Absolute good triumphs over absolute evil

Rating: 9/10 (15 August 2013)

Schindler's List is about the idea that good triumphs over evil. Small gestures of kindness can overcome the inconvenient irks of everyday life, but absolute good must rise to the occasion to meet absolute evil, no matter the cost. In this story, there is no question about the absolute evil: the innocent victims of the Holocaust (the appeasement of which implicates us all, see The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich). In the backdrop of this absolute evil, our hero is not without guilt. He is a Nazi party member, an unabashed adulterer and war profiteer. But when history gives him the chance, he chooses to pursue an absolute good, the saving of a thousand innocent Jews from certain death. And this absolute good, pursued to the cost of his entire fortune, redeems him of all the other ills he had accumulated over his life.
To give this idea life, the story's main plot is that of Schindler saving the Jews. To show the cost of this success, another plot tracks his fortune which is given up to save the Jews. Two other internal plots depict the morality of Schindler and Goeth. To make us experience the idea, absolute evil is given a face, a personality and a humane charm. The choices Goeth and Schindler make highlight the inner battles that must be won to strive for the absolute good.
This story is so powerful, it's meaning so relevant, that its experience is almost beyond words. This is why movies should be made. Its special resonance comes from the fact that given the ideas of such absolutes, the hero and villain are not depicted as black and white. The same story could easily have veered to a didactic history lesson, instead it is a shared experience that makes the world a better place by reminding us of what the human species is capable of doing to itself.
My Story Chart of the movie is at storycharts.ca.