There is little I can say to add to the gravity of this movie's content. But since this blog is mainly about my personal journey with movies, this movie has an important place in my journey with movies. It is an important one because it shows something about how I approach movies. I was thinking recently that this movie is a perfect way to describe my evolution regarding how I watch movies (not that any of you asked).
I first saw this film in the theater back when it was released in 1993. It was a homework assignment for a college class, so I did my duty and attended the movie. At the time, I remember feeling outraged. Of course I felt a rage at the atrocities I saw depicted on the screen. But furthermore, on a personal level, I felt angry that I had been made to watch this horror. At the time, I had a very different view on film and the arts. It seemed unnecessary and over the top for me to go to a movie theater and see the evil of the Holocaust put before me. I remember feeling offended by the notion that I would need to sit through the depiction of the Holocaust in order to better understand it.
It would be easy for me to look back on that event and judge myself and say how much I regret my feelings that day. I won't, and I don't. We all approach art as we are, not as we will be or were. A couple of years ago, I watched this film again with my wife, and I was stunned by its brilliance, its poignancy and its symbolism. The story involves a wealthy German man of questionable ethical standing who finds a way (through the loss of his own fortune) to save the lives of 1000 Jews during the reign of the Third Reich. Along the way, director Steven Spielberg challenges the viewers with horrible scenes from the concentration camps, and just a touch of the death and horror that most have been everywhere in those camps.
What I didn't realize when I was in college is that art is by its nature is totally unnecessary. To ask whether or not something needs to be shown is, in many ways, a misguided question. Of course the atrocities don't need to be shown, any more than any other art needs to be made. But artistic expression does satisfy a human desire to tell stories and express feelings. And many times, the worst of times produces some of the best art. The story of "Schindler's List" is a story that begs to be told, though it didn't need to be told for us to have a sense of the horror of the Holocaust. I just read Elie Wiesel's short memoir of the Holocaust, Night. That book uses only words, yet it is piercing. Is Wiesel's book necessary? It is no more necessary than Spielberg's film. The issue becomes not whether or not the film or the book are necessary, but how well does it do telling its story? In asking this question, we see Spielberg approaching this material with the same conviction of his storytelling that he had with "ET". In both of these films, the sad realities of life are brought to the forefront. With "ET", it is on a small scale, as we see a lonely boy befriend an alien as he copes with the breakdown of his parents' marriage. In "Schindler's List" , Spielberg shows human sorrow on a grand scale, as the dignity and humanity of millions is stripped away before our eyes. Sometimes that level of sorrow needs to be faced. I think of some of the horrors depicted in the Psalms, and the raw emotion that is expressed therein.
With this in mind, the question that I should have asked myself those many years ago in college was not, "Was this movie necessary?'" This question cannot truly be answered, since art is by nature an offshoot of humanity rather than humanity itself. Instead, I should have asked myself, "What can I learn?", or "Where is God here?" It is my hope that I can continue to do that. That is why a film like this, as bleak as it is, can be strangely inspiring and, in its own way, uplifting.
