I regret to say that I found Steven Spielberg's acclaimed "Schindler's
List," the story of the Nazi industrialist who saved the lives of a
thousand Jews who worked for him, disappointing. First, the obtrusive
obscenity. Not much, but enough to stain the movie. Second, the Nazis are
just standard movie Nazis. The chief Nazi officer, Amon Goeth (brilliantly
played by Ralph Fiennes), is given a few kinky quirks, and even the hint
of a soft side, but this only underlines the sense that the movie's view
is just as polemical as Hollywood movies produced during World War II. The
moral seems to be that Nazis were cruel men with cruel dogs, and that part
of the reason they were cruel (the men, that is) is that they couldn't get
in touch with their feelings.
A really original movie might have shown how ordinary people could be
drawn into a fanatical movement and induced to cooperate in horrible,
systematic atrocities. It might have shown Nazis when they weren't just
being Nazis.
Spielberg has tried to move outside the adventure movie, the genre in
which he has no rival. But the result is just another kind of adventure
movie. To be sure, there are many wonderful touches; the action scenes
banish any suspicion that Spielberg's real genius has deserted him. All
the same, it's a somber escape flick, a Holocaust epic for the silver
screen. In the end it's simply inert. It says nothing in three hours that
couldn't be said in two, and the last hour is punishing to sit through.
But having said all that, I want to stress something else. The film is
pro-Christian. Schindler is twice, and pointedly, shown in church. He
isn't made out to be a devout Catholic, but we are left in no doubt that
his religion is ultimately part of what makes him behave heroically in the
crisis of his life. Even more stunningly, at the end of the war we see him
leading his Jewish workers in prayer, and he crosses himself. As he makes
the Sign of the Cross, his hand passes over his Nazi Party button, which
he then removes. The good cross triumphs over the bad one.
In this respect "Schindler's List" is almost the opposite of
"Shadowlands," the story of C.S. Lewis' marriage to Joy Davidman. Though
Lewis was probably the greatest Christian apologist of his generation, the
movie, directed by Richard Attenborough, plays down his religion, treating
it as a kind of private hobby, and barely mentions that Joy was a
Christian too.
Both movies are beautifully filmed. But both are too long, and both seem
to push us into feeling emotions for the sake of feeling emotions.
Spielberg wants to horrify us, and then to make us feel good together,
like earthlings and Martians at the end of some of his children's movies.
Attenborough wants us to have a good cry. But though deep feeling is a
fine thing, it has to be earned by some serious way of addressing the
human estate. Neither film, alas, tells us anything we haven't heard many
times before.
