Film Paper: Schindlers ListEssay Preview: Film Paper: Schindlers ListReport this essay“To refuse life is a sin; its stupid and mad. You have to accept life, cherish it, love it, fight for it as if it were a treasure, a woman, a secret happiness.”
-Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor/writerIn 1994, Steven Spielberg created a film that represented a metaphorical backdrop for the corruptive madness and folly of war, and its effects which nearly destroyed an entire peoples existence. Schindlers List presents how one mans selfish dream of riches and fame, unknowingly saved the lives of thousands of Jews during the period of Nazi rule. This film is the true story, structured around Oskar Schindler, of a mans will, determination, and transformation during a time of hate and war.
Although there are many beautifully layered and revealing scenes in this movie, I will only highlight a few. The first of which is set between Poldek Pfefferberg and Helen Hirsch, in the basement wine cellar where she sleeps. We can hear the distant sound of a woman singing to the rhythm of the violin, although the sound of water dripping becomes more dominating as Pfefferberg walks down the stairs and we see Helen standing stiff with her clothes and hair soaked. Helens fearful silence and Pfefferbergs nervous pacing are great indications of their characters; while Helen is just trying to do anything she can stay alive and deal with the chaos around her, Pfefferberg is a weak and troubled alcoholic who is in love with his own hatred. There is a dark shadow cast on both their faces indicating uncertainty and confusion in the scene, a theme which is dominant throughout the film. We can see the camera shooting up at Pfefferberg throughout this scene, indicating his role as the antagonist. Similarly, Helen is shot from her back and over her shoulder, showing her to be the victim, while at the same time we are getting a sense of her subjective point of view. Chiaroscuro lighting effects are used, emphasizing the good and bad sides to their characters. Also it is noticeable that in each shot only one light bulb is seen, adding to the eerie and dark mood of the scene. The scene also cuts in and out of flashes of Schindler at a dinner party, and a wedding ceremony which is being held. This is used to parallel the contrasting roles that the war has made these people play. In the closing of the scene, we hear loud and cheerful music at the dinner party, and a light bulb breaking signifying marriage, while simultaneously Helen gets striked and beaten by Pfefferberg.
This scene is important to the theme of the film because it provides a microcosm for the roles and feelings of Nazis and Jews during this period. The conversation being conducted by Pfefferberg is more of his expressing his thoughts about Helen to himself perhaps for the first time; in short it is a battle within himself which he is expressing. His apparent love for Helen is overshadowed by his hate for Jews, a hatred which he begins to questions first after his friendship and admiration for Schindler and now by his deep affection for a Jewish girl. He expresses to both the young girl and himself, “I realize that you are not a person in the strictest sense of the wordbut maybe whats wrong, its not us, its this [situation]”. However, in the end he cannot bear to come to senses with his own fears and weaknesses, and chooses to carry on as a ruthless coward who beats the woman he is in love with to deal with the hatred he has for himself. This, to me parallels a great theme in this film, which is that of confusion and conflict of feeling for both the Nazis and the Jews. As Mr. Elie Wiesel very appropriately put it, “a man hates his enemy because he hates his own hate”.
The next scene I chose to focus on, takes place when the women on Schindlers list are accidentally shipped to Auschwitz. Having heard rumors and horror stories of women and children being gassed to death there, they are expecting the same fate be theirs. The scene begins with the solo cry of the violin, accompanied by the loud chopping of scissors cutting the womens hair. The violin gets progressively louder as their naked and malnourished bodies enter the dark room with hollow lights hanging overhead and on the sides. This demonstrates the fear of the unknown that the women are experiencing. They hold one another close as the double doors are closed behind them, and we get a close up of the submarine type window into the room where they are. We are then seeing the victims through the stalking point of the view. There are a lot of overhead shots, which makes us see the victims and feel their sadness and fear as we are made to look down upon them
The Nazis, in particular, are considered a cult, according to the American historian Howard Easley. The Germans even have a plan to “put an end to this group.” “When they began to be expelled, many had the idea that they would use it to make themselves hated by the Nazi party. If the Jews came, they would get more from us.” Easley says they tried to win over the new German population by making them feel something, not something bad about the Nazis and his vision of “the future.” “They tried to turn our people away, but they failed to do that. Because they didn’t understand this. They did their best to make us feel sad and unhappy, even though they had a lot of their ideas. But when the Germans came, the idea of revenge and persecution began to drive us around, for we really hadn’t been able to find it.”
“A new German nation is coming into existence, who are just like the old Germans.”
The New Germans make for great Nazi leaders, the world had never seen like this before. The New Germans didn’t have high ideals. The New German leadership had a lot of people who were really opposed to his policies, and he really despised those people. And as many of those were gone when the Nazis came, he would use them to justify his “new German nation” and he wanted to destroy the old German people. “They weren’t the best negotiators. He was a dictator who had the same ideals we had.”
“It was the time when the New Germans were really making these people out to be very bad,” recalled Easley. “We were not trying to save the country.” “The old Germans were much more humane and would protect people and those that had been victims of war. They would fight their own battles and not try to control the whole nation.”
“I was amazed by all the anti-Hitler organizations that emerged. I mean, we weren’t always told the truth and we couldn’t make sense of how those people reacted and wanted what they saw… they would just say, ‘Don’t look at me but my blood is on this bridge; this is where we are.'”
Easley says he was one of those new Germans who were working against his ideas. –
“They didn’t see that as something new, but as something that was coming into existence. “It’s almost hard to say ‘New Germans,’ it’s the wrong term.”
Even if I didn’t believe in them then, I felt that there was hope in the future. As Easley began to talk through his ideas, we also saw in how the old Germans were different from modern German people. For instance, Hitler didn’t believe that there was a right to a job – he had no right to provide one. He saw his way through the Nazi process in ways that most modern Germans did not: that of the family. His attitude toward women was similar to that of most modern Germans. His attitude toward the state was similar to that of modern Ukrainians or Jews.
Easley says in his book, “The New Germaners: The Triumphs of Frederick and My Neighbor David” the New Germans would have no future without “Germanization” and so “these men started to organize. They started to build houses, to build factories and so on.”
Easley says the Germans were “a group of people who realized that they were very good at taking care of themselves, and that was something that needed to be talked about.” “They wanted to be free and that meant owning property,” he says. “The old Germans told them no property