 00s) in cinematic history – he’s so misread so much of the time it drives me batty. Dislike him if you will, criticize his sentimentalism and enthusiastic flourishes, but if I have to read one more characterization of his films as “impersonal” or “lukewarm” or “vanilla” I think I’ll fly off to whatever planet E.T.’s on and hang out with someone who gets it.
For whatever it’s worth, Spielberg and Godard are my two favorite directors and I wouldn’t do without either or the various styles and world visions they encompass between them.
(P.S. while I believe all of what I said above, my tone of frustration is somewhat tongue-in-cheek; I don’t want anyone to think I’m telling them to shut up or anything – like JAFB I really enjoy this challenging back-and-forth. But those are my thoughts on the matter.)
Touche, MovieMan. Now we’re talking! I love this paragraph:
“But in a fundamental sense, Spielberg probably saw a lot of himself in Schindler – ironically, more than he seems to have seen himself in the Jews, which is why Schindler is a more well-rounded, fully-felt character than any of the Jewish ones (though Ben Kingsley is quite good as Stern). He’s always been the showman, a bit of con artist, a grand romanticizer of life, and at heart a sentimentalist. Both men have a strong combination of chutzpah and heartfelt emotionalism.”
And that is where my problem lies with SL.
If SS see himself merely as a romanticizer, he is, I think, being only dishonest to himself and, hence, to us. He does not seem to confront his identity. Instead, he dwells on surface characteristics. I don’t have a problem with that.
Here is an interview with Colin MacCabe where he pans Spielberg harshly. I agree with him on one point though:
What makes Schindler change at all? As far as I could say, it was the horrific images of atrocity. But, is that a good enough reason for a con man who knew his tricks to drop everything? I mean, isn’t this gesture a mere middle-class sympathetic gaze that wears off soon? It, in fact, mirrors our view of SL, looking at a few “beautiful” images and weeping till the pop-corn runs out.
But most of all, what irks me is the fact that SS decides to break off the film’s POV from that of Oskar and decides to show “us” what happens in the ghettos and int he chambers. I would have been more comfortable if he had romanticized the life of Oscar alone, tracking only his developments and his point of view. Instead, SS tries to evoke empathy by showing the Jews as sufferers and, as Aaron Brody says, pours out our own racist feelings into a safe vessel called the Nazis.
JAFB, I appreciate and even sympathize with this comment more than the last one. Indeed the troubling aspect of SL is not that Spielberg’s approach to the central characters is impersonal – it’s anything but; rather, that his approach to the actual victims of the atrocity is somewhat impersonal (ironic, given his own background and his repeated avowal that the film brought him closer in touch with his own Judaism – a fact I don’t at all doubt, while also admitting that there’s little evidence on the screen except perhaps in an avoidance which made itself felt elsewhere).
How’s that for a run-on sentence?
Anyway, I’m still troubled and slightly annoyed by some of McCabe’s arguments and by the general way opposition to Schindler’s List is expressed. As previously stated, I think there’s a lot to be criticized on a Platonic level (and believe me, I value idealistic arguments as well as pragmatic ones, but believe they should be differentiated). But McCabe’s criticisms smack of self-loathing disguised as social critique (and lest that seem too harsh towards poor Mr. McCabe, let me say I mean “self-loathing” in a more general sense than a personal one, the self as type rather than as individual). Whenever intellectuals snipe about “middle-class” or “bourgeois” values (something I’ve done myself at times) you know they are essentially indulging in guilt-tripping.
What is necessarily “middle class” about compassion or empathy? Indeed, the implicit assumption that the poor are incapable of feeling similar emotions smacks of condescension (indeed, I find a lot of cultural criticism to be an unseemly mix of half-digested leftover Marxist dogma and a near-aristocratic aura of above-it-all alienation). I sympathize with some of McCabe’s unease, as I expressed above, but I’d rather see its personal ramifications than try to tie it to the broader audience reaction: as individual response and personal responsibility rather than cultural condemnation.
But I’m sort of figuring this out as I type and even as I go back to retype it may not entirely cohere. Perhaps I’ll come around and change my opinion on the matter; but this is where my thinking’s at right now.
Movie Man, I completely understand your points.
I, too, am not comfortable with MacCabe zeroing in on SS for all the exploitative moves of Hollywood. Surely, the studio execs are to be blamed too. And SS has made so many good movies that are never even talked about – Duel, The Color Purple etc.
The “bourgeois” is, at least nowadays, a mentality rather than an economic division. Everyone, including me, who enjoys films like SL should be placed in this category. It is that group of people which says “oh my, there is so much misery in the world” while their mind thinks “whatever happened to the cola I ordered?”. It is the same case with people (read Hollywood writers) who assume all tribes to be basically “noble beings”, animals to be “humanistic” and the poor to be “morally good”. I almost laugh when I see films that claim to celebrate the human spirit DESPITE the poverty, misery etc. I mean, do these “poor people” ever feel the same way about themselves? No. They are oblivious to all this talk. Survival becomes just a habit. This safe distance that we assume indirectly places obligation for the “poor, oppressed and uncivilized” to be “noble and good”. It is this false assumption that we can truly empathize with horror and misery through cinema. I have always believed that true empathy comes from discovery and experience and not from information or visceral impact. That’s why I’m so uncomfortable with SL.
But I completely understand your ambivalence, which is shared by me, about the film. I think it is only healthy. Thanks.
JAFB, that’s partially what troubles me about McCabe’s and others’ use of the term: it IS an economic term, and by shifting the ground to culture, utilizers are able to take advantage of the moral overtones of Marxism, without the specificity that the ideology demands. And presto! Aesthetic distastes and personal prejudices (some of which stem from snobbery more than compassion for the downtrodden) are sealed with imprimateur of “official” social science.
I’d almost prefer the more honest term “liberal” which radicals used to use disdainfully, before conservatives consigned all on the left to fall under that label. At least it’s political – having to do with the mind – rather than economic – having to do with the pocketbook. Even that grates, though, because it feels like a pose.
Most of all, I don’t like the way MacCabe’s use of “middle-class” “others” those outside of its parameters, suggesting that compassion and sympathy are bourgeois traits alone. I guess I’d have to read more of the interview to see if I’m mischaracterizing his view here. Do you have the whole text?
By the way, I think there are two somewhat contradictory strands in your own comment. On the one hand, the idea that a viewer can never understand about someone else’s life just from watching a movie; on the other hand that there’s nothing TO understand, hence your comment “survival becomes a habit.” My problem, and perhaps you share it, is the categorization of people by groups,
Perhaps “otherness” is a self-fulfilling prophecy: maybe these so-called bourgeois viewers (including those who critique themselves, openly or indirectly by critiquing the “middle class”), in a sort of intellectual jujitsu, actually “other” themselves, cutting themselves of by viewing these other people as somehow fundamentally “different” when they are not. Thinking “there’s so much misery in the world” and “where’s my next coffee” may be a fundamentally human trait; one shared by the supposedly miserable themselves, as you seem to suggest.
Anyway, I’m not comfortable throwing these terms around willy-nilly; I know too many people, including myself, who are not easily categorizable. That’s another thing that irks me about the stance of many cultural critics, the idea that someone is primarily definable by their class, gender, race, nationality, sexuality, etc. That’s part of what forms a personality and a mind, but not the whole part, and probably less important than a lot of highly individual factors.
In the process of trying to be open-minded, many of these intellectuals actually become more reductive.
Movie Man, what I meant by the “survival” statement was that the way we feel about these “suffering Jews” and “poor kids of Calcutta” are much different from what the reality is. Just that one should never confuse it with real understanding.
“that someone is primarily definable by their class, gender, race, nationality, sexuality, etc. That’s part of what forms a personality and a mind, but not the whole part, and probably less important than a lot of highly individual factors.” – Spot on. Brilliant. It all comes down to the individual, even if there are larger factors at work. And it is up to each one of us to strive to grow out of stereotypes to do what one feels is right, instead of theorizing it all and, like you said, trying to separate yourself into two.
Strive to grow out of, and strive to avoid falling into. Sometimes I feel like somehow, somewhere (and I’m not sure how and where exactly) critical deconstructions of the whole notion of the “other” turned into renewed constructions of the same, albeit now with alleged “sympathy” for the outsider. As if in critiquing humanism for falling too short, some threw the baby out with the bathwater and killed humanism altogether.
Schindler has many of the characteristics of Billy Wilder’s wheeler-dealers but with the saving grace of redemption.
What a comment thread! An excellent review of Spielberg’s film. I think that Fiennes’ performance as still the best of his career (with his work in The English Patient as a close second).
Spider beats both.
He was quite good in Spider and I enjoyed both the film and his performance. But, for whatever it’s worth, it didn’t have a fraction of the impact Schindler’s List and Goethe had on me. Yeah, that’s a fairly subjective barometer, butu there you have it.
Movie Man, I wanted to say precisely the same thing, but I didn’t wanted to get into trouble. I admire your honesty here.
I would agree with ‘Spider’ a film I love, but what I think of most when I think of Fienne’s is his character in ‘In Bruges’ yelling to his wife: “You are a fucking inanimate object!” Gets me every time. I love that film.
Film Dr.: Great, enthusiastic comment! I’m with you.
He was superb in ‘The End of the Affair’.
I thought SPIDER was a bit of a one note performance…an excellent and masterfully played note…but one note none the less and the film left me wanting so much more.
Fiennes has had such an “underrated” career arc. I think his Goethe is his finest and most multilayered and complex performance. But he was equally brilliant in THE ENGLISH PATIENT, THE END OF THE AFFAIR, and THE CONSTANT GARDNER.
As for IN BRUGES….fucking brilliant movie and fucking brilliant performance from Fiennes (again, he should’ve won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for this one, but he wasn’t even nominated!)…and Jaime, that is one of my favorite lines from any movie ever…and it’s all because of Fiennes’ delivery.
ALLAN-While I may question or ponder your placement of this film, I think I have stated time and again that, while I DON’T agree, I DO DEFEND your rite to opinion and choice. I’m not challenging you and, most times (and you know this), been your biggest supporter. I needn’t be reminded by you how you analyze and dissect the reasonings behind said choices. As far as sacred cows are concerned, while you may not believe in them, and that’s another rite for you, I happen to believe in them. SCHINDLER made your 23 slot. I’m neither bitching or complaining. My list will show my feelings about this film as this list has shown yours.
Interesting that in over 60 comments, zero acknowledgment for Thomas Keneally’s novel as the source material. The achievement here is equally Keneally’s as the guy who did the research and put a story together and wrote the characterisations. In other words, the film was a team effort. The auteur frenzy here I find over-blown, particularly when the reality is that Spielberg is not a profound thinker. Joel’s quasi hero-worship is over-the-top. Schindler despite his flaws took risks, Spielberg never has.
THIS IS interesting, Tony. I wonder how many have read the book (I have not) to be able to compare and contrast and see how much of the film’s authorship belongs to Spielberg.
I ultimately think he made the film he wanted to make…and I do think, although he rarely works on the screenplays, Spielberg, in terms of his “control” of his films from pre to post production certainly qualifies as an auteur.
Careful, Tony, I expressed almost the same exact sentiment above: Schindler may have been more flawed than Spielberg, but he was also more heroic.
By the way, Keneally’s book played a large part in the aforementioned essay I wrote years ago, and I’ll endeavor to bring it into the discussion at a later date (not sure I can find it right now) though by then things may have died down here somewhat.
Because the discussion is centering around the film’s aesthetic rather than its content, it’s unsurprising that Schindler’s Ark – a work of nonfiction – has not been mentioned.
Correction: the work is considered a novel, as Kenneally added fictitious dialogue and closer descriptions than would be possible in a pure work of history. I did read the book, but seven years ago, and the impression I retained was more factual than novelistic – the book is a sort of hybrid between fiction and nonfiction and, as I recall, reads more like a nonfiction account than conventional novel. At any rate, I am still unsurprised that the conversation has focused on Spielberg, particularly as right away it was the film’s style which was under attack and/or defense.
If we’re talking about the screenplay, than Steven Zaillian would be the one to cite – and my understanding is akin to David’s, in that Spielberg was a “hands-on” auteur who may not have written screenplays but was deeply involved in developing many of his projects, rather than just shooting whatever someone else put in a script.
Schindler has its melodramatic moments, but it also has moments of satire and black comedy, and I thought it was hilariously audacious of Spielberg to throw in the gag about Goeth’s hanging at the end amid all the pieties. The debate about representing the Holocaust reminds me of my own thoughts about nuclear-war films. I’ve always thought that many of the more acclaimed ones sent a deceptive message by leaving people alive at the end while one of the more denigrated, On The Beach, struck me as more correct by ending with everyone gone. But we ought to remember that the film is about Schindler and his list, not the Holocaust. It’s about rescue and survival and such a story has as much a right to be told as anyone’s version of the larger truth of the event.
“… and such a story has as much a right to be told as anyone’s version of the larger truth of the event.”
Agreed 100%. I’m not one that things this movie is beyond being criticized, but it seems like the major criticism comes from people being upset that he Spielberg didn’t make the Holocaust film that THEY wanted to see made.
Sam, I would have to disagree when you say the film is not about the Holocaust. I would say it is most definitely about the Holocaust, and Schindler and his List are simply the McGuffin(s).
Or wait, maybe you are right and it’s the other way around? The Holocaust put people in the seats to see a movie about Schindler and his List????
No, no, no….I think the film IS about the Holocaust….and as I believe Dennis and some others have implied…it almost IS the Holocaust.
David: This entire thread begs the question of what a film that is about the Holocaust as an event should be like. The problem with applying any proposed standard to Schindler’s List is that a movie about Schindler is necessarily about an exception to the rule, and the exceptional will inevitably be foregrounded. An authentic Holocaust movie, it seems, must make one point clear above all: that millions of people were killed. But the point of Schindler’s List is that here were a few thousand who were not killed. The norm of the Holocaust is a gruesomely vivid background for a story about people not getting killed, as is most plainly shown when Schindler fetches his charges out of the gas chamber itself. If that’s the Holocaust, then the Holocaust was a melodrama, a moment of suspense. If you think not, then Schindler is not a film primarily about the Holocaust, whatever Spielberg himself might say.
Samuel, I’m going to have to disagree with you. I think SCHINDLER’S LIST is not about those who survived but those who died. Spielberg, with his great commercial sensibilities, had to give the audience some hope, so he saw the story of Schindler and his List as way to show that some people did survive. But I do stand by my original thought that Schindler and his List are the McGuffins…for what it seems to me, what Spielberg really wanted to show, and in some ways reveled in showing…was ALL THAT DEATH. The fact that those on Schindler’s List survived is the stereotypical happy ending to one of humanity’s darkest passages. What Spielberg wanted to show was those cattle cars…those gas chambers…the immense shock of mass killing.
Polanski’s PIANIST on the other hand, seemed to have one goal: the depiction of one man’s survival. That is why (and correct me if I am wrong for it has been some years since I have watched the film) almost all of the death scenes and Holocaust horrors depicted by Polanski are those of a “singular” nature….the old man in the wheelchair being tossed from the balcony…the little boy getting crushed to death trying to escape through a hole in the wall…a row of people one by one being shot in the head. I believe there may have been a cattle car scene…but nothing like what was shown by Spielberg.
And that is why I think THE PIANIST was primarily about SURVIVAL and SCHINDLER’S LIST was about DEATH.
David, this is a brilliant proposition here, but I must give this some thought. S.L.’s ending doesn’t quite support this idea, but much of the film does of course.
Sam — I think the ending of SCHINDLER’S LIST does in fact support my theory that the film is about the Holocaust and DEATH. It appears to be a “happy” ending — the survivors and their families coming together with the families of those who died and laying flowers on the graves. Is it not a scene honoring the dead…celebrating DEATH? Only on the surface does it seem to be about survival…but in the minds of the survivors, it seems to me…they are still back there…in the black and white images — struck by all the DEATH. Haunted. Forever. Not by their survival but by the deaths of the 6 million who did not survive.
That’s the trouble Spielberg gets in from people like Jamie & JAFB, and even more sympathetic viewers than myself. That at times Spielberg steps away from Schindler’s perspective to take a more “omniscient” view of the Holocaust. This is where the movie becomes ethically problematic – by taking this narrative and stylistic (and marketing) approach, Spielberg (perhaps inadvertently) implies that his movie is able to contain the event itself, which is at the very least troubling. Of course, it also makes the film brutally powerful and deeply thought-provoking.
“implies that his movie is able to contain the event itself, which is at the very least troubling. ” – absolutely, absolutely.
Once again Tony speaking in an authoritative voice for all. If Spielberg NEVER takes risks he wouldn’t have made SCHINDLERS LIST. As far as hero-worship for this director is concerned, I say: why not? I’m in my mid-forties, child of the 60’s and 70’s. In my lifetime there were, in American cinema, a few film-makers that stood tall for us the same way guys like John Ford, Alfred Hitchcock and Walt Disney were for generations before us. For me and, I’m sure, others of my generation, those directors were guys like Woody Allen, Francis Coppola, Marty Scorsese and STEVEN SPIELBERG. Yea, sure, Steven made thrill-rides. But, they were expertly made thrill rides that displayed ingenuity, wit and heart. I love 85% of the films he has made both before and after SCHINDLER. Yea, the guy is a bit of a hero. Your own definition of art is what enriches us. There are at least two films he has made, and this is one, that follow your own definition.
Hey Dennis. My intention is to speak for myself only. Perhaps my mode of expression is at fault. I respect your opinions and admire your enthusiasm. Disagree with me yes, but (and this also goes for others counseling me to be ‘careful’ and so on) please let me have my say without always having to defend my right to say it.
In January I will be 57 and I have no heroes. Films are an interest for me and I like discussing them and writing about them, but they are only a part of my life. I will not lie on my death bed (if I am so lucky) and lament all the movies I haven’t seen.
For me (me remember), movies must be judged beyond a strictly cinematic aesthetic. When I spoke about Spielberg and risks I was referring to the artistic risks that true artists take in their work.
No-one has to agree with me. I can live with that. Others can, as Archie Bunker once said, “lump it take it down the street and dump it”. It is after all only a movie blog.
Ironically, though, Dennis is only using the same assertive tone that you do. I don’t think either of you intend to silence the other person, just to express your own opinion forcefully. Anyway, here are some thoughts, but other perennial touchstones which you keep bringing up, and on the film and the conversation at hand:
1) Your stance on movies – that’s fair enough as far as you go, but sometimes you seem to suggest it’s wrong for other people to feel differently. Keep in mind that while you may regard film as a hobby, for others it may be an intense passion, a career, even a personal redemption (Allan has spoken of the cinema in such terms – all 3, in fact). You may feel that this is to much emphasis to place on them, but we’re all different and we all take what we can get and what we want from life. I know that for me, my knowledge and appreciation of film are something I can feel proud of and that I plan on structuring my life around in one way or another – hopefully, someday, even earn my living by them, either teaching, making, or writing about (fat chance the way things are going!) them – or all of the above. As such, I don’t see them as “just” movies or as a minor hobby. I respect the fact that you do, but would hope for the same respect in return for my different opinion.
2) “When I spoke about Spielberg and risks I was referring to the artistic risks that true artists take in their work.” This is curious, as this DOES seem to be judging Spielberg “by a cinematic aesthetic” (or did you mean by that phrase technique as opposed to expression?). Anyway, I’m not sure I agree. I think you’re saying that he never risks alienating or challenging the audience but while there’s some (not unfettered) truth to that, I’m uneasy with the suggestion that a true artist must do so. Anyway, despite the success of Schindler, it was certainly seen as a major risk at the time, and Spielberg himself felt as if he was walking on a tightrope during its making – for the first time he largely avoided storyboards and let his sense of the scene and the performance guide him as he crafted the film more or less “in the moment”. If that’s not artistic, I don’t know what is. In retrospect Schindler’s List may not seem as aesthetically risky as, say, Shoah but I think it certainly has an edge. Commercially, of course, it was a major risk.
3) “I will not lie on my death bed (if I am so lucky)” Hmmm, I always thought it would be better to go quickly and unexpectedly, but perhaps that’s just the yoot in me.
Joel, I can’t keep up… my wife will back soon and I haven’t done my chores…
I can’t say movies are a ‘hobby’ for me, they are like books, people, places, a good wine, a cold beer… they are part of a rounded full life, a window to nature, the soul, to understanding…
I have never knocked being passionate about film, but I do believe those with a wider perspective, maturity, and experience of life can offer a more valuable insight than obsessives whose concerns are more narrow.
Hmmmm, yes and no. I do agree that one whose interests only lie in movies is missing out on life and – incidentally – missing out on movies, since they usually refer to the outside world and are enriched by connections to it. On the other hand, the “narrow obsessives” do have extensive knowledge of the subject which should be respected; not that others can’t bring something to the table too, but just as I respect an expert in any field or profession, I will respect an expert in cinema, however well-rounded they are (or aren’t) in other regards. But anyway, I guess we’d have to define “narrow obsessives” since few people actually do nothing all day and night but watch movie after movie. Even those who have been characterized as such, when you look closer, had a multitude of other interests not to mention family lives, social relations, etc. (think Godard, Scorsese, etc.).
Luckily – for me, at the same time as I was into ‘Star Wars’ as a kid and Spielberg was hitting his stride with ‘Jaws’ and ‘Raiders’ I had the most marvellous opening to – through Halliwell’s original film guide – to Billy Wilder, William Wyler, Hitch, Capra, Welles and a whole slew of giants were alive to me as any of the big ’70s young turks.
SAMUEL WILSON-yes, the film is about survival. The name of the film is SCHINDLERS LIST and, in part, is about SCHINDLER and his LIST. But, while I think Keneally’s novel is more about attesting to Schindler’s “out of the blue” heroics, Spielberg uses said heroics and Keneally’s book as a framework to take us, literally, into one of the blackest moments in modern humanity. Spielberg’s intent, was to springboard us through Schindler’s story as a way of entering the Holocaust as a second-hand experience. Basically, through film, leading us a close to feeliung what it was like to be in it. Like Kubrick using the framework of Clark’s THE SENTINEL to allow us to get as close to experiencing space travel in 2001, so is Spielberg doing with the Holocaust and SCHINDLER. The ambiguity of explaining Schindler’s heroics are as represented in film as they were in Kenneally’s book. This is the only film on the subject that actually gave me a slight feel as to what it was probably like.
Dennis: I’ll yield to people who agree that the film can be about both the Holocaust and survival. It’s when critics suggest that a true Holocaust film must emphasize (yet presumably not dramatize) the enormity of mass murder as a morally indescribable phenomenon that I feel it necessary to note that Spielberg’s film is about survival above all. Naturally the film is also Spielberg’s statement on the Holocaust, but his insistence on offering a vicarious experience as well as the exception of the Schindler Jews troubles some people who presumably think that the exceptions trivialize the fate of the majority.
This is an age of sights and sounds. Since the advent of film and, particularly, television, we (generally) have become a race that takes its information quickly. Very few of us read history or talk with seniors or take the time to question a teacher or professor. That said, it has become the duty of those that mold and create in this media the responsibility of informing and teaching future generations what we know and HAVE to pass on. Max Von Sydow has a great line in HANNAH AND HER SISTERS: (commenting on a documentary on the Holocaust he just saw on PBS): “all of them sqirming and asking ‘why did this happen’ when, it is the question that is problematic. Knowing everything we know today the question should be ‘why doesn’t this happen more often'”. By using the visual medium of film as a transportive device, SCHINDLERS LIST does for our generation and future generations, the work books and conversations once did. It takes us to a place we can’t forget.
Therefore, by subtracting Schindler’s POV midway through the film and focusing on the atrocities, Spielberg kills two birds with one stone. 1. He is able to suggest that said atrocities may have been witnessed by Oskar and could be a “reason” that may have sparked his heroics. 2. The director, now in flight, is propelling the viewer into the atrocity for a first hand “feel” of what it may have been like. By both feeling and witnessing the events, we take on, as a viewer a slight knoewledge of both the sufferer and the put upon savior. Ultimately, and this is the genius of SCHINDLERS LIST, it makes us ask the question on both points: WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
While I’ve already stated my own ambivalence about Spielberg’s approach in this regard, you do a good job stating its virtues. Ultimately, if I were to lodge one objection to this description it’s that our identification with the Jews is never as complete as it is with Schindler. Even though we’re closer to “the action” we’re still essentially witnesses rather than participants. Not that we can ever REALLY be particpants, but we can feel like them if we get to know the victims better. But they come off more as types or half-glimpsed personalities than fully-fleshed characters (only Stern seems truly developed, but he’s still kind of subservient to Schindler – the good angel on one shoulder while Goethe is the bad angel on the other). If I can step away from my aesthetic-ethical ambivalence about the movie, it might be to make that point. I should note, though, that Goethe’s maid comes closest, next to Stern, to being a full-fledged character we can identify with, and not just a victim we observe. Still, Spielberg spends more time with Goethe than with Helen and hence in their confrontations we may actually feel more like the victimizer than the victim.
I think the strongest foothold of Schindler’s List is in the world of the powerful, not the world of the powerless. That’s where it is most comfortable, and where its effect is strongest.
“I left the day after the Reichstag fire and I left my mother in Vienna.” – Billy Wilder
“He made me look very deeply inside myself when he was so passionate to do this. In a way he tested my resolve.” – Spielberg about Wilder’s intense desire to direct it.
“They couldn’t have got a better man. The movie is absolutely perfection.” – Billy Wilder
“Yesterday I saw ‘Schindler’s List’ for the third time, and next week I will go again with my wife. Actually, she doesn’t like war movies, but this movie, my God, is no movie. It is an event- a document of the truth. I was so moved afterwards that for an hour I couldn’t utter a single word. It was the same with the others in the theatre- everywhere you looked you saw handerchiefs. Even after the first ten minutes I had forgotten it was a movie. I didn’t care about camera angles and all that technical stuff- I was only enthralled with the total realism. It starts like a newsreel from the period- very difficult to stage, to make real. And believe me, these scenes are so authentic it makes you shiver. I lost a big part of my family at Auschwitz- my mother, my stepfather, my grandmother- and the whole agony came up again. I sat there and saw on the screen how Jews were driven togehter into the trains on which they were deported to the gas chambers, and I looked at the line of people thinking- my mother has to be somewhere in that crowd. But I couldn’t find her.” – Billy Wilder.
A Schindler moment occured when Spielberg took Wilder to Spago during that time, and the younger, world famous man was immediately surrounded by autograph hunters, only one of whom approached Wilder. “Could you autograph three times?”
“Sure, but why?”
“Because for three Wilders I can get one Spielberg.”
A very good article on Contemporary German History in Film:
http://www.goethe.de/ins/in/bag/kue/flm/en4917383.htm
The incredible Dennis Grunes, who perhaps watches and writes more than any of us, sums up the whole discussion in his scathing analysis of SL.
http://grunes.wordpress.com/2007/02/04/schindlers-list-steven-spielberg-1993/
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