Schindler’s List

“This list is an absolute good. The list is life. All around its margins lies the gulf.”

So says Itzhak Stern, the list’s co-creator, to his boss, in one of the most important and symbolic moments in Schindler’s List, a heavyweight of cinema and Spielberg’s most powerful film. The list is life, and we can agree to that, and the gulf that surrounds the list is fuller than death than one could ever hope for. It’s occasionally said that this film is about victory, and a story about the Holocaust could never be about victory. But throughout the film there are statements that deny this limited perspective. Earlier in the film, a ghetto woman tells us that “an hour of life is still life”; later in the film, Stern reminds Schindler that “to save one life is to save the world entire”. Stern is not telling us that the “Schindler Jews” are satisfied with their salvation, but that their boss should understand that to do the best you can in such a dire situation is to show kindness in an abyss of inhumanity. This is why Schindler’s List is not about a victory, but about the miracle that was saving 1100 people from unspeakably horrible deaths. The film’s ending, although off-put in its sentimentalism, serves the general idea that the Holocaust could never be about victory in Spielberg’s vision. He believes in the people’s search of light against darkness.

Schindler’s List is probably one of the most iconic examples of how important stories are made great by how they’re done, and how social purposes in mainstream filmmaking can enlighten its audience and shape their views on important questions. The film is both about what’s done and how it’s done. It’s about absolute good versus evil (and not just any evil, but the most infamous face of evil in history) on the surface, but in the end it’s about much more than that: here is a film that, unlike most vague biographies and topic du jour prestige pictures, tells many stories in one. The film was directed by one of the most overlooked directors in Oscar history, but one who’s been more influential than any mainstream director in Hollywood. Spielberg is a director whose flourishes are both pleasantly distinct and overwhelming, and whose spirit and directorial vision can always be found in even the dullest of his films. There are still some cringe-worthy excesses – the shower scene where helpless women are saved from the showers at the last second, the final confrontation between Schindler and his workers -, but they’re much subtler and harder to find. Here, Spielberg created something more mature than he could ever do, and the Academy recognized that with a well deserved basket of awards.

In a way, Schindler’s List is about the monstrosity of World War II; above that, it’s about the rules that permeated the Nazi system and the industrial brutality with which they killed European minorities. They killed out of extreme contempt, and played with the Jews with materialism and passionless indifference: a Jew was as good as his set of skills and how essential they were, and was still as disposable as the rest – it was only a matter of time. The Nazis were moved by thoughtless Fordism and so was Oskar Schindler, a man who learned to see the situation with heart but nevertheless worked for efficiency and profit alone. He begins with indifference, grossly overlooking and neglecting the Jews working for him, who could escape a terrible fate under his influence; I further wonder whether Schindler is a symbol of how upper-class people often overlook those in need, and how the West overlooked the Jewish situation before they had to personally face the truth.

This morbidness in the mechanics of the camp killings is made of, and tainted with, corruption, and that’s where Schindler excels at. For the officers and common men who were just following orders and seeking stability and safety under working clothes, simple trades of valuable goods and persuasive bribes can do miracles. The film cares a lot about how jewelry, alcohol, expensive clothing and women can go from a person’s hands to another in the blink of an eye, and how one can have everything they need and don’t need and then suddenly see it all go away. Notice how it disguises great visual storytelling as obligatory visual information: the film starts with the infamous makers preparing to turn minorities into numbers; they bring their pens, ink cases, stamps, staplers and even their own tables, and the Jews come with fine clothes and innocent faces. Then we’re introduced to Oskar Schindler, a textbook example of finesse: as he prepares to a strategic appearance at a party, the camera makes a big splash out of countless rings, ties, suits, cash (as much as he can carry) and a pompous yet hateful Nazi pin. Later in the film, we’re in the ghetto, and the more baggage people can carry (they often can’t), the better; jewelry, furniture, photographs and religious tokens are taken in a hurry, and food is scarcer than ever. While Schindler wins over the Nazis by giving them as much as they can take, the Jews lose everything available one heart-wrenching bit by bit, until they have nothing but their lives and their minds to own.

The film is divided into three hour-long acts, and each division has Schindler, the master of persuasion and entrepreneurship, coming closer and closer to the glimpse of humanity threatened right in front of him – closer than most of his acquaintances will ever come. What drives him from one side to another and what gets him to break the rules by creating new ones is an insistent mystery that the story never shares explicitly. But it assumes a form that we can all accept and look with fascination. Liam Neeson gives Schindler all the necessary class and elegance, the same class and elegance that ironically defines Ralph Fiennes’ Amon Göth, Schindler’s greatest enemy and the brutal commander of the concentration camp they’re involved with. Göth, however, is inadvertently a simple man in disguise, and his counterpart (both men make people think they’re arbitrary when they’re simply subverting preconceived rules) always has the upper hand when it comes to negotiation and conflict of interests. Schindler’s uncompromising will to succeed and to give hope to the Jews, in the eyes of the Nazis, is both admirable and hilarious, and they fall for this trap every single time. He also falls for some traps throughout the film as they are arranged by Itzhak Stern (a heart-warming Ben Kingsley), the accountant who discreetly fights to saves the Jews he can bring to Schindler’s factory until his boss joins him in the risky adventure they have started together.

Almost needless to say, the black-and-white photography in this film, so widely praised and revered by audiences, is beautifully, overwhelmingly entrancing. But this beautiful black-and-white isn’t used as a gimmick to give the film a historical look, or a certain timelessness, and one should definitely see and know why. It’s first and foremost not rejection of color, but its absence; the void of color is the void of life, and Janusz Kamiński’s cinematography drains these colors out of the film to brings us down to the solemnity of its subject. Black and white don’t open the film, but rather emerge from it, as soon as a Sabbath ceremonial is over and the candles are almost burnt out, and there’s little but a meek flame barely producing any smoke. When the smoke rises to the ceiling, all color has vanished, and the film cuts to the intense smoke of an incoming train, coming as ominously as anything could ever be. This is why the return to color in the famous red dress excerpts the second ceremonial are so powerful and move us so deeply; the former because they indicate a change in direction made possible by poetic justice, and the latter because it indicates something the survivors had not seen in a very long time.

Most of Spielberg’s films, in my opinion, are timeless accomplishments of filmmaking (almost masterpieces), and one of his most powerful tools has been John Williams as the ever-present composer for his films. Without John Williams, his films would be far less moving and unique as they are, because Williams, one of cinema’s absolute greatest composers, has a gift for the craft and for how it heightens the film’s emotions that is nothing short of pure cinema. Think of five great film scores you can remember, and it’s very certain you’ll find yourself picking one of more soundtracks from Williams – Star Wars, Superman, Jaws, E.T., Harry Potter, Raiders of the Lost Ark. In Schindler’s List he does his best work at elevating the material to entirely new levels. It’s solemn, heart-wrenching, and almost brutally beautiful. To hear its violin solos, beautifully performed by conductor Itzhak Perlman, is to face pain, grief, hope and kindness in the form of music, to watch a film with your ears. Few scores are as moving and essential as this one.

In the end, a viewer with some film experience may ask, “Why is this so much more popular and widely distributed than so many other great films about the Holocaust?” It’s a great question, because I share it myself and have seriously thought many other movies deserve the same chance. Alain Resnais’ Night and Fog, a short documentary of unforgettable images, is far more poetic and just as poignant, and Shoah, the 450 minute-long masterpiece of documentation, is many times more heart-wrenching and profound (and arguably one of the greatest films ever made). And that’s naming only two films! One could go on and mention The Pianist, Au revoir les enfants, A Film Unfinished, Judgement at Nuremberg, Ida and so many other films, from short documentaries to feature films.

But it’s important to have a film like Schindler’s List in this selection of great Wolrd War II films. Schindler’s List is by far the most accessible entry, the most comprehensive and most important Hollywood take on a topic that has seen so many misrepresentations. It’s the one that talks best to its public, and it tells its story in a way that can join audiences with the director. Schindler’s List is also one of the most hopeful Holocaust films; it ends not with a warning or a lamentation, but a dreary-eyed plea for remembrance of the Jews and for liveliness in darker times. It asks those it can touch to see beyond hopelessness, grief and despair and to look forward to acceptance and inspiration. It asks for absolute good in a gulf of evil.

Schindler’s List

Year: 1993

Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, Ralph Fiennes, Caroline Goodall, Jonathan Sagall, Embeth Davidtz

Academy Awards: Best Picture; Best Director; Best Adapted Screenplay; Best Original Score; Best Film Editing; Best Cinematography; Best Art Direction; Best Actor (nominated); Best Supporting Actor (Ralph Fiennes, nominated); Best Sound (nominated); Best Makeup and Hairstyling (nominated); Best Costume Design (nominated)