Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List (1993) is a powerful yet problematic movie. Handsomely directed and impeccably acted, this adaptation of Thomas Keneally's Schindler's Ark provides a harrowing portrait of genocide and unconventional heroism. Yet it frames the Holocaust in the safest manner possible: an outsider delivering harried minorities from evil.Businessman Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) makes a killing off the Nazi regime. He relocates to Krakow, Poland, opening a munitions factory and selling black market goods. Then SS Captain Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes) liquidates the city's Jewish ghetto, relocating survivors to the Plazow concentration camp. Schindler initially turns a blind eye but grows disgusted by Goeth's wanton cruelty. Helped by accountant Itzak Stern (Ben Kingsley), Schindler finds Jews work in his factory, shielding them at great personal cost (and risk). By the end of WWII Schindler's saved 1,200 Jews, yet agonizes over whether he's done enough.
Before Schindler's List, Hollywood generally relegated the Holocaust to television (Holocaust, Escape from Sobibor) and documentaries. Surely such a disturbing topic wasn't fit for mass entertainment. The Diary of Anne Frank and The Pawnbroker approached it through allusions and flashbacks. War movies like Cast a Giant Shadow or The Big Red One depict soldiers liberating death camps while keeping the inmates offscreen. And European depictions too often inject sensationalism into the mix - The Night Porter, anyone?
On this level, at least, Schindler's List is important. Some critics feel Spielberg trivializes the Holocaust, which baffles me. His meticulous recreations of death camps and mass murders aren't exploitative or sanitized, evincing a deeply felt disgust at Nazi genocide and compassion for their victims. Deeply enough that Spielberg later formed the Shoah Foundation, preserving eyewitness testimony of Holocaust survivors. Nor should the glut of lesser Holocaust dramas be held against Spielberg. Whatever its flaws, Schindler doesn't treat the subject lightly.
Schindler might be Spielberg's best-directed film. Janusz Kaminski's black-and-white photography mixes noirish atmosphere and stark immediacy. The Krakow liquidation plays like a large-scale Battle of Algiers, replete with details of incidental atrocity and madness: Nazis luring children with nursery rhymes, hospital patients machine-gunned in bed. Some of Spielberg's touches feel cloying: the red-coated girl is less poignant than superfluously showy, and Schindler's final revelation plays a bit strong. But Spielberg's never been subtle, and these lapses don't dilute the overall power.
Schindler's List scores also for its complex protagonist. Spielberg and writer Steve Zaillian play up Schindler's repulsive side: a womanizer, a piratical industrialist who views war as a business opportunity. He rescues Stern from a train to Auschwitz, only to berate him for jeopardizing their business! He even befriends Goeth, trying (without success) to dissuade him from depravity. His conversion is genuinely poignant: beneath the callow exterior lies a compassionate man, who soon bankrupts himself rescuing Jews. Yet his success proves an exercise in situational morality: it takes an amoral man to outwit an evil government.
Yet for all Spielberg's sympathy for the Schindlerjuden, few register as individuals. Some get telling vignettes like Schindler's one-armed worker or Helen Hirsch (Embez Davidtz), Goeth's maid. But none develop strong personalities, reduced to prayer and fretting between massacres. Even Stern mostly serves as Schindler's conscience, with little back story or private life. Kapo and The Pianist feature Jewish protagonists navigating the tricky ground between collaboration and survival. By focusing on Schindler, Spielberg provides a curiously Gentile perspective on a Jewish tragedy.
I'm also torn about Schindler's Amon Goeth. Goeth was a real man as monstrous as depicted: target-shooting prisoners for sport ranked among his more pleasant pass times. Yet for all his evil charisma, he seems overly convenient, rolling every detestable human trait (alcoholism, promiscuity, unpredictable violence) into an odious hate figure. Such dramaturgy unintentionally reduces genocide to the whims of a mid-level psychopath. Then again, what sort of regime gives Goeth carte blanche in the first place?
Most viewers will excuse these faults. For better or worse, Spielberg is an old-fashioned director: simple moral compass, eye for spectacle and mass appeal. Even if Schindler lacks a Jewish hero, it's still a harrowing piece of work, unsparing in its details and disturbing imagery (the ashes snowing down from camp chimneys) that make things plain. And if Spielberg makes the 20th Century's greatest atrocity understandable to lay viewers, complaining about dramatic lapses seems almost pedantic.
Liam Neeson gives a career best-performance. He starts an amiable louche, looking for profit and comfort amidst war, gradually finding his humanity - which only generates self-loathing and doubt. Neeson works uncomfortably hard finding Schindler's moral core, giving a multidimensional performance that becomes remarkably moving. Neeson's recent glut of interchangeable action movies shouldn't disguise that he's a remarkable talent.
Ralph Fiennes matches Neeson with his terrifying Amon Goeth. Preening and comfortable in his nastiness, Fiennes gives Goeth human touches (bitching about his job, his affection towards Helen) which only enhance his evil. Ben Kingsley plays Stern as even more upright than Gandhi, if that's possible. Yet his forceful dignity keeps Stern from being a bore, rounding out a remarkable trio of performances.
Schindler's List is an old-fashioned take on a difficult subject. It certainly isn't the definitive Holocaust film: not with Night and Fog, Shoah or the aforementioned movies around. All the same, its large-scale, compelling tragedy remains an affecting watch.
