Schindler's List (1993) | 100 Movies Every Catholic Should See #149

Directed by Steven Spielberg. Starring Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, Ralph Fiennes.

When the Vatican released its list of 45 great films celebrating the first 100 years of the cinematic art form in 1995, they included one film that was not even two years old at the time: 1993’s Schindler’s List. From its very release, Schindler’s List was recognized as one of the most impactful historical epics ever made. It tackles the Holocaust, a subject that has by now been significantly over-represented in Hollywood, but makes perhaps the most definitive cinematic statements about this historical atrocity, often imitated but never surpassed. It is a monumental film, one which is not an easy watch but is still accessible for the average viewer. Steven Spielberg’s genius was in making incredibly popular, endlessly watchable films; Schindler’s List transcends the rest of his filmography but retains the hallmarks of Spielberg’s filmmaking that make this 3 hour epic approachable for a popular audience. It is a sobering depiction of the Holocaust, it is a fascinating character study of a bad man called to redemption, and it is an excellently crafted and beautifully shot film. Its high reputation and place on the Vatican film list is well-earned.

Through the first part of the film, the theme that interested me the most was man’s inhumanity to man. Schindler’s List does a great job of showing how easy it can be to dehumanize, mistreat, and ultimately exterminate fellow human beings in the name of grievance or ideology. There isn’t a question or a struggle in the minds of the Nazi soldiers about what they are doing; the Jews are subhuman, explicitly compared to rats or beetles at a couple points through the film. Even the camera itself seems to dehumanize the violence we experience, with Spielberg using an impartial, documentary style of filmmaking to capture the impersonal, detached, dehumanized vision of Jews held by the Nazis. We see Jews playing along with the Nazis to get special treatment, turning on their fellow countrymen in a futile attempt to escape their ultimate fate. As I watched so much horrendous cruelty, I was even tempted to dissociate these characters from reality, to remind myself that these were fictional characters I was watching. But no, Spielberg will not let us use that out to downplay or cope with the evil he portrays. His unblinking camera is as unforgiving to its viewers as its subjects, forcing me to wrestle with the harsh reality he was revealing. At the end of the film, we see the actors process to Oskar Schindler’s grave accompanying the real-life people whom they portrayed. At every turn Spielberg makes us grapple with the realization that human beings can and will do such awful things to each other, and the even more awful truth that we ourselves are not too different either from victim or monster.

It is by drawing us from the universal to the particular that Spielberg works his movie magic. There is so much death, so much cruelty, so much inhumanity in this film, and yet it is the individuals that struggle, work, hope, despair, live, and die that give the film its power. The various inmates of the Krakow ghetto, labor camp, and factory are presented with gentleness and pathos. From a wealthy family forced from their luxury flat into a room with a dozen other Jews, to a mother and daughter clinging desperately to each other through thick and thin, to a young couple getting secretly married in the concentration camp barracks, Spielberg excels in getting us invested in the many small stories that make up this larger epic film. Our investment in these stories make the cruelties and tragedies so much sadder, the hope and salvation so much more triumphant. In the first act, I found the many characters Spielberg was setting up to be overindulgent; by the end, I realized this choice was masterful. The emotional impact of the film is greatly strengthened by building sympathy for so many of the victims and potential victims of the inhumanity oppressing them.

What really makes the movie masterful, however, is the central character of Oskar Schindler. Schindler (played masterfully by Liam Neeson) starts the film as a war profiteer, fully willing to exploit the cheap Jewish labor offered to him by the Nazi work camp system. He is a vain, prodigal, womanizing conman, living it up in the Krakow nightlife while making money off the backs of unpaid Jewish prisoners. Things change, however, when the Nazis clear out the Krakow ghetto and move the Jews into a concentration camp, killing indiscriminately as they go. Schindler observes this from a distance, removed from the violence but repulsed by it, seeing a level of inhumanity he did not believe possible. He does not change overnight, but he begins to provide better and more humane treatment for his workers, convincing himself at first that it was better for business but eventually being completely overcome by compassion. He works to keep as many of his workers as he can from being sent to Auschwitz as the war turns against the Nazis, creating the titular List of over 1000 people that he buys from the camp before it is completely shut down. Schindler’s transformation is slow, believable, and complete. Spielberg portrays the redemption of a wicked man, showing how a moral transformation can be effected through exposure to great evil. It is a call to heroism under fire, a celebration of the good of human nature even while exposing the evil.

And ultimately, the story has a happy ending, as Schindler’s factory is liberated and the men and women he saved are set free. As dark as it can be, Schindler’s List never loses hope: hope in each other, hope in divine assistance, hope in humanity. I came into the film expecting to see man’s inhumanity to man exposed, meditated upon, and condemned. What I did not expect was the theme of man’s goodness, compassion, and heroism that can emerge under fire. The film is, indeed, dark at times, but it moves beyond the darkness into the light of hope. Man has the capacity for great evil but also great good, in the small moments of compassion and love shown to each other in day to day life as well as in the grand heroic gestures of a man like Schindler, begrudgingly moved from apathetic profiteering to altruistic patronage. Schindler’s List is about good and evil, darkness and light, the angelic part of man as well as the demonic. It is as good a popular exploration of these themes as has ever been produced, and will go down as Steven Spielberg’s most enduring serious work. It is an epic, in every sense of the word, and fully deserves the acclaim it has received over the years.

"Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire."

“I could have got more.”