Director: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Kingsley
Running Time: 195 minutes
Certificate: 15
Extras: 77 minute documentary ‘Voices from the List’
Articulating the Holocaust is always problematic; how do we find the appropriate language to talk about genocide? Can we, or should we, create art out of such adversity? Cinema has responded in a number of ways, from the post-war neuroses of SOPHIE’S CHOICE (1982) to comedy, and the child’s perspective in LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (1997) to extensive interviews in documentary film SHOAH (1985). However it’s arguably SCHINDLER’S LIST that has entered our cultural consciousness most fully, aided by a plethora of awards and its place firmly in the top ten of the AFI’s 100 best film list.
We all surely know how over one thousand Jews were saved by German businessman Oskar Schindler during World War II, and their harrowing experiences are shown here in distinctive black and white. But first and foremost, the story belongs to Schindler (Liam Neeson). In fact he’s our guide through the horrors and we see many of the unfolding events through his eyes beginning with one of the earliest scenes showing him preparing for a boozy evening of wine, women, song and schmoozing with powerful business contacts and Nazis.
Skilled CUs and cross-cutting only introduce the audience to Schindler’s character and values through his clothes and belongings: a pack of cigarettes, money, sharp clothes, a Swastika pin. He’s a man who loves wealth and whose allegiance shifts according to who can best serve it. It’s important we understand this from the outset so we can follow his transformation from pragmatic entrepreneur (or war profiteer) to saviour for the Jews who worked in his factory.
The performances in SCHINDLER’S LIST are faultless: Neeson is utterly convincing as the debonair and suave ladies’ man who ends up humbled, and Ralph Fienne’s portrayal of concentration camp commandant Amon Goethe is intense and completely terrifying. The man oozes cruelty and violence, but also a sophisticated ability to entertain, not unlike Schindler’s.
Spielberg’s choice to shoot in black and white (bar the modern-day ‘book-end’ scenes) allows Schindler’s moment of realisation to happen in a way only cinema could: watching the liquidation of the ghetto he notes a girl in a red coat – the only glimpse of colour on screen. It’s a way of bringing the magnitude of ethnic cleansing down to the personal. Of course, the next time Schindler sees this red coat it’s on a corpse and his transformation is complete. It’s a powerful moment in film, but one when we realise we’re being played – Spielberg is certainly a director who knows how to guide an audience’s emotional response.
But whether it really happened like this is, in a way, beside the point. Despite being given authenticity through its documentary-style footage and hand-held cameras, SCHINDLER’S LIST conforms to mainstream Hollywood conventions and remains very much a work of fiction. The narrative follows the anti-hero Schindler’s path from excess and debauchery to transfiguration and redemption, he loses everything yet gains so much more. An added element of trauma and voyeurism is brought about by the Jewish women’s accidental transportation to Auschwitz with an extended scene in the shower-rooms plays with our expectations, building the atmosphere to unparalleled heights before water surges from the shower-heads, not the expected gas.
It doesn’t matter if SCHINDLER’S LIST blurs the line between truth and fiction. Spielberg may have created a revisionist history for Schindler but the film still packs a punch on a raw, emotional level. It’s a powerful exploration of both one man’s journey to redemption and the twentieth century’s darkest moment.
Extras: A 77 minute feature documentary gives first hand experiences and testimonials from a number of the Schindler Jews and their families, however it doesn’t give any insights to filming techniques or behind-the scenes.
SCHINDLER’S LIST: 20TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION is out on DVD and Blu-ray April 8 via Universal. You can order it here.
