"Schindler's List": Film as Testament

Rating: 10/10 (18 March 2004)

It won't be very long before the last survivors of the Holocaust as well as their rescuers are dead. Their children will, with varying degrees of passion and understanding, repeat stories long told or wonder about experiences barely hinted at. Then that generation too will be gone and the dense record will largely interest those committed to studying history, a minority.
Film can have much to say about the world that not so very long ago convulsed with the agony of a war that included among its terrors unprecedented state-directed genocide committed with, for its time, cruelly efficient technology. Steven Spielberg produced a masterpiece with 1993's "Schindler's List" and it will remain a painful, at times agonizing, recreation of a very special craziness.
Winner of many awards including the Oscar for Best Picture, the cast brings to life an enigmatic and, probably, not very likable man, German small-time industrialist Oskar Schindler. Schindler profited from the war and he was a skirt-chaser of extraordinarily ravenous tastes. What set him apart was his rescue of some 1100 Jews from the jaws of the Nazi extermination apparatus. Compared to the tally of the murdered this seems a small number but every life is precious and Schindler did what he could.
Why did he set about rescuing people destined for the gas chambers or death through individual murder or, simply, by overwork? No one really knows including the survivors themselves. One has been quoted as saying that everytime he asked Schindler about his motives during postwar encounters he got a different and incomplete answer.
Perhaps Schindler himself never knew. But results are more important than reasons.
There have been some notable films about Nazis, concentration camps and genocide. Some like "Life is Beautiful" reflect too much development of a star and seem almost obscenely clean, even with the killings. "The Pianist", a recent fine example, shows the suffering of a gifted and wounded man against a supporting backdrop of horror.
In "Schindler's List," the hopelessness of the victims stretches from frame to frame and the first senseless killings seamlessly lead to a growing orgy of dehumanization. Liam Neeson is extraordinary as the German factory owner and Ralph Fiennes as the SS concentration camp commander is both repulsive and fascinating as a warped man whose violence ebbs and flows without any rational inciting events.
Some dismiss Fiennes' character as one-dimensional and unreal but, in fact, any study of SS types who commanded those camps reveal the same split personalities: people who could be fine family men before setting off to work to superintend mass murder, stopping on the way to commit the occasional individual atrocity.
The DVD release has been digitally enhanced and the sound is crisp. Spielberg declined to provide the usual extras found on most DVD releases, stating that his original film should speak for itself. But augmenting the movie is a documentary where some who survived because of Schindler recount their experiences. It must not be missed: some of these voices are already stilled-all will be soon.
A very unusual item in the DVD edition is an envelope soliciting contributions to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive and to teach its lessons to young people increasingly remote from the war. The solicitation is appropriate-I'm posting a check.
Tonight was my third viewing, the first at home on DVD. An amazing, disturbing, brilliant film that will continue through the decades to be invaluable.
10/10