Schindler's List

[grudlian. 4725]

5 hours ago, bleary said:

I'm interested in whether the lack of discussion on this movie is due to people choosing not to/not getting a chance to watch/rewatch it, or due to a general lack of differing opinion or lack of desire to engage in the usual banter over such a serious movie.  (Or maybe everyone is out shopping or otherwise enjoying the holidays, or just taking care of end of year business.  I put it on while I was grading finals, so I might have missed a chyron or two.)

For me, I didn't watch it and it's been well over a decade since I saw it. So, I don't have much to say except in very broad strokes. Plus, it really is the probably definitive narrative film on the holocaust both in reputation and merit. There are other good ones (I remember really liking The Shop On Main Street), but outside of The Pianist, I don't think there are others that come close in the general consensus.

As others have said, I'm curious (and shocked) how this came to be the introduction to the holocaust for Americans. The statistic from Amy seems unbelievable. Roosevelt even ordered footage be filmed to prove it happened. So, how were we unaware? I was going enough that, in 1993, we probably wouldn't have discussed the holocaust in school in gory detail. I know we watched some documentary in church youth group around this time but maybe we wouldn't have without Schindler's List being released. But I feel like I certainly would have been aware of the holocaust without this movie.

[AlmostAGhost 2718]

Yea I did watch it in the '90s and then again last week (though it took me like 3 or 4 sittings).  I don't love it, but I think it's ok.  Very basically, I think my criticism is the lack of artistry/poetry in the filmmaking side of it.  It does feel to me less like a movie open to arguing about though, for sure.  I feel like anything critical I think, I have to also go "but I do recognize this and that..."  But then, that does sort of match how I feel about it -- I do really like the emotional tale of Schindler and how it builds to his ending scene, but really am not so sure I'm behind the filmmaking used to tell it. 

A lot of positive reactions note how beautifully shot the film is, but I just don't think it's interestingly shot at all.  I get that being 'plain' or making it feel like a documentary/reality is a valid way to go, so I don't particularly hold this against the movie.  But I don't know what people are seeing there?

[sycasey 2.0 2301]

7 hours ago, AlmostAGhost said:

A lot of positive reactions note how beautifully shot the film is, but I just don't think it's interestingly shot at all.  I get that being 'plain' or making it feel like a documentary/reality is a valid way to go, so I don't particularly hold this against the movie.  But I don't know what people are seeing there?

I dunno, it's not as beautiful as the usual Spielberg effort, but there are still some great shots in there.

And IMO, it's still terrific visual storytelling, the kind of movie where you can turn the dialogue off and still generally understand what's happening.

[sycasey 2.0 2301]

Something else I noticed while watching this movie again:

I was waiting to hear the famous John Williams violin theme, you know the one . . .

 

. . . so plaintive and sad, it sounds like the instrument is literally crying. But the movie goes a LONG time before you hear this, the most iconic musical theme. I think you don't get it until maybe an hour or so into the movie, when Schindler first starts carving out his own factory under Goeth's command, so he can shelter his people from the worst abuses of the Nazis. It's pretty much only used after that when Schindler decides to help someone out of the goodness of his heart, which made me realize: it's the hero theme. This sad little melody is used to tell you when Schindler is acting his best, when his empathy and humanity is winning out. If that's not a great illustration of the conflicting emotions at the center of the film, I'm not sure what is.

Hot take: John Williams is pretty good at movie music.

[sycasey 2.0 2301]

Sorry to keep dominating this discussion, but this movie gave me a lot to think about! On this most recent viewing, I found that Schindler's List worked less as a document of history and more as a statement about how to resist such horrors in the future, should we ever be confronted with them again (and frankly, I think we're closer right now than we have been in a while, at least in the West). This was a nice piece that elucidated those ideas:

https://www.flickfilosopher.com/2018/12/movies-for-the-resistance-schindlers-list.html

IMO, this is also why it's valuable that Spielberg wanted to make his film about a man of action and a man who was fighting for others, not for himself. Such an approach helps make the message more universal.

[ol' eddy wrecks 212]

On 12/16/2018 at 2:56 PM, bleary said:

So it really was a big deal that a director like Spielberg, who had four previous films nominated for Oscars and who had released the highest grossing film of all-time just months prior, made this film that was entirely about the Holocaust.

He was more known doing blockbusters at that point than doing what people would consider serious movies.  So, if you're talking about cultural importance, that aspect is probably more important.

Back to, if I read Night before Schindler's List came out, I had to double-check dates.  I'm not positive if that was the case.  The timing was very close.  It depends if I read Night in 8th grade or 10th grade (8th and 10th grade both covered the Holocaust - weirdly I think in English classes).  Ninth grade history did cover the Holocaust as part of World War II.  Schindler's List came out in the second half of my freshman year of high school.

I'm pretty sure 9th grade history was when I was shown American footage of soldiers liberating Jews in concentration camps.  Seeing living people emaciated beyond what I thought was physically possible to be alive - that left a stronger impression on me than anything I would end up seeing in Schindler's List. Though to clarify, 15 year old me did like Schindler's List.  It was just as I got older a little older that I came to dislike it.    My memory is stronger in its belief that I read Night before seeing Schindler's List.  I suspect I did not see it in theaters.  We did watch it 10th grade and they showed it in prime time TV unedited and without commercials (I think we at least read Night before that though).

I will also point out (though for what point, I don't know), in the This American Life episode, the students said they didn't know anything about the Holocaust when they went into the movie theater, but they did say, "I think we talked about it a bit in 8th grade, and the teacher gave us a brief lesson about an hour before going into it."

I'm trying to organize my thoughts on the most concise way to express why I don't like the film these days, and i don't have time tonight, and I'm not entirely sure when I'm going to get time soon.  Visiting family next week and I'm going to try to cram some movie watching in before I go.  I'm sure we'll eventually get a streak of movies where I don't have a lot to contribute about them, and that's when I'll get some lengthy posts in on Schindler's List.... and A Clockwork Orange as well... Yeah, set expectations appropriately low on this happening.

One small interesting thing I came across, while looking for links on the topic of other movies that portray the Holocaust, I found this quote:

Quote

In an interview several years ago, Spielberg insisted that any good Holocaust movie cannot in the least come across as entertainment.

https://www.nydailynews.com/archives/gossip/benigni-life-isn-beautiful-spielberg-article-1.822494

Stumbled across it, while I was looking to find old articles confirming Spielberg did not like Life is Beautiful as I remember hearing at the time.  It doesn't refute that a Holocaust movie shouldn't have entertainment qualities to it, but since everyone it seems, has been praising the movie for being entertaining, seeing that attributed statement makes me think he wasn't going for that (though I also think he failed in refraining from doing so, and his natural instincts took over).  Related to Paul being surprised that people didn't like Schindler's List for being entertaining, Spielberg's negative reaction to Life is Beautiful seemed to be seemed to their dislike of Schindler's List.  And on that note, (I'd have to dig up the links I found), Son of Saul, which I have not seen, came out a few years ago, and Lanzmann (director of the documentary Shoah, and I believe I read, he didn't like Schindler's List either, but I'd need to double check that.  Art Spiegelman, who wrote the graphic novel, Maus, really hated Schindler's List, based on how he read in that roundtable I linked to) and J. Hoberman (the critic who did that critical Village Voice review of Schindler's List), were both fine with it.  Though, as Hoberman noted in his review, for some, the fictional narrative format is still inappropriate for the Holocaust.  Though, for me thus far, Paul raised the question of, "what do they want then?  It sounds like they ultimately just want a documentary."  You know, what did I watch instead?  A nine and a half hour documentary (though reading the round table, it really did put Marcel Ophul's documentaries on my radar, which they hadn't been before).  For the sake of that conversation topic, catching up with Son of Saul might have been the more appropriate comparison.

[ol' eddy wrecks 212]

14 hours ago, ol' eddy wrecks said:

Though, for me thus far,

I apologize for the poor grammar in my post. It was pretty bad and clunky.

[WatchOutForSnakes 807]

I think that quote about Holocaust movies not being entertainment, really hits the mark for me. It's probably why I haven't re-watched it since high school. And I think it's why it's so hard to critique in the same ways as the rest of the AFI list. It exists in a world all it's own. Maybe that's why it belongs not only on the AFI list, but so far near the top. There's just nothing else like it. Spielberg is the master of drawing out emotions, and he really succeeded with Schindler's List, such that my memories of it are enough.