Schindler's List

Cafe Society
21

I first saw this film on the recommendation of my English teacher (he didn’t portray it as The Story of the Holocaust, with trumpets, but as a powerful story set during that time).

It was one of the most powerful films I’ve ever seen. It’s so intense, words fail me. I think it’s a brilliant film, a perfect example of the art of cinematography.

It is not a feel-good movie, in my opinion. It does show that one man can make a difference, it shows that good can exist even in the most unlikely of places, but it never evoked a warm, fuzzy feeling in me.

22

“Schindler’s List” is not only the story of how Oscar Schindler saved 1,200 (some accounts place the list at 650, 900, and 1100 as well) people, but how they saved him. When the war began and Oscar joined the Nazi party, he was by many accounts a despicable man–an alcoholic, a womanizer/adulterer and, to that point in history, a failure at business. The war permits him to finally achieve financial success, but in the opportunist process of obtaining wealth and success, he comes to realize the heinousness of the Nazi party and their “solution.” He begins to change and see the jewish people not only as cheap laborers but as mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters. One man can make a difference is certainly a major theme throughout the film, but I think it goes beyond that, following the change to and within Oscar as well – he was saving their bodies and they were “saving his soul.”

The girl in red? My interpretation of Spielberg’s use of the girl in the red coat is the focus on the individual. Stalin is said to have made the statement: “One man’s death is a tragedy, one hundred thousand is a statistic.” During the film, the view follows the lives of specific “Schindler” jews, but those who were not under his protection–being saved by him–are slaughtered on screen. After viewing so many represented atrocities, the tree blurs for the forest, shall we say. I think the little girl in red is Spielberg’s effort to bring the tree back in focus–to remind us of the individuals who died as part of the millions. It was not and should not be remembered merely as a lump sum murder of 6-million. It was a angonizing destruction of one life by one life–no matter how quickly or efficiently the Nazi’s became at mass extermination, each life was still a single life cut down. This should also serve to remind the viewer that while they were only 1,200, still they were 1,200 individual people–even if he’d only saved one, still it would be one. And those 1,200 now have 6,000 descendents around the world.

I also think, as someone else stated, she was used as a poignant marker of the moment Oscar really saw the people being killed–the point of change in Schindler’s heart–the softening or melting of his greed and lust into compassion that would grow into a passion to save all those he could.

When the film came out, I heard some Jewish people interviewed adn they complain that the film makes Schindler a saint when clearly he was not (nor do I believe Spielberg glosses over Schindler’s flaws), or at least, he did not start as one, who and what became their savior/salvation, started as exploitation. But, I have never heard of the movie as being a “feel-good” story of the holocaust. In addition to the points mentioned by those before me, let me add that Oscar Schindler spent everything he had accummulated (and then some, which has been estimated at 4-million German Marks, a large sum for that time in history) to deliver those 1,200 jews from death. At nearly the end of the film, as the war ends, we see Oscar lament that he should’ve done more…saved more. He is forced to flee under the cover of darkness as he will be unwelcome by both sides–the Allies because of his affiliation with the Nazi-party and the Nazi’s because of his affiliation and rescue of jews.

The real Oscar Schindler lived out the remainder of his life as quite a (financial) failure. Business after business failed. He also chose to leave his wife, Emilie, in Buenos Aires and and move back to Germany for a time (rendering him as a failure at marriage as well)–spending the rest of his life moving around, failing at various business ventures, and living, for the most part, from the generous support of the “Schindler jews” because he never accummulated any wealth for himself following the war.

The only “feel-good” aspect of the film is seeing the actual “Schindler Jews” (or their descendents) at the end of the film placing stones on Schindler’s grave. But it is a bittersweet ending…while it makes us aware that this one man was responsible for preserving those lives (or family lines), there were so many more that he could not and were not saved.

23

I guess the main point I got out of Schindler’s List was that you don’t have to be a saint to do the right thing. Schindler certainly wasn’t a saint, in many ways he was a despicable human being, but he still could not bring himself to mass murder.

What are people complaining about? The Holocaust is not just the dead, but also the survivors. Survivors speak of guilt, of feeling they bear the burden of living life for those who have died, they feel compelled to speak up and be witness to some of the worst humanity can deal out to itself.

We have the story of Anne Frank, who did not survive. We have the story of the Schindler Jews, who did surive. There was a movie made about the escape from Sobibor, where only about half involved in the escape survived (and fewer survived the rest of the war) They are all stories of an awful, horrible time. But the fact is, only the living can speak to us in words. We can determine a person died from violence from their skeleton, we can know from the gouges clawed by bare fingers in the roofs of the “shower rooms” that people died in terror and panic, but only a survivor can tell us the last words of those who died, tell us how they looked, how they begged and pleaded, how the children hid in latrines and people ate bugs and dirt and shoelaces and how in most instances it was a useless grasp at survival. Should the survivors remain silent because somehow they aren’t “really” part of the Holocaust? How ridiculous!

24

This link offers the following quote:

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I thought it was an excellant movie, but I can see why there was a “feel good” element to it. If you read the original book by Thomas Keneally,you can see that Schindler was a real pig - a serial adulterer, a drunk,lazy, a thief and profiteer - much more than shown in the movie. He also did not, at least I don’t remember Keneally showing it, have any terrible remorse about those he did not save. Speilberg played down his faults a little bit, and added that remorse bit (again, to the best of my memory - I read the book years ago). Schindler tried to escape with a small fortune in diamonds in his car, but I believe the car itself was stolen. He sold the ring given him for booze. What was better about the book is that Schindler was a bigger pig but even better at saving people, even picking up extra people at the death camp who literally just happened to be standing around.

26

Screw it, the Israelis consider him a reighteous person.

:slight_smile:

27

You have just been liberated by army of Soviet Union.

“Liberated” by “the Soviet Union?”

When the hell did they ever liberate anyone? The jews just traded one dictatorship with a focused evil to a different dictatorship with a more generalized evil.

I enjoyed the movie, other than that one line. And no doubt Spielberg meant it in all sincerity.:confused:

28

No offense, but the premise of this thread is ridiculous. How this film can be seen as “feel-good” is beyond me. Could the Holocaust itself be described as “feel-good” because ultimately many Jews were lucky enough not to be exterminated?

29

Are you kidding? Or do you just have a mental block??

Of course a Soviet officer WOULD have said that, so it fits perfectly. And it was obviously meant as irony.

30

Hello, my grandmother WAS LIBERATED by the Soviet army from Auschwitz. They acted just like all the other armies in providing humanitarian aid and organizing displaced persons. My grandmother did not become a Russian citizen, she was put in a DP camp in Germany and emigrated to the US in 52.

I don’t think they were being ironic.

31

For how long was she in a Displaced Persons camp?

32

Speaking of Raoul Wallenberg:

I read in Reader’s Digest - oh - in the last five years I guess - about one man (American? Swiss? Dunno?) in some embassy in China (maybe?) who wrote night and day visas or signing citizenship papers for jews (and others) to help protect them from the Nazi’s. I’m pretty sure the guy who was the diplomat was asian.

For the life of me, I can’t remember anything more than this pathetic recollection.

Can someone help me out?

33

I think that the original “feel good” comment might have been made if the teacher had read the book and later saw the movie.

I read the book before the movie came out, seeing it in the library. Glancing at the fly leaf it said something like
“Oskar Schindler was a Nazi, a war criminal, a black market profiteer, a thief, an adulterer, and used slave labor from the concentration camps. He is also honored as a Righteous Gentile.” After that I was hooked. It is a good book, a little bit different from the movie, but well worth the read.

34

Only 650. But to be included in that number, what a wonder feeling that must have been!

35

I’m not exactly sure how long she was in DP camps. (she never talked about it). She didn’t have any living relations to take her in. I do know that my father was born in Germany in 1948.