Oskar Schindler & Steven Spielberg – Using Their Uncommon Gifts
“Watching the film, I understood more clearly how we do have the power to change our own lives, how fate doesn’t deal all of the cards.” – Roger Ebert.
Schindler’s List:
If you have not seen “Schlinder’s List,” one of the best movies ever, I encourage you to see it. It is a story about a German profiteer and his actions and choices during World War II.
After the war, Oskar Schindler was unsuccessful in most of his business ventures. Wikipedia currently notes:
“By the end of the war, Schindler had spent his entire fortune on bribes and black-market purchases of supplies for his workers. Virtually destitute, he moved briefly to Regensburg, Germany and, later, Munich, but did not prosper in postwar Germany. In fact, he was reduced to receiving assistance from Jewish organizations. Eventually, Schindler emigrated to Argentina in 1948, where he went bankrupt. Returning to Germany in 1958, he had a series of unsuccessful business ventures. Schindler settled down in a little apartment at Am Hauptbahnhof Nr. 4 in Frankfurt am Main, West Germany and tried again – with help from a Jewish organization – to establish a cement factory. This, too, went bankrupt in 1961. His business partner cancelled their partnership.”
Below are excerpts from Roger Ebert’s review of “Schindler’s List”:
“Oskar Schindler would have been an easier man to understand if he’d been a conventional hero, fighting for his beliefs. The fact that he was flawed – a drinker, a gambler, a womanizer, driven by greed and a lust for high living-makes his life an enigma. Here is a man who saw his chance at the beginning of World War II, and moved to Nazi-occupied Poland to open a factory and employ Jews at starvation wages . . .
The Holocaust was a vast, evil engine set whirling by racism and madness . . .
Schindler’s genius is in bribing, scheming, conning. He knows nothing about running a factory, and finds Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley), a Jewish accountant, to handle that side of things . . .
We also see the Holocaust in a vivid and terrible way. Spielberg gives us a Nazi prison camp commandant named Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), who is a study in the stupidity of evil . . .
(Schindler) bribes, he wheedles, he bluffs, he escapes discovery by the skin of his teeth. In the movie’s most audacious sequence, when a trainload of his employees is mistakenly routed to Auschwitz, he walks into the death camp himself and brazenly talks the authorities out of their victims, snatching them from death and putting them back on the train to his factory.
What is most amazing about this film is how completely Spielberg serves his story. The movie is brilliantly acted, written, directed, and seen. Individual scenes are masterpieces of art direction, cinematography, special effects, crowd control. Yet Spielberg, the stylist whose films have often gloried in shots we are intended to notice and remember, disappears into his work. Neeson, Kingsley, and the other actors are devoid of acting flourishes. There is a single-mindedness to the enterprise that is awesome.
At the end of the film, there is a sequence of overwhelming emotional impact, involving the actual people who were saved by Schindler. We learn that “Schindler’s Jews” and their descendants today number some 6,000, and that the Jewish population of Poland is 4,000. The obvious lesson would seem to be that Schindler did more than a whole nation to spare its Jews. That would be too simple. The film’s message is that one man did something, while in the face of the Holocaust, others were paralyzed. Perhaps it took a Schindler, enigmatic and reckless, without a plan, heedless of risk, a con man, to do what he did. No rational man with a sensible plan would have gotten as far.
The French author Flaubert once wrote that he disliked Uncle Tom’s Cabin because the author was constantly preaching against slavery. ”Does one have to make observations about slavery?” he asked. “Depict it; that’s enough.” And then he added, “An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere.” That would describe Spielberg, the author of this film. He depicts the evil of the Holocaust, and he tells an incredible story of how it was robbed of some of its intended victims. He does so without the tricks of his trade, the directorial and dramatic contrivances that would inspire the usual melodramatic payoffs. Spielberg is not visible in this film. But his restraint and passion are present in every shot.”
~ end of excerpt ~
Wikipedia notes:
No one really knows what Schindler’s motives were. However, he was quoted as saying “I knew the people who worked for me . . . When you know people, you have to behave toward them like human beings.”
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No matter how small
Do whatever good you can
Some artworks primarily make you mindful of the artist
Some artworks primarily make you mindful of the arts of being humane
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9 comments so far
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some credit is due to the writer thomas kenneally, who wrote schindler’s ark, from which the film was derived
This is a horrible site and it should not be on the internet and why is oskar schindler on it grrr
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OneMoreOption: I hear you. If you genuinely want a response to your comment of frustration, I’ll start with Roger Ebert’s quote from above:
“Oskar Schindler would have been an easier man to understand if he’d been a conventional hero, fighting for his beliefs. The fact that he was flawed – a drinker, a gambler, a womanizer, driven by greed and a lust for high living - makes his life an enigma.”
If you’d like a further response to your anonymous comment, I’d encourage you to read the rest of the blog. It’s not very long – readable within a few days. You might do everyone more of a service if you read it through once before making such sweeping criticisms prematurely or anonymously.
who cares whether schindler was a flawed man? it doesnt change the fact that through his action or influence he saved over 1000 people that would have nearly certainly been murdered along with the other millions!
Who is this person that says it is a horrible site? How many lives could be saved if there were more “Schindlers” in our world? This man was a true hero who risked everything because he did not get swept up in the nazi insanity.
He saved lives and manufactured weapons that were duds, thus saving even MORE lives.
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OneMoreOption: Thank you for expressing your thoughts
A true humanitarian…who if he could have saved more – would have saved more…To save ONE life is amazing..but to save how many he saved under lies and bribes…this is a true act of LOVE and the way a real CHRISTIAN should be towards all and even the people of GOD…GOD BLESS ISRAEL!! and I am not a JEW
Schindler was an amazing man. Not only did he save ‘his jews’ but he saved many other lives too, by manufacturing bad weapons. Even if he did many great things in his lifetime, he was somewhat of a sleezy man. That being said though; he will forever be one of my greatest admired heros. No matter how sleazy a person he was, he saw what was happening around him and decided to do something about it.
He watched so many fall around him, and he found the humanity inside of him when others could not. He risked his life to save others, and that makes up for any bad things he ever did in my book.
@ “Lauren”
3:45 PM CST
…Refreshing to see someone as youself capable of recognizing that a “sleezy” man of sorts can also become an enlightened hero.
Multi-dimensional thinking has become a rare ticket item to tap into within this cardboard culture unfolding around us.
Keep writing.
J.B.
10/6/09
I’ve scene Schindler’s List a number of times. Each time it makes me cry. I’m an african american woman living in NJ. When I was in college I learned our state had one of the largest consentrations of servivors of the Holocaust. The college I attended Richard Stockton College of New Jersey has a Holocaust library.
I spent hours there learning about the unjustices Jewish people went through. The Diary of Ann Frank is one of my favorite books. It pains me to hear people fighting over who suffered more black american decendents of slaves. The Jewish people during the Holocaust. I mean seriously. Native Americans, African Americans, Jewish, Chinese American, etc everyone has suffered.
I hate to hear people say the Holocaust didn’t exist. We as a race of humans need to open our eyes. Embrace each other and learn from each other. I commend Mr. Schindler for his actions. It doesn’t matter ill he may a lived like. It was unconventional. It saved lives. I applaud him.
I am indeed left to feel that humanity at the most challenging times, from all types of people do indeed exist…we often hear of the new terminalogy bandied around”paying it forward”….this is indeed one of the finest.
Despite areas of development we all endure to grow daily we are left with a piece of us wanting to pay it forward daily. Let’s again be reminded we can ALL make a difference