DP Tool Club 12/CD_ASCQ_12_0294.iso/vrac/sun9402.zip/MOV1

Text File | 1994-02-02 | 11KB | 182 lines

Lights Out Movie Reviews
Copyright (c) 1994, Bruce Diamond
All rights reserved




        ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
        │  SCHINDLER'S LIST:  Steven Spielberg, director.  Steven   │
        │  Zaillian, screenplay.  Based on the novel by Thomas      │
        │  Keneally.  Starring Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, Ralph     │
        │  Fiennes, Caroline Goodall, Jonathan Sagalle, and Embeth  │
        │  Davidtz.  Universal Pictures.  Rated R.                  │
        └───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

          Spielberg's first "serious" film, THE COLOR PURPLE (1978),
     met with mixed box office and critical success when it was
     released; for my money, it was his best artistic effort (some
     critics would argue for JAWS, 1975, or DUEL, 1971) until
     SCHINDLER'S LIST.  Spielberg was known mostly as an image-driven
     director before COLOR PURPLE, blatantly pushing the audience's
     buttons without a nod toward subtlety.  In this respect, he would
     never advance into the first tier of American directors (peopled
     with the likes of John Ford, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock --
     although Hitch started as a British director, he became the
     quintessential American director throughout the sixties --
     Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese).  Critics advanced
     theories (too mired in popular culture, not enough depth in
     "traditional" cinema, etc.) concerning Spielberg's so-called
     superficiality, and attributed the same faults to conspirator-
     in-entertainment, George Lucas.  To a very small extent, they may
     have been right; even with THE COLOR PURPLE, Spielberg's button-
     pushing became evident, especially through comic moments (Oprah
     Winfrey striding purposefully through a field of corn, a shiner
     covering one eye; her husband's slapstick confrontation with their
     roof) and in scenes of high emotion (Whoopi Goldberg standing on
     the porch, straight-razor gleaming in her hand, torn between
     shaving Mister -- Danny Glover -- or slitting his throat).
     Spielberg was still married mostly to the image then, in such a
     way that it occasionally overrode his story sense.  Witness
     Shug's rousing spiritual number at the end of the movie, complete
     with traveling choir, as she leads the way from the beer house to
     the church for Mister's funeral.  Shug's "salvation," represen-
     ting as it does Whoopi's salvation and the healing of the town's
     schism, really makes no dramatic sense as staged, because the
     emotion of the moment overshadows what the movie is really about:
     the defining of African-American roles as a free people in the
     early part of this century.  The image of that traveling choir,
     and the music, is about as stirring as you'll find in a
     Spielberg movie (it moved me to tears on first viewing), but it
     sews disparate people, emotions, and messages into too neat a
     bow, giving the movie a happy ending it really shouldn't have
     aimed for.  (I'll only mention Spike Lee's criticism of the scene
     as "happy darkies down on the farm" long enough to partially
     agree with him.)

          SCHINDLER'S LIST is another case, completely.  Here,
     Spielberg is dealing with his own pain instead of someone else's.
     (More than one critic of COLOR PURPLE has called that previous
     film as one white man's apology for 400 years of slavery, but
     again, that criticism shoots wide of the mark).  SCHINDLER'S is
     an intensely personal film, and for all of that, it is also an
     immensely entertaining one.  Perhaps entertaining is an odd word
     to use in conjunction with a film concerning the Holocaust,
     especially a film that shows the brutality of that event in gut-
     wrenching details.  Realize that I'm not speaking of comedy or
     the frivolous nature of a Hollywood thriller here (you want an
     insulting version of the Holocaust and WWII, just rent the
     screamingly awful SHINING THROUGH, a 1992 piece of dreck that
     starred Michael Douglas and Melanie Griffith).  SCHINDLER'S is
     entertainment of the first magnitude: a gripping human drama
     that clocks in at three hours and 20 minutes while barely feeling
     that it's over two plus change.  Spielberg has managed to
     reawaken the Nazi monstrosity and show it to us in such frighten-
     ing detail that a new generation of movie-goers will have a hard
     time forgetting that the Holocaust really *did* happen.

          Spielberg's visual and manipulative magic (so blatantly
     obvious, yet thrilling in JURASSIC PARK) is still present, but
     here it serves the story rather than overshadowing it.  Scenes
     that seem to be pure Spielbergian invention (a boy hiding in a
     latrine cesspool as Nazi stormtroopers sweep through the camp; a
     frighteningly-vulnerable scene in the camp showers) are based on
     reality and only spiced by Spielberg's cinematic "reality."
     SCHINDLER'S is just further proof that the horrors of real life
     can transcend anything we can imagine.  Real horror is never
     cathartic; instead it's depressing, sickening, and most times
     beyond our comprehension.

          SCHINDLER'S LIST portrays Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) as
     he was, with no apologies:  opportunistic, egotistical, and
     demanding.  He was a man used to the finer things in life and
     found a way to further his fortune at the expense of others.  He
     approaches Isaac Stern (Ben Kingsley) with an idea for a factory,
     totally funded by Jewish money, since Jews could no longer run
     businesses in occupied Poland, and staffed by Jewish workers, the
     cheapest labor around.  Schindler rationalizes the business deal,
     stating that it will provide a means for Jews to remain employed,
     thereby delaying their "resettlement" into the camps, and it will
     also provide Jews with a source of black market goods -- pots and
     pans -- that they can, in turn, trade for the essentials like
     food and clothing.  We later see that the occupied territory has
     a thriving black market (Schindler obtains his wardrobe and other
     items of luxury through street contacts), so there is some truth
     to his words.  By presenting Schindler in this seemingly-sympa-
     thetic light, Spielberg has opened himself up to criticism that
     he means for this war profiteer to be regarded as a hero who had
     only the best interests of the Jewish people at heart from the
     very start.  And by presenting Schindler as this shining knight,
     the naysayers contend, Spielberg unfairly confers sainthood on
     him, reducing the Jewish plight to a mere power struggle and
     trivializing their efforts to survive.  That is a cynically
     shallow reading of Neeson's portrayal and Spielberg's complex
     presentation of the turmoil within Oskar Schindler and how it
     mirrored the turmoil around him.  You'd have to be blind to
     regard Schindler as a saint from the time he proposes the
     business deal; throughout most of the movie, constantly refers to
     his workers as "*my* Jews," reducing them to the equivalent of
     machinery, as anonymous and interchangeable as the tools they
     work with, and he's constantly embarrassed when confronted with
     his workers' problems on an individual basis.  "Never do that to
     me again," he warns Stern, after the bookkeeper/plant manager
     brings an elderly worker to Shindler's office so the old man can
     thank the German for his job.  The confrontation with his own
     conscience (essentially, Stern acts as Schindler's conscience
     throughout much of the film) unnerves him and serves to remind
     him that he has an obligation to these people, an obligation to
     keep them as safe as one person can in war-torn Europe.

          Schindler's inner growth and acceptance of his ultimate
     responsibility seems to occur in inverse proportion to the
     depravity around him.  His first full awakening to the horrors
     Germany is visiting on central Europe comes when he visits a
     fellow SS officer, Goeth (played with disturbing intensity by
     Ralph Fiennes) at an Austrian concentration camp.  Goeth
     represents the absolute worst in the Nazi character:  he shoots
     prisoners at random from his balcony, more for his own amusement
     than anything else.  Goeth's hypocrisy disturbs Schindler more
     than the man's cruelty -- while he guns down Jews by day, he
     professes his devotion to his Jewish maid (Embeth Davidtz) by
     night.  When "his" Jews are rounded up for the camps, Schindler
     finally takes action and owns up to his conscience.  He and
     Stern put together a list (the titular list) of Jews that worked
     in the factory, and then go beyond their original list in an
     attempt to save as many people as possible.  Everything that
     Schindler has done to make his own life comfortable is now in
     turn laid on the line to save his workers.

          Goeth as a character bothers me.  Though based on reality, I
     can't help but consider Goeth an almagamation of Nazis, serving
     as the representative for all of the Third Reich's sins.  As
     such, he comes across as more monster than man, and harder to
     relate to on a human level.  Of course, we've all heard stories
     of Nazis as bad as, and worse than, Goeth, but the on-screen
     depiction somehow passes our saturation level for cruelty, to a
     point where we can become inured to the character's depravity.  I
     don't know where the fine line is, nor if Spielberg really could
     have presented Goeth in any other way, but after a fashion the
     character began to join the ranks of the storybook Nazis so
     prevalent in Hollywood movies about WWII and the Holocaust.
     Perhaps I'm the only one who reacted this way to Goeth, but after
     his third scene of sniping from his balcony, he seemed at one
     remove from the heart of the problem and he became a stereotype.

          I'm still in awe of Steven Spielberg's achievement.
     SCHINDLER'S LIST is one of the best films of 1993, and is,
     indeed, one of the best films of the past few years.  Spielberg's
     use of black-and-white imagery goes beyond the usual reasons for
     the form:  portraying the world in shades of gray, even during a
     time when the world seemed polarized into black and white;
     lending an historical/documentary feel for the subject matter
     (which the intense, hand-held camerawork also augmented); or even
     to just make an artistic statement with light and shadow.  Spiel-
     berg has recreated his family history (not literally, but the
     film feels that personal) and captured a point in time when the
     utter ruthlessness of humanity helped create some of the race's
     truly shining moments of individual grace and honor.  As a
     people, we have all been to the heart of the fire, and we are
     stronger, and hopefully, more compassionate for having been there.

     RATING:  10 out of 10.