Superficial, goofy exploitation film

Rating: Null/10 (13 August 2011)

"Schindler's List is an exploitation film." - David Mamet "Schindler's List? Kitsch as fat as a dinosaur." - Imre Kertesz Steven Spielberg directs "Schindler's List", a sentimental, sensationalist film which has virtually nothing to do with the Holocaust. But of course audiences never went to "List" to think or learn. This is a black and white horror film, providing shocks and jolts and artfully constructed little moments of "realistic" terror. Audiences went for the same reason they went to see "Jaws". They wanted to be shocked. Spielberg takes the visual touchstones of the Holocaust, (trains/showers/fences/chimneys etc) which audiences automatically recognize, and then uses them to create little action set pieces. Will the gas chambers work? Will the Nazi's find the girl? Will the sniper let the woman live? Will the train stop? Will the little boy find a hiding spot? Will the gun misfire? Will the hose be long enough? It's like a silly game of pee-a-boo or whack-a-jew. The mindset also turns up on a larger scale near the film's end, in a tasteless suspense scene that mines thrills over whether the list will arrive in time to save the Jews from getting gassed. And so on and so on. People criticize the film for being morally black and white, for being thoughtless, for its pantomime characters, for being Zionist propaganda (the final scene is shocking in that it uses Nazism to suggest that Israel is the only alternative to Jewish persecution), for presenting "good" and "evil" as being inexplicable (none of the characters thoughts or motivations are explored) and ignoring all nuance, history and politics. These criticisms are valid, but really, these people are criticizing a film that "List" never tried to be. It's a thriller. An exploitative horror film disguised as art. That is the real immorality of "List". Unsurprisingly, Spielberg ignores all truths and instead opts to propagate Western Holocaust myths. The fact that Goeth, who was arrested by the SS Judiciary and imprisoned on charges of "brutality and sadism", was an anomaly and precisely the kind of figure of excess that undermines and makes events like the Holocaust impracticable, isn't brought up. Instead, with the exception of Schindler, all Germans are portrayed as brutes. Schindler (whom modern historians - Jitka Gruntova, David Crowe - don't regard as having altruistically saved anyone) is himself Spielberg's typical father figure who slowly learns to love his flock of children. Meanwhile, the film's Jews are reduced to a slightly gentrified version of Der Sturmer caricatures: the childish, initialized mass of holy innocents, the bespectacled accountant, the dangerous Jewish seductress, the money men in the church etc. Or, as Yosefa Loshitzky put it, they're strikingly "similar to their images in Nazi propaganda". Gone are all messy complexities. "List" ignores the fact that the kapos routinely conspired against fellow Jews, and that often only the wealthiest could get on Schindler's list in the first place. Schindler's history is wiped clean too (he used slave labor for most of the war), as the fact that he worked for the Abwehr and procured the Polish uniforms and information to be used in the Gleiwitz Incident, the "false flag" operation which was used as a pretext to start the invasion of Poland, and therefore World War 2, is far too traumatic for audiences who want neat cartoon demarcations. Western Anti-Semitism is likewise shunted aside, Hitler's brand of Imperialism is never mirrored to the equally insidious behavior of the other world Empires and the fact that Hitler's war was the "logical" outcome of early techno capitalism and that all world powers were equally complicit in the Holocuast, is ignored. Likewise, the way the West effectively blackmailed (and abandoned) Poland and used them for a proxy war is neglected as well as all manners of socio/political/historical complexities. Schindler saved 1200 Jews you see. That's all that matters. Turn off your brain. Shed a tear. Remember. Everything is okay. End result: WW2 and the Holocaust reduced to a kind of historical brainwashing: "evil Nazis kill cute Jews, good Nazi save some Jews, debt paid if Jews allowed to keep Israel". The film turns the Holocaust solely into a Jewish experience. No one else suffers, nothing else matters. Like "Private Ryan", the film exploits the context of war and deliberately lies in order to tell a fantasy of rescue/survival/redemption. The real narrative subtext here is the restoration of family and the recuperation of a nation and its history. The boosting of comfortable myths and the avoidance of truthful confrontation in order to provide superficial closure. In ignoring all issues, it bolsters that which allow these problems to continually repeat themselves. Spielberg's optimism is correct, but he is wrong in placing the blame on a failure of individuals and individual ethics/responsibility, rather than the system itself. At their core, these are systemic, ideological problems which continue to this day, and yet the film condescendingly lets its audience pat itself on the back for believing that it, like Schindler, would give up its riches to save lives. The double-binds and compartmentalization which made and continues to make such "morality" impossible (as well as futile) are not shown. It's only easy to say "yes" to the film's ethical dilemmas when you're a wealthy and powerful factory owning Nazi. Unsurprisingly, the film takes the shape of a "monster vs kids" ride, the Nazi's becoming a surrogate for Spielberg's tripods/pirates/sharks/ dinosaurs/trucks. They zap Jews and you jump. Because "List" has a higher cum-shot-jew-kill ratio, all other Holocaust movies are obsolete to salacious, contemporary taste buds. Other movies don't kill enough people for them, don't give them that Hitchcockian buzz. Notice no one went to see "Amistad". Spielberg didn't kill enough slaves. He learnt his lesson with "Ryan", though, and dispatched a couple thousand Nazis for your amusement. Self-congratulation sells best with blood. 7/10