1993 Best PictureRating: 18/20 (Jen: 18/20; Dylan: 11/20)
Plot: Businessman Oskar Schindler saves a bunch of Jews during the Holocaust. He's rewarded with a tree and a bunch of rocks and, long after he's gone, a movie that nobody will want to see because it isn't even in color.
So here's my question: Why were so many details changed? They're not significant details--the girl in the red dress, based on a real person apparently, survived the Holocaust--but doesn't it damage the integrity of the film? Even a minor rewrite is still a rewrite of history, isn't it? Isn't that what Inglorious Basterds is kind of about? It makes me question the historical accuracy of other things that happen in the movie, like when Fiennes character is shooting at people from his balcony.
Here's something else I wanted to bring up. Here's what filmmaker Terry Gilliam had to say about Schindler's List: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAKS3rdYTpI
It's a two minute clip. I know Cory made us watch a five-hour movie this month, but you can spare two more minutes to see what Mr. Gilliam has to say, right? I have my own thoughts, but I wanted to see what you had to say.
Another question: Spielberg refused to take any money for making this, and he doesn't sign any memorabilia related to the movie. That's noble and all, but a stronger move would have been to keep his name off the screen during the closing credits. Or at least not end his movie with a powerful scene of Schindler's Jews giving him rocks and then immediately splash "Directed by Steven Spielberg" on the screen after it.
I saw this in a crummy theater in Terre Haute when it came out, back before they'd invented devices that would enable my wife to check Facebook during the movie. Now I'm not completely sure about this, but I think that makes her almost as bad as a Nazi. Of course, Dylan only rated this an 11, not even twice as good as Dr. Strangelove, so he's probably going straight to hell. He called it "boring," and it is too long, arguably longer than it needs to be. If I had to cut anything at all, I'd maybe lose the big chunk where Goeth is going through a "pardoning" stage after that lengthy conversation that Qui Gon has with Goeth's maid. I guess I know what a scene where Goeth gets a manicure adds to the Schindler's List experience, but it could have been cut without losing much. It certainly is a long movie, but most of what you see on the screen needs to be there. I don't think our director wants humanity to get away without seeing some of this imagery. It's the same reason why people should have to read Night, almost like an act of penance. Also, this much time is needed to make what Schindler does realistic and comprehensible. You lose some of the space this movie gives the Schindler character, and you lose the real person that he was. And speaking of that real person, I'm happy this leaves in some of his defects. What we find out first about the man is that he was a selfish womanizer, and I think that's important. Neeson's so good here, both with those aforementioned flaws and the more emotional bits as Schindler transforms into the person who deserves to have a movie made about him. Fiennes makes a scary villain, a much scarier (and nosier) one than Lord Voldemort could ever have been. Just as Neeson gives the titular character some real flesh 'n' blood, Fiennes also gives his character, a character who puts a face and name on the evil and gives us something more specific to hate, some unfortunate humanity. And he's so matter-of-fact about it all. It's frightening. It's a brave part for him to grab at the age of 30-something, mostly because he's so good at being pure evil that people might not want to see his face on the screen ever again. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor (CORRECTION: No, he did not. And neither did John Malkovich.), and if there was an Academy Award for Best Paunch, he would have gotten that, too. As evil as that character is, he did give me a pick-up line that I'll probably use once I leave my wife for getting on Facebook during Schindler's List and will need to find a replacement wife--"I realize you're not a person in the strictest sense of the word. . ." I don't think many women would be able to resist that.
One other question: Did they really say "fuck" that much in 1940's Poland? This is a legitimate question. It's a word with a fuzzy history.
Spielberg gives us a lot of pictures that are impossible to get out of your head. The handheld camera work during a lot of this startles. True, some of these visuals just seem too easy, the kind of stuff that a director who knows his name will be the first thing you see after the last image of the film might think will get him that Academy Award. The camera lingers on children, and piles of shoes or pictures, concentration camp atrocities, and dying extras get more than enough screen time. The ghetto scene is absolutely brutal. The little boy with the ears trying to find a hiding spot and the shot of him spotlighted in that desperate situation he decides upon is impossible to forget. Of course, there's the girl in the red coat. Ashes, the slow river of blood fighting through snow, the ominous crematorium chimney. One of my favorite moments is in the hospital when the nurse poisons some patients. One woman's grateful expression and that nurse's look of defiance when the SS arrive are both so beautiful. It's powerful film-making, and there aren't a lot of people who can watch this and feel nothing.
One more thing--I think it's a little sad that I have to look up the name of the accountant/factory-manager. It's Itzhak Stern. Maybe it's just me being bad with names.
My thoughts about Gilliam's thoughts: What are you going to leave this movie remembering the most? Is it a Holocaust movie or a movie about how one person can make a difference? Do you think about how evil humanity is as the credits roll or are you remembering the goodness of one human being? If it's the former with those three questions, Gilliam might have a point.
OK, your turn. What do you want to say about our Oprah Movie Club selection for May?
16 comments:
First, Gilliam. I didn't think much of his interview. It kind of felt like sour grapes aimed at a much more commercially successful director. Spielberg was not honor-bound to make a documentary about the Holocaust. For one thing, no studio would make it, and for another thing, almost no one (except maybe people like us) would watch it. I think Spielberg is doing a much greater service by giving the audience an example of the good side of human nature amidst the horrors that were going on everywhere in that time. Schindler is a role model that helps the audience connect with the material much more personally. We hope that would have the courage to act in the same way.
I agree with most of your review. There are so many things I love about the film and the emotions it ellicits that it seems trite trying to put into words. While not flawless (a few scenes too many and some emotional manipulation), the film is devastating and uplifting as it shows the true extremes of human nature. The film is so effective at adding to the tension bit by bit as the Jews go from being identified to being the victims of slaughter. Neeson's portrayal is so brilliant in showing the man, warts and all, as step by step he is changed by what he and we see. The scene where he gives the watch to save the parents, and the scene where he is up all night with the trunks of money are incredibly moving to me. Every scene with Kingsley also reaffirms the goodness in man.
At the same time, Spielberg doesn't blink as he creates much of the most unforgettable and painful imagery I have ever seen, showing the other extreme...man's capacity for pure evil. Fiennes creates one of the screen's great villians, and all of the Nazi characters are perfect ranging from apathy to evil.
Spielberg can't help being manipulative in creating movies. It is his genius and his curse. I forgive that and respect how much he overcame in this film because you can feel his honest motives in every single frame. Along with "The Diary of Anne Frank", I believe it is "Schindler's List" that will be the thing that brings the Holocaust and it's lessons to our fellow man, and that makes it an absolute good (in addition to being great art). A 20.
Well its a 19 or 20 for me. Its amusing to see someone like Terry Gilliam talk about Schindlers List as being uplifting, and thats a bad thing, because some people were saved, instead of noting how many people died in this movie, in horrible, brutal ways.
I guess you could make a Holocaust movie about how all these people died, and we could spend two or three hours in the theater watching them expire, but thats not a very interesting movie is it? The MOVIE never claims or tries to be a documentary on the Holocaust, and instead is a story about one man, and how his decisions affected so many others.
I watched that short interview with Gilliam, and it showed exactly why he is an inferior filmmaker. He doesnt understand that no matter what the subject matter, you still need a story to back it up. Gilliam makes beautiful movies, that almost always become jumbled messes. Time Bandits, Brazil, 12 Monkeys, The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen. All of them are fatally flawed by Gilliams inability to create a compelling storyline and a decent ending. His only movie that is "tied up in a little bow" at the end, is the Fisher King...a movie, that not surprisingly, Gilliam had nothing to do with writing. Its also, not surprisingly, his most successful film, both artistically and commercially.
So you have Spielberg, who is guilty of many times of going over the top with his need to completely tell a story, and then someone like Gilliam, who cant create a complete story himself, so he makes up for it by saying that the audience needs to do it for him.
Schindlers List does all the things that Gilliam wishes he could do with a movie. It has unforgettable characters, mixed with scenes that sit with you long after the movie is over, plus a genuinely interesting story to follow. Its simply great filmmaking, by a supremely talented director at the height of his ability, and a fascinating subject matter.
Just think of it this way. Oscar Schindler is a household name now. Everyone knows who he was, and what happened in his little part of the war. If you had asked a thousand people about Oscar Schindler before this movie came out in 1993, its doubtful one person would have heard of him. This is how well done this movie was....it brought an obscure moment of human decency into the national consciousnesses. Its success in every way measurable for a movie.
In other news...Cory and I put in our reviews within a minute of each other, without knowing the other was doing so.
I am giving Schindlers List a 20. I have no idea why I even said 19. I am a waffler.
Ralph Fiennes did NOT win the oscar for best supporting actor for this film. Tommy Lee Jones won for The Fugitive. Both are good performances in an excellent year for supporting actors. (Maybe the best ever)
Leonardo DiCaprio got his first nomination for Whats Eating Gilbert Grape, John Malkovich was up for In the Line of Fire, Pete Postelwait for My Left Foot. Every single one of them was memorable.
The funny thing is...I like Terry Gilliam movies, usually. They are mostly just eye candy fluff for me, so its hilarious seeing him bag on Speilberg for any reason.
Gilliam. Yeah, sour grapes. Good way to put it. My issue with his comments is that thinking a movie has to be about one thing or have a certain tone just because of its subject matter is shortsighted. It's a Holocaust movie, but more specifically, it's an Oskar Schindler movie. So it's not supposed to be a movie about despair; it's a movie about hope.
My question, however. Let's say in five months, you randomly just thinking of Schindler's List, and the first thing that pops into your head is the brutal scene where bodies are being conveyer-belted into a pit of fire while crazed Nazi guys look on. Or the image of the little girl in the red coat being wheeled past...that pops into your head first. Let's say that what Schindler did is only the 37th thing that pops into your head, and most of what you remember is that despair. Does that give Gilliam's point some validity? Is this movie ultimately a failure if the feeling the viewer is left with is one of despair rather than hope?
Spielberg's manipulations do bug me. Always have. I don't see this one as being even close to his worst offender though. The girl in the red coat is a cute little trick. All of those shots of children? But really, if you're going to call this manipulative, you have to call Wiesel's 'Night' manipulative, too.
Fiennes should have won the Oscar. No, wait. Malkovich should have because that character is brilliant. Not Tommy though. I didn't like that performance so much.
I disagree with you (Barry) about the roles/jobs of directors and the audience, but you knew I would. We've touched on this before with a couple Coen brother movies. To me, I see film as an art form, just like painting or poetry. And some movies, just like some paintings and poems, are a lot more abstract than others. I just don't think a painting has to give all the answers. Great art has some gaps, and what an audience brings to the table is important. I like what Gilliam said about how people who watch a movie should be able to go home and think about things and, in some cases, not even understand things completely or have all the answers.
Have you ever read the short story "The Lady or the Tiger?"? I don't want all of the movies I watch to be like that, but I do like feeling challenged by certain movies. I like being able to bring my own experiences and beliefs into it and be a more active participant in the process.
I like Gilliam's movies, too, but there's just something so frustrating about them. Maybe it really is his inability to tell a complete story.
What a lazy blogger I am...I assumed Fiennes won that Oscar and really did a quick Google search to verify and saw something that satisfied me. I tell my language arts students to triangulate when they research, especially on the Internet. Oops.
I do think that cinema can be art, but its not art like a painting. Various kinds of art need to accomplish certain things in order to reach that artistic level. A great painting needs to make you think about the subject, and because the medium is so limited, it is forced to rely on the viewer to fill in things. A great book is exactly the opposite...it needs the author to create as complete a world as possible in order to have that artistic feel to it. A movie is far more like a book than it is a painting. It has more ways to express itself than any other artistic medium, and when you go too far down the "well just let the audience decide for itself what so and so means" it reduces the very essence of movie making. I appreciate how some ambiguity can make certain aspects of a film better. The end scene in The Graduate, or even in Before Sunset....but they are very VERY rare for me when they work, and the rest of the movie has to avoid ambiguity to allow it at the end. The two Coen Brothers movies we are talking about are No Country For Old Men and the excrement that is A Serious Man. With No Country, it took a great movie, and turned it into a slight disappointment. The ending they chose had absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the film, and was a total cop out. With A Serious Man, the entire film was set up to be ambiguous so the entire film was a lazy ass waste of time. Its examples where this idea that ambiguity is somehow artistic, has gone too far.
As for your question about if you think of the violence and horror of Schindlers List, does that make the movie a failure? The question itself is just an example of Gilliam creating an impossible standard for Spielberg. So if we think of the movie as something that gives us hope, of scenes like Schindler breaking down over his inability to do more, then we are being manipulated and Spielberg is doing a disservice to the Holocaust. If we think of a scene where Gothe is shooting a little boy because he is having a temper tantrum, then Spielberg failed as a moviemaker because he is somehow glorifying the horror.
The film has multiple images that come to mind. Thats a reason its so great. The first scene I thought of, when Gilliam asked the question was the one where many prisoners are taken into the showers, which we have been shown means death, and instead all that happens is a regular shower. So we have a scene with both horror and hope. Dread and relief. Since thats the first scene I thought of, what does that mean in terms of the movie being a success?
Well said.
I constantly thought commenting was stupid, but for this blog i shall give it a go. Im loving it!
The library's copy of Schindler's List is still out, so I guess I kind of blew it on the movie club. Sorry, but I'm going to be a hypocrite and comment anyway. I did see this movie in the theaters when it came out, while my dad was a movie reviewer, so I must've had a good conversation about it back then.
I can comment on a few points that have been made so far, I think. Terry Gilliam collaborated with the playwright Tom Stoppard on Brazil, and I don't think the writing on that one is incoherent at all. Either Stoppard or Gilliam is on the special features of the DVD, and whichever one it is brings up the "no answers" idea again in that interview. Even without answers I find that movie (and 12 Monkeys and Fear and Loathing) completely satisfying. I think on an instinctual level I sense that they are complete within themselves, whereas my gut tells me that The Brothers Grimm, Tideland, or the Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus is a sloppy mess. So I'm willing to give Terry Gilliam the benefit of the doubt and wouldn't chaulk everything up to sour grapes.
Maybe what Gilliam is saying about answers and the plotting of Schindler's List is not a critique of the focus on Oskar Schindler, but about the overall aesthetic of Spielberg films? I like some of the work of the German playwright Bertolt Brecht, and he used an "alienating effect" to remind people that they were watching a play. The idea was that if the audience was too immersed in the action, they wouldn't be as invested in the message. So he would periodically remind them they were watching a play by having an actor speak directly to the audience, using skeletal sets, etc. Maybe by having a perfectly developed plot and superb actors giving finely-tuned performances, we have an impression of immersion and coming away thinking that our sense of history is better and more profound that it really is? If you've ever read Maus by Art Spiegelman, I think that's why the story is told at one remove, from the perspective of the son of a holocaust survivor, and his anger at his father for being so severe is part of the story and the equation that makes it work.
Barry, have you read No Country for Old Men? Cormac McCarthy is my favourite author, and that book is the only one I didn't really like. If you haven't, it's not too much of a spoiler to say The Coen Brothers altered the ending by lightening up it just a tad, and I really appreciated how they seemed to know when they had pushed the darkness as far as it needed to go. Having read it I wasn't thinking about the ending in terms of how the ambiguity was frustrating, I was thinking about how when it was all over, how perfectly the movie had framed the balance of light and dark. So at least in the case you mentioned, the book/movie comparison goes deeper for me because it's almost like there's a conversation happening between two great artists (I'm lumping the Coens into one person) in different mediums, and maybe seeing how their different philosophies manifested in their approach to the same story enriched the ambiguity.
Again, it's been ages since I saw the actual movie in question, so you guys know what you're talking about better than I do, but at least I appreciated reading some of the discussion here...
I refuse to argue about the greatness (Excrement? Geez!) of 'A Serious Man' but that tornado did have something to do with the rest of the movie. Biblical allusion!
Good point about cinema being a different kind of art than painting. It doesn't change what I think about movies as art or the potential of movies as an artistic form. Just as there are different kinds of painting, there should be different kinds of movies. You've got all the -isms (impressionism, pointillism, surrealism, pop artism), various styles, and various forms with varying purposes. A still life of a bowl of fruit, a self portrait, or a landscape painting all have different purposes behind them than something more abstract. Some painting just requires more from the viewers. I'm not saying it makes the art any better necessarily, just different. Or take 'Mona Lisa' as an example. The greatest of that work is that somebody can look at it and appreciate it as just a painting of a person and move on while somebody else can find new dimensions, new stories, new angles.
It's the same with movies. Some movies are like landscape paintings or still lifes. And that's fine. If somebody wants to watch the cinematic equivalent of a bowl of fruit, I don't have a problem with that. Heck, I enjoy the bowl of fruit just as much as the next guy. Those kinds of movies are good for what they are. Then you've got the more abstract stuff that a lot of people will look at and say, "Is this even a movie?" They require more from the viewer, and not all of them will work for everybody. Then, you've got some in-between movies that are enjoyable on a very superficial level while at the same time holding deeper interpretations for others. You know, like 'Up'...
So I know they're different mediums, different kinds of art, but I still think they're similar in a lot of ways. I don't think we should put limitations on any art form and say, "This is what this art form has to be." Painting has evolved a lot from when cave people made handprints or drew horses on cave walls. Movies should be allowed to evolve, too.
RE: that shower scene...
That's an interesting one because I'm still not sure if I like that scene. Well, maybe "like" is the wrong word because there are so many scenes in 'Schindler's List' are technically brilliant and/or as moving as you're likely to see on screen, but they are impossible to "like"...but you get the idea. I don't know if that scene is just an example of that Spielberg manipulation or not. It's a powerful scene though.
Matt, I like that you brought up Brecht and the "alienating effect"...I think with a subject like the Holocaust, a director is in danger of having too much movie, a case where you lose some of the meaning because you can't get past the medium. My brother, who like you has not been able to see 'Schindler's List' yet and unlike you has actually never seen it, is pretty cynical about this whole thing. I don't really want to speak for him, but I will anyway. He thinks Spielberg is showing a Hollywoodized version of Schindler and the Holocaust, an "overblown" thing designed to win a bunch of Oscars. There are times when it does feel like Spielberg is trying to win an Oscar here, when some of the acting (Fiennes more than the others) make this more of a big movie event rather something more...I can't think of a word here, so I'll use 'sacred.' Most of this though has such a documentary-esque realness. It's brutal and sometimes painful, but the images are shown in this matter-of-fact way that lacks any Hollywood sparkle. I don't think there's much showing off from Spielberg or his actors here, and there's a reverence that keeps this from being just a big big Hollywood movie.
In other words, I don't think this is 'Titanic,' a movie that I find almost offensive in the way the subject matter is Hollywoodized.
You're probably right that Gilliam's remarks have less to do with 'Schindler's List' and more to do with the Spielberg brand of filmmaking. I don't think Gilliam appreciates the attribute of 'neatness' as much as some directors or most audience members. He's looking at the subject matter of the Holocaust in the most pessimistic way you possibly can--this is the low point for humanity and there is no satisfactory explanation for why 12 million people were slaughtered. The Schindler story is an optimistic one, a little hope in all this murky bile, and to Gilliam (and my brother), that may seem like Hollywoodizing or big-budgeting things. It's bewildering to me that somebody like Gilliam, a filmmaker who should understand that movies can be a lot of different things more than any other filmmaker, would be a little close-minded here.
I wonder what Gilliam would think about 'Life Is Beautiful'...you want to talk about the Hollywoodizing of this particular subject matter! I'm sure what Benigni did made him nearly choke to death.
By the way, I fell for 'Life Is Beautiful' in a big way. I love that movie despite it's very obvious flaws and a level of manipulation that makes Spielberg look like a little league manipulator.
How many Holocaust movies were there before 'Schindler's List'? I'm too lazy to think about it or look it up. I know there have been quite a few since '93.
I loathed Life is Beautiful. Just to get that out there. If it gets reviewed here, I will list out why, but there it is.
I knew that because you mentioned it in the comments for 'The Tiger in the Snow'...and I can completely understand why people would hate 'Life Is Beautiful'...I fall for it and am a little embarrassed about it.
As you said when we were talking about Life is Beautiful before, the Oscars loved Roberto, so its people like me that are missing something here. By the way, this movie created some of the best discussion we have had for a while.....albeit about how lame or good Spielberg is. Glad SOME of us watched it. :)
Ehh. I'd never argue with anybody about Roberto. Unless they wanted to tell me that his version of 'Pinnochio' was brilliant because that was borderline unwatchable. I would suspect that more people, here in America at least, would be annoyed by him more than they'd like him. And I wouldn't be surprised or disappointed to find out that more people "loathed" 'Life Is Beautiful' than liked it...can't trust Oscar people anyway.
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