Approaching Schindler’s List is a heavy task. It’s not just a movie, but the most culturally significant exposé of the Holocaust since Night and Fog; surpassing it even as the go-to film for discussing the great travesty of the twentieth century as represented in art. It is unlike anything else Steven Spielberg has ever made, by far the darkest subject matter he’s ever tackled, and with the most poignancy. And it was quite a success, at least in its impact. It’s still considered a high point of his career, the film that finally won him both Best Picture and Best Director Oscars, and continues to be held as an example of great serious cinema in movie discussions today. It sometimes even skirts in the conversations of the greatest movies ever made.
So it’s an intimidating film to talk about. But Schindler’s List is incredibly important not only for its content and message, but for what it meant to Spielberg, his career, and the public perception of him going forwards. It’s cultural imprint and how it changed the way we view the Holocaust is also worthy of discussion, and I’ll try to the best of my ability to address that here, in addition to its presentational prowess and strength in performances.
The film tells the true story of Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), a German enamelware manufacturer in Krakow during the Second World War, and the construction and operation of the Plaszow Concentration Camp within the city, overseen by Nazi commandant Amon Göth (Ralph Fiennes). Initially staffing his factory with Jewish workers because of their cheapness, Schindler soon realizes the horrors of the Holocaust and does as much as he can to save as many Jews as possible by employing them under his protection.
Though Spielberg got “first dibs” on the story, he was reluctant to direct it himself. Martin Scorsese was at one point going to, and the legendary Billy Wilder, whose own family perished in the Holocaust, had a personal interest in making it as well. But ultimately it was right that Spielberg would be the one to see the project to fruition. Personally, it would facilitate his coming to terms with his Jewish heritage, anti-Semitism in his youth, and his connection to the Jewish diaspora. And professionally, this was a story that had to be told while there were still those left to remember the Holocaust; to truthfully reveal its barbarism to a world where ignorance and denial still thrived, and it needed to be done by a Jewish director of Spielberg’s level of clout and name recognition.
Wisely, Spielberg came at the film from a different angle. Dispatching of all his usual devices, he made sure the film was shot spontaneously with a documentary feel. Thus there’s more hand-held camerawork than in his other movies, less reliance on narrative, and a brutal precision to the violence. Deaths aren’t built up in this movie, they just happen, sudden and swift. It hits close to home because there’s no fabricated drama to it, it’s merely depicted as a sharp act of evil. Spielberg shooting the movie in black and white as a means of both emanating documentary footage and keeping the Holocaust removed from, in his view, the beauty of colour, was a really effective choice too. Though I argue black and white film has a beauty entirely unto itself, it is the preferred means of conveying real grimness, misery, and despair. And the particular look of Schindler’s List especially evokes the Italian Neorealism of Vittorio De Sica and Roberto Rossellini. In fact there are shots in this movie that could have been taken right out of films like Bicycle Thieves or Rome, Open City. The one iconic speck of colour is the red coat of the little girl wandering through the chaos of the liquidation, based on a real girl who unlike this movie counterpart, survived the Holocaust. A symbol of innocence or violence, or the sapping of life, it’s the most powerful and compelling visual choice of the movie. According to Spielberg she represents the elephant of the Holocaust, and how the Allies during and before the war feigned ignorance to it. But to me her purpose is stronger than that, as a representation of the unimaginable cruelty of the Shoah and what was lost.
The film moves at a slower pace than any other Spielberg has made but it earns its three-hour runtime. He lets scenes play out, allowing the camera and audience to be an observer, not shying away from especially uncomfortable scenes; such as when the Nazis force the older Jews to run naked in circles to determine if they can still work, and the famous sequence where the women and children are sent to Auschwitz by mistake and are terrified by the prospect they might be gassed to death. The latter might be the most suspenseful scene Spielberg has ever directed, full of immediate horror, desperation, and genuine relief at its aversion that easily tops anything in Jaws.
Schindler’s List was incredibly smart with its cast. Though a lot of big name actors were interested in the title role, Spielberg gave it to the relatively unknown Liam Neeson, who’d never been the lead of a film before. Neeson plays Schindler with great subtlety, never letting the audience know for sure when he changes from the ambitious industrialist to the concerned saviour. The liquidation of the ghetto is certainly one of the prominent moments in his development, but it’s not alone a sudden and singular character shift. Neeson may be reserved, but this isn’t an emotionless performance; he has moments of great grief, hopelessness, and anxiety, not to mention overzealousness and even joy early on. And of course that final scene before his flight is one of the most powerful performances Neeson has ever given and one of the most vividly heartbreaking scenes Spielberg has ever crafted. In addition to Neeson, this is the film that introduced the extraordinary Ralph Fiennes to the world, cementing his place as Goth among the great movie villains, and ensuring Hollywood would return to him for villainous roles for the rest of his career. And he is pretty imposing, pretty vile, pretty scary; one of the greatest Nazi movie villains since Colonel Strasser of Casablanca. Ben Kingsley is superb as the trustworthy and intelligent Itzhak Stern, Schindler’s loyal accountant and friend, and I’d forgotten how good Embeth Davidtz is as Helen Hirsch, the maid who Goth abuses and has a conflicting attraction towards.
Perhaps the greatest performers though are the Polish and German actors in all the minor roles. Theirs is the most difficult job: representing the millions of European Jews who suffered through the Holocaust, as much as it’s possible to recreate such trauma. Their anguish is intimate, soulful, and uncomfortable, forcing you into their circumstances.
Part of this authenticity is why Schindler’s List was the toughest shoot for Spielberg. Of course he was also reconciling his identity and his heritage in light of the subject matter, and that really took a toll on him as well. His refuge in his family, and the comedy of Saturday Night Live, Seinfeld, and his pal Robin Williams, helped him get through the increasingly difficult and emotionally trying shooting days. This was a very personal project, even if it wasn’t connected intimately to Spielberg’s experiences. But there is extraordinary passion behind this movie and its need to present the Holocaust honestly. There’s nothing in it that feels typically like a Spielberg movie because of this honourable dedication to holding nothing back. And I think that was really eye-opening for him.
Schindler’s List was a turning point in Spielberg’s career, and I think part of that was due to its reception. This was an incredibly big gambit for Spielberg and it paid off with audiences and critics. Everyone was just surprised he could pull this off, and the result was a confidence to steer more noticeably towards dramas and films tackling serious issues. How those movies would turn out and how this different direction would impact his popcorn movies we’ll see over the course of his career into the twenty-first century. But Schindler’s List is where that spark was lit.
Obviously, Schindler’s List is much bigger than Spielberg though. For better or worse, it’s done more than any other movie, certainly any other narrative movie, for raising awareness about the Holocaust. And its ripples are felt in every Holocaust drama that has come out since. This is invariably a very good thing. The film resulted in greater education on the Holocaust emphasized in schools through the Shoah Foundation, which Spielberg founded in 1994. The movie did as Poldek Pfefferberg had wanted; it made Oskar Schindler rightfully famous for saving roughly twelve-hundred people. Culturally, its’ aesthetic has come to be a stereotype of both “Oscar-bait” films and the notion of a popular director attempting serious fare. But it has also stood as a testament to the kind of work a filmmaker can achieve with the right resources, crew and cast, and passion.
Schindler’s List is almost certainly the most important film Spielberg has made. It was the peak of his maturity as a filmmaker and It’s the movie by which all other Holocaust dramas are compared against. It’s still utterly powerful and moving; its ending, which shows many of the surviving Schindler Jews, as well as Emilie Schindler, laying flowers at the grave of their hero (I particularly like that Ben Kingsley escorts the widow of his character) really drives home both the happy ending of Schindler’s mission and the sadness of the greater tragedy. It really leaves an impact you can never forget after seeing it.
Spielberg put everything into this movie, and deserved his Oscar win for it. And it would be four years before his next, the longest gap period of his feature career. Sid Sheinberg, the executive and friend who sent Spielberg the initial impetus for the film, allowed him to direct it on the condition he make Jurassic Park first. Spielberg acknowledges he wouldn’t have been able to make Jurassic Park after Schindler’s List, and we know that’s true. Because if he had, it would have been The Lost World.
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