Amon Goethe in Schindler's List

Cafe Society
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But exactly. My point is not that Goethe is a monster; he’s a man. His human weaknesses and vulgarity are expressly presented.

But it was certainly NOT Spielberg’s intent to make Goethe appear as if he had a sheen of goodness, as Jarbabyj’s pink lemonde side wanted to see. (I like pink lemonade.) It was to illustrate the human banality of Goethe, the depth of his psychological perversion, to show the sort of men that do this.

Goethe, to my mind, defies traditional Hollywood convention of villiany. Hollywood has basically three kinds of villians

  1. Evil geniuses like Darth Vader, Hannibal Lecter, Blofeld, or any number of modern day Anne Rice I’m-so-cool-teenagers-love-me vampires,
  2. Cartoonish super-evil dudes like the Indiana Jones Nazis, or Draco Malfoy types, and
  3. Natural/supernatural killing machines like Aliens or Jaws.

Goethe is none of these. He is not a charming evil genius. He is not cartoonish at all - he’s horribly real (and of course based on a real person) and he’s not a shark. He’s a straightforward authoritarian sociopath, the most realistic sociopath I can ever remember seeing in a movie. So to address Jarbabyj’s queries about the two scenes in question, I don’t think Spielberg was AT ALL trying to tease us with the notion Goethe might do something good. I think the clear intent on a thematic level (tossing aside the enormous horror and tension value of what physically happens - remember how physically proximate Stern is to one of those incidents, and the danger he was in) was to demonstrate that Goethe was a man whose nature was sadistic and devoid of empathy - and to show Goethe as mirroring Naziism himself. Goethe, at least as portrayed in the film, is the absolute, 100% up and down perfect personification of a Nazi.

That’s why the scenes with Goethe and Helen are so powerful (and I agree, Jar; the scene in the basement is among the very finest ever committed to film) because it’s then that you best see Goethe’s humanity, and how truly twisted his humanity is.

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jarbabyj, I’m glad you had the guts to come in here and inquire about this. I’d like to ask that you do something.

Imagine being a young child of six or eight years old. Consider what sort of influence it would have on you to hear about family members being gunned down for no reason other than in reprisal for a Nazi officer who was killed elsewhere that day.

Think of the impression that seeing the movie Night and Fog would make upon a young mind. You may not have seen this film. It contains live footage of concentration camps being liberated by the Allies. It shows first hand the horrors they encountered. There is actual footage of bulldozers scraping six foot deep piles of emaciated stick-like bodies into mass burial pits.

Imagine your mother being able to convincingly recite Hitler’s speeches that she was forced to listen to in school. Think of watching your Danish grandmother silently weep while lighting a candle every August in remembrance of a young daughter she lost and an Aunt that I would never have.

Think of that Nazi officer, Gothe, picking off innocent people like they were mere tin cans on a fence. The one you so desperately wanted to think better of. Read Leon Uris’ book “QB VII” where he details how Nazis would inject blue dye directly into the eyes of young children in attempts to “Aryanize” them. You cannot imagine the horrors inflicted upon twin children because of the excellent biological control groups they represented. Read William Manchester’s book “The Arms of Krupp” or some works by the Nazi Hunters, Ellie Weisel or Simon Wiesenthal. Pick up “The Diary of Anne Frank” sometime. I have read all of the books named above. You might come to have a deeper understanding of the horrors that have gone on in this world if you did so too.

I’d also suggest you view “Night and Fog” and “To Die in Madrid” one evening (on an empty stomach). Like I said, my mother took all of us children to see those films. I was only six at the time and the images are seared into my brain forever. I’ve also seen Schindler’s list, and it was heartbreaking to watch his character weeping at the end of the film because he could not save just a few more people. Members of my mother’s family risked their lives on a daily basis transporting Jewish people to Sweden from Denmark.

After doing all that, I’ll ask you to come back into my Pit thread and continue your castigation of me for being glad that Odai and Qusai Hussein are dead. I was raised with nearly first hand knowledge of the horrors of war. I have little tolerance or sympathy for the evil that men do. Especially for those who take pleasure in the torturing, maiming and rape of innocent people.

I’d apologize for this being a hijack of your thread except that I do not feel it is. There is a strong possibility that you will benefit from watching and reading the films and books I have mentioned. I have no desire to shatter your optimistic viewpoint. I too am an optimist. The difference is that I have no tolerance or sympathy for those who knowingly, willingly and intentionally commit crimes against humanity.

At this point, I’ll ask the contributors in this thread to please voice their own recommendations about books, films and websites you could visit. If you could do any of this, it would give your apologies to me in the Pit thread some meaning.

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You make good points, Zenster, but there is one bit to which I take exception.

You saw movies and you heard stories. That is nowhere near “nearly firsthand knowledge.” Don’t insult the dead by trying to appropriate the horrors they faced.

Jarbaby, I’m glad you came to see the point I made in the Pit thread. Goethe was never close to being virtuous or humane–when he spared people death it was merely another form of gratifying his ego. “I shall grant that one life, if only for a while. I pardon you.”

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gobear, I said “nearly” and that’s what I meant. I heard my family tell stories of the Nazi occupation and listened to my Grandfather’s labored breathing after being gased in the Argonne forest. I went back to Denmark and saw the Nazi machine gun nests left standing at the city intersections. All of my memories are pretty vivid. Far from insulting the dead, I am trying to keep their memory alive. I make no claim to their sorrows or scars, only to their anger against those who would perpetrate such things again.

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Damn, Zenster, what a post. Your family is in my thoughts tonight.

jarbabyj, don’t feel dumb or naive or foolishly optimistic. I wish I was. But do see the film again, please. I own it and have watched it many times. Each time, I see something new, feel something else, think about something differently.

And I highly recommend The Arms of Krupp for some insight into German affairs (and ours) during that time. I read it in high school, because I couldn’t understand why my dad was so pissed after reading it. Wow.

26

jarbabyj - I think perhaps what you were feeling is the hope for redemption. One of the reasons I’m not a death-penalty advocate is because I want each person to have the time and opportunity to see that what they did was wrong, and in some way redeem themselves. That is probably an off-shoot of my Catholic upbringing. But to me, the idea that someone can be so totally evil and never learn different, never feel sorrow for their actions, never seek atonement, is a horribly sad thing. It may be naive. I know intellectually that some people will never reach for that, but still I hope.

Maybe I’m projecting my own feelings on to you, though. If so, I apologize.

StG