Schindler's List DVD > Reviews > Schindler's List-- A 7 Academy Award-Winning Rant

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Liked it
Story	Very ordinary
Characters / Performances	Outstanding
Special Effects	Good
How does it compare to similar films?	Weak

Advantages:	Standout performances by Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley and Ralph Fiennes; Stunning John Williams sound track .
Disadvantages:	Spielberg's mawkishly overwrought, one - dimensional depiction, turns poignant historic subject matter into a pretentious melodrama .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Schindler's List...

Starring "Police Chief, Martin Brody" as Oscar Schindler; "Marine Biologist, Matt Hooper" as Itzhak Stern and "Jaws" (the shark) making a dramatic comeback as the stereotypically sadistic Nazi laborcamp commandante, Amon Goeth.

Plot Details: This opinion reveals minor details about the movie's plot.

I. INTRODUCTION & PLOT SUMMARY

A. Introduction:
This review begins with a somewhat dry, but straightforward synopsis of the movie's plot, (please skip this if you've seen the movie; you'll be glad you did.) It then goes into a discussion of my "critiquing parameters," then moves to a discussion of its score and concludes with a discussion of the effect Spielberg's direction had on its overall production.

B. A Dry, But Straightforward, Plot Synopsis:
"Schindler's List" is based on the true story of German businessman and Nazi sympathizer, Oskar Schindler's personal transformation from a womanizing, materialistic playboy into a selfless, dedicated and philanthropic hero. Schindler, (Liam Neeson) a German businessman in 1938 Poland, sees the Nazis' rise to power as his opportunity to make a fortune. He begins a cookware and utensil company, and applies his natural skills as a social shmoozer and a conman to flatter and bribe his way into acquiring a series of Nazi military contracts. He brings in accountant and financier Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley) to help run the factory, but more importantly, to serve as a liaison through which to supply his factory with a dependable, unpaid labor force of Jews who had been herded into Krakow's ghetto by Nazi troops. Stern, realizes working for Schindler could mean survival for himself and the other Jews. However, in 1942, when Krakow's Jews are assigned to Plaszow, a Forced Labor Camp run by Commandant Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), their survival is once again in jeopardy. Schindler by shmoozing with Goeth, is able to arrange the continued use of Polish Jews in his plant. Schindler now realizes that he and his factory, are the only barrier between his labor force and the Nazi death camps. Schindler completely abandons his previous desire to generate a fortune, and uses his remaining finances as bribes to procure more Jewish workers and maintain the factory's current staff. By the time the allies defeat Germany, Schindler's fortune is wiped out, but he has saved 1100 people from imminent death.

Many people who saw this movie, exited the theater feeling quite certain they had seen an all-around masterpiece of a film. Unfortunately, I was not one of them. I realize there are those who may claim I'm an anti-semite for blaspheming this movie with my less than lavish critique, but in fact, it's because I am not an anti-semite that I believe that this movie's presentation of the Schindler saga does an injustice to the sacred memory of the Holocaust.

C. Great Expectations
I attribute much of the harshness of my overall assessment of this film to my disenchantment with the affected manner in which Spielberg treated its historically important subject matter. Let's face it; this film is no "Jaws." The folks who put this blue chip production together were thinking "Oscar" right from the get-go, and I don't mean the "Schindler" kind. This movie was given every possible benefit a future classic could ask for. I figure this raises the movie's "critical bar" a little higher than it might be for a comparatively low budget action/adventure flick like "Jaws."

I think because of his particular style of directing, that Steven Spielberg was the wrong choice to direct a movie of such historical significance. I have nothing personal against Spielberg. "Jaws" is one of my favorite movies of all time. However, "Jaws" is the type of film in which Spielberg's style shines. Specifically, it is a movie with an unknown, nightmarish, perhaps mythical, common enemy. It is a movie without a complex storyline; one whose "us against them" (or "it," as the case may be,) is black and white. A directorial attempt to explore any perceived "shades of gray," would only have watered down the "fairytale-brought-to-life" flavor of its horrifying magic.

It is precisely this style; a style which was such an asset to the storytelling in "Jaws," that proves to be a liability in "Schindler's List." As Roger Ebert, put it: "...Spielberg (is a) stylist whose films often have gloried in shots we are intended to notice and remember... ." The key word here, is "intended." The images I was apparently intended to notice and remember, were not so much of the compassionate Schindler bargaining for human livestock, or of the pain of the Jewish victims being separated from their families, but rather of the stereotypical sadism of Nazis scouring the Krakow slums for hidden prey; Comandant Goeth randomly shooting at human targets, then gratuitously swinging like a human pinata, from the noose by which he is hung. As horrible and tragic as the Nazi extermination may have been, stereotypically dehumanizing all Germans involved in the war, in this manner, cheats the viewer of the crucial recognition that we are all, in some way, at some level, guilty of our own prejudices and personal judgments, and perhaps not so worthy of pointing the finger of guilt as Spielberg would have us believe.

The French author Flaubert once wrote that "An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere." This is the ideal Spielberg should have aspired to in this film. He should have focused on the evil of the Holocaust; told the incredible story of "how it was robbed of some of its intended victims." It is this he fails to do by consciously and obviously making it a "them versus us" stereotypical melodrama.

True, Schindler's List was nominated for twelve Academy Awards and won seven; Best Picture and Best Director included. Yes, I believe that some aspects of this movie were excellent, perhaps even great. The acting of its three leads: Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley and Ralph Fiennes, was flawless and inspired. Its art direction, its cinematography and its special effects were well above average. However, my dissatisfaction with this film is a result of its directing; it's presentation of its story material.

II. THE "SCHINDLER'S LIST" SCORE

A. John Williams' Score Is Like An Aeolian Harp
For me, the highlight of this movie, was its hauntingly beautiful score. If you're a music-ruled soul, as I am, The score, by John Williams, does for the audio story, what Spielberg, could have and should have done for the video side of the tale. As I try to think of what I might compare it to, I'm reminded of a time I was in England, in the pastoral "Lake" District, visiting the home of Romantic poet, William Wordsworth. One of the exhibits was a recording of an "Aeolian Harp". I put on the exhibit's headphones and listened, momentarily hypnotized by the desolate peals of "slide whistle"-like eerie, mournfulness, which seemed to combine the soft, yet strident, metallic underwater-echo of communicating whales, with the distant wail of a grief-stricken spirit's siren-song, as the strains of her melancholy dissonance intermittently rise above storm-driven wind gusts. I recognized this instrument's sound only one time in a movie's soundtrack; specifically, in "Apocalypse Now," which incorporated the Aeolian Harp's dreary whine with lethal acumen in conveying the otherworldly, isolated surreality experienced by the alienated American soldiers on their ill-fated jungle-trek in search of General Kurtz.

B. Painting With Music
Though "Schindler's List"'s does not incorporate any Aeolian Harps, the darkly ethereal dreariness of its sound track conveys a remarkably similar experience. Williams seems to intuitively sense he must musically paint in the three-dimensional hues and shades lacking in Spielberg's "black & white" depiction of the Schindler story. He does so by wielding violinist Izhak Perlman's soul-piercing violin solos like the brush strokes of a Renaissance master. He blots in the dark mauves and violets of malignant alienation pervading the Krakow ghettos and daubs in the icy blues and jaundiced yellows of the suffocating apprehension experienced by the condemned as they are carted off by train to the Nazi death camps. At times, his musical influence is purposefully vague, like a fleeting pang of elusive apprehension. At other times it commands the emotional forefront of the drama, overwhelming the senses with its painful bittersweetness. In this way, Williams score provides for the Schindler production, a depth of story illustration which is not supported or evidenced in the stilted stereotyping of its visual counterpart. Williams received a well-deserved Oscar for this virtuoso soundtrack. I highly recommend music-enthusiasts purchase it on CD.

IV. WHO WOULD I HAVE CHOSEN TO DIRECT SCHINDLER'S LIST?

[Rather than criticize without offering a constructive solution, I've herein included a discussion of SL director-alternatives. Though the focus appears to be on directors, I use the discussion to indirectly flesh out a number of SL's pros and cons.] My "Schindler's List" director-selection pool would have been composed of directors whose bodies of work show an aptitude for emphasizing a movie's "storytelling" forest for its "individual-character" trees. Consequently, my selection would have had to be able to present the historic Schindler story material in one of two ways:

EITHER,

1) It would have to tell a very basic, straightforward story using its main characters as generic, this-could-be-you, "everyman"-type mouth and action pieces for the story, none of whom were either particularly good or evil; just people responding within the range of potential human reponses given each character's respective set of surrounding circumstances,

OR

2) It would have to tell a broad, multilayered story, having each concurrent layer represent the individual, limited perspective of that sub-aspect of the overall story that each of the three or four main characters brings to the forward movement of the plot as a whole. This story structure is metaphorically similar to the manner a competent conductor blends the confluence of competing "individual-storytelling" musical sounds generated by the various instrument sections that comprise a symphony orchestra, into one all-encompassing, harmoniously-balanced, "overall-storytelling" composition. By way of the same metaphor, Spielberg's telling of SL sacrifices its proverbial orchestra's woodwind and string sections in favor of its brass and percussion sections, to conduct a symphony that history composed to be played by the full breadth and measure of the orchestral spectrum.

Since my time machine is on the fritz, John Ford, Frank Capra, Alfred Hitchcock and, more recently, Hal Ashby, drop off the list. Alfred Hitchcock has always been my favorite director. He's the most "thought-provoking," and based on his amazing sense of humor, a pure artist, but I think his brilliant, microcosmically-focused manner of telling the macrocosmic story would be wasted here. I worship Martin Scorsesi for his ability to blend hard realism with a sort of brooding, urban romanticism, and for his unwillingness to compromise his intense, personal vision. Yet I don't see this approach befitting the director's chair for "Schindler's List" either.

Three "1993-active" directors capable of bringing out the more baroque intricacies and elusively subtle facets of a multifaceted, socially-relevant historical incident, without compromising the fidelity of its broader, overall perspective; three who could portray said incident without getting preachy or sanctimonious about it, thus whom I might have awarded the "Schindler's List" director's chair, are Stanley Kubrick, Francis Ford Coppola (Apocalypse Now) and Terrence Malick ("The Thin Red Line.") Each of these three choices represent directors possessed of impartial-"conductor" storytelling styles and qualities I feel Spielberg lacks; particularly regarding the latter's simplistic, one-dimensional, all-or-nothing, "the good guys wear white hats; the bad guys wear black hats" treatment of thematic issues and ideas. Spielberg's directing talent is better applied to portraying simple, but dramatic storyline, Disney-esque fantasy, action/adventure and children's stories. "Schindler's List" should have been more preoccupied with "history;" not "his story" (i.e., Spielberg's.)

Thank You For Your Thoughtful Read,

The 29th_Candidate