|
Review
|
Spielberg, having accumulated millions of dollars from a
series of highly commercial artistically sterile mega-hits
(Jaws, Jurassic Park, ET) suddenly decides he wants
"respect" and thus issues "Schindler's List", which, in his
mind, is a cultural event of mind-blowing significance.
What it really is Spielberg applying his "B" movie
sensibilities to a subject that arouses a respectful hush
when you simply utter the word: "holocaust". Based on the
true story of a German industrialist who ran factories
seized from the Jews by the Werhmacht and eventually made a
sequence of baffling moves to rescue his Jewish slave
workers from the concentration camps. Schindler was a
puzzling man. He was a womanizer, and he may well have
profitted from his factories, at least in the early stages
of the war. Why he suddenly decided to risk his life on
behalf of his workers remains an enigma, one barely touched
upon by Spielberg in this facile treatment. The special
effects, the recreation of the factories and camps and so
on, are impeccable, and the performances of Neeson
(Schindler) and Ralph Fiennes (Athol are good. But
Spielberg can't resist serving up emotions in small, chewy,
bite-sized pieces, as when a girl in a red coat flees the SS
during a round-up in the ghetto, or when Schindler breaks
down and cries at the end because he didn't save even more
Jews than he did (an incident that did not occur in real
life, because Schindler had to flee the on-coming Russians
for fear of summary execution, and because it was not in
Schindler's character to do so in the first place). The
real tragedy of the holocaust is the way that people like
Spielberg keep packaging it for popular consumption and
subtly encourages us to remain detached from the evil that
continues to persist around us. We know the Nazis are evil
because of this kind of Hollywood mythology. It would be
wonderful if we would know the same evil when it disguises
itself as patriotism or "realpolitick".
|
