A toughie...

...on with the show.  I'm watching the AFI Top 100 (10th Anniversary Edition) in a calendar year and writing my thoughts here in this blog.  I'm now going a little longer form with each film, and publishing quickly.  I'm watching them, from #11 onward, in blocks of 5 I haven't seen before, then 10 I have seen before.  Rules about how I organized the list is here.  Reviews of other films can be found by going to the blog and scrolling around.

I'm on #12.  You can guess from the below photo which film it is.  Sorry, no goofy MST3K photo on this one.

Film 12

12.  "Schindler's List" (AFI Rank #8) 

No.

I'd never seen "Schindler's List."

I have now.

I've been prodded recently to try and make these musings less stream of conscious, and a little polished/edited.  I'm not doing that this time.  I am going to place my thoughts here, then leave them as is.

I watched "Schindler's List" last night.  I have consciously avoided watching the film for over 21 years.  Despite appeals to my nature as someone who tends to take things seriously, or someone who appreciates art, I quietly ignored any pressure to see the film.

I am glad I did so.

I'm probably going to commit a bit of sacrilege.  I'm not sure it's that accurate/complete/decisive a film, largely based on the ending.  It is haunting, no doubt, but I think its ending feels awfully forced, awfully manipulative, and awfully...well...cheesy...at times.  Which is stunning, because there is SO MUCH of it that is anything but...that...when these moments of pure Hollywood appear, they stick out like...well...like a girl in a red coat.

Now, I'm not taking anything away from that particular image.  It's brilliantly used in the film.  Reading about it, Spielberg describes her presence as allegory, mentioning that the Allies knew what was going on with Hitler and the Jews, yet they did nothing to stop the trains, either by bombing the rail lines, or any number of things.  What was happening was as obvious, according to Spielberg, as a girl in a red coat walking down the street.

I may as well get into what I found incongruous, then go into praise.  There is much to praise.

The film is about a list.  So, I'm going to list the things I couldn't forgive.  Things that I find out of place.

1.  Liam Neeson's acting in his final scene, in fact the entire last scene with Neeson's dialogue.  It was ham-handed, bordering on "chick flick" emotionally tugging.  Look, there was a very famous moment in the show "Seinfeld" where Jerry is caught making out during "Schindler's List."  This was funny, as everyone knew what the film was about, whether they'd seen it or not...and it's not exactly a subject that could be construed as an aphrodisiac.  What is less famous about that particular episode is the less obvious call-back to this film when Elaine's boyfriend, played by Judge Reinhold (the Close Talker), laments, as Jerry's parents are leaving, that he could have done more.  "This watch, this watch could have bought them another lunch."  Now, while it was funny on "Seinfeld," it's less funny, as someone watching the film for the first time 21 years later, to see something like that and realize that yeah, that scene in the film deserved to be lampooned...and it is supposed to be the emotional climax of the film.  Schindler may very well have lamented how much more he could have done, and that part rings true.  His regret could have bordered on madness.  However, the scene strayed into the maudlin so deeply that it eventually felt like a parody.  Then...we had the group hug.  I'm sorry, this whole thing missed.  It did for me, anyway.

2.  The very ending of the film, in color, with the survivors visiting Schindler's grave with the actors who portrayed them.  Lose the actors.  The actors, except the kid from the pit toilet and Ben Kingsley, were hardly recognizable in this bit anyway.  Again, this was ham-handed.  I'm OK with the visual of the visiting of the grave by the survivors, but reminding me that I'd just seen a group of actors is the OPPOSITE of what I'd just experienced.  I had been taken into that world, and that illusion was shattered in this.  It really scarred my experience, and really brought the film crashing down.  Don't tell me that it made the experience personal.  It made it exactly the opposite to me.  It looked like a very forced bit of cinema, with some Hollywood people being more important than they really are.  You've told the survivor's/victims story.  Leave it with them.  Show them visiting Schindler's grave.  That's respect.

That's all, I think.  The ending of this film could be trimmed completely or really edited, and you'd have...well...you'd have something that never let up.  Never forgave you for watching it.  Never said, "It's OK, it's just a movie."  EDIT:  Although, I think maybe the longer I ponder this, the more I think the whole movie is "just a movie." 

Now.  The praise.

Holy shit.  Ralph Fiennes' performance is chilling.  I was holding a meeting for a committee in my house right before I watched the film.  One of my friends described his Goeth as "pure evil."

I did not see it that way.  I saw a man who had a job to do, and went about it as coolly as he could.  Yes, as he became desensitized to what he was doing, he eventually is shown to be quite sadistic, but his opening about how hard his job is...I think that's a guy just going about making a living.  The perks of the job, for him, were that he got to kill Jews.  I confess I had seen about 5 minutes of the film previously.  I watched the part where we see Goeth open fire on the labor camp for the first time, killing two women, in what appears to be a rather indiscriminate fashion.  However, if you watch the scene, both women shown executed were not working, but resting.  Goeth, however perverted his vision was, had a job to do.  In the midst of madness, the best way he could find to convince others not to make the mistakes of these workers was to execute them in front of other prisoners.  Did he take pleasure in it?  Probably.  Was that the overwhelming motivation?  I'm not entirely certain that was it.  My defense of this argument is the scene where Goeth grabs the rabbi and sets out to shoot him, only to have his gun jam.  Then, another gun jams.  Goeth pummels the holy man with his pistol...then leaves him alone.  In fact, this rabbi survives the war.  No further harm is visited upon him.  If Goeth is pure evil...he follows through on that, and murders the rabbi.  He didn't.

Now Randy, that's awfully cold.  Yes.  It is.  Goeth is shown as a sadist.  He is shown as evil.  He also...in his mind...was just doing his job.  I think Spielberg  and Fiennes absolutely intend us to understand that.  That's nuanced filmmaking, and that is worthy of heaps of praise.

In the centerpiece of the film is the liquidation of the ghettos of Krakow.  I can't say too much about this, except, it is much less graphic than I thought it would be, based on what I heard about the film.  This was a great relief to me, and an indication as to perhaps why the film is so highly regarded.  There are lots and lots and lots of photographic evidence of the atrocities visited upon the human body by the perpetrators of the Holocaust.  What Spielberg managed to do was convey the terror, more than the fascination with the results.

And that, ultimately, is what is so haunting about the film for me.  Whether it is the scene where the children of the camp are loaded onto trucks and taken to Auschwitz, smiling and waving goodbye to their terrified mothers, or the scene where the women are led to a shower, in which they (and we) are quite certain they will be gassed, Spielberg beautifully tugs at our terror reflex.  The dispassionate way in which the facts are presented, and allowed to hang there, makes that dread/terror that much more palpable.  In that sense, this film borders on masterpiece.  Unfortunately, no one told me that was what was most chilling about the film, and I think that is largely missed.  I didn't want to see the graphic.  I thought that's what the film was, as its most famous imagery (besides the girl in the red coat) is of suffering.  Spielberg doesn't really give us copious amounts of that.  He, instead, focuses on what tertiary responses to suffering are, and that is deeply moving, if not slightly manipulative.  I wish I'd known that 21 years ago.  Hell, I wish someone could have looked inside my brain and said, "Hey, this will appeal to you and those sensibilities you have buried back here, watch this, please."

Couple of other observations.  For a black and white film, this film, unlike "Saving Private Ryan" feels awfully crisp/sharply focused.  There is very little graininess about it, and it does, at times, feel more like watching an old television show, like when it was obvious that "The Twilight Zone" was being filmed in a studio, rather than an old beat up film.  I liked that choice.  I also found the sets to be stunning.  There was no romance to be found anywhere.  It felt dirty, but it felt organized.  I imagine that to be what German camps really looked like.  Yes, death and disregard for humanity were everywhere, but dammit, it wasn't filthy.

So. I'm told by multiple people that they've seen the film, and that they don't have to view it again, which is fine by them.  I can understand that.  I will watch this film again, I believe, but next time, I'm going to try and forgive the ending.  I don't think I can, but I'm going to try.  Beyond that, I know I'm going to watch a powerful, albeit fictional, film. One that hints ever so slightly at the horrors, yet keeps them largely hidden from us.

Kinda like that other film this guy made.  You know, the one about the shark.

Thanks for reading.


EDIT:  Roger Ebert's essay about this film is here.   He and I saw very different films this time.  I don't, not for a minute, believe that Schindler was a failure at business when he had the enamel works.  He made millions, which he then dispersed, toward the end of the film, to save the names on his list.  I think Roger missed a lot in this film.  I also do not believe that Schindler was always altruistic in the film.  That happens in the middle.  He wants to make money.  He does a great job at it.  Then he stops. 


EDIT 2:  This gets at some things I brought up here.  Check this out.