This month sees the 20th anniversary of the one of the most influential movies of my youth. Schindler's List was a movie that simply had to be seen when it came into the cinemas in 1993. It was released 50 years after the clearing of the Krakow ghetto; an event which forms the long, central scene in the movie as Oskar Schindler's eyes are truly opened to the horror and brutality of the Nazi regime.
I watched the movie again the other night to remind myself of Steven Spielberg's epic achievement. It still resonates as a monumental testimony to lives so unnecessarily lost to hatred and genocide. But it also bears witness to the true nature of evil.
'Evil' is a word which, when Schindler's List was released 20 years ago, was losing currency. Many did not think that it was an appropriate word to use any more. Along with words like 'sin' and 'right' and 'wrong', 'evil' was seen as too judgmental, too condemnatory, not understanding enough of the complexities of human psychology and sociology of which we late 20th century westerners had a so much better grasp than our ancestors. Then 9/11 happened and the only word we could find to describe it was 'evil'.
The Nazi commandant in the movie, Amon Goeth, played to Oscar winning effect by Ralph Fiennes, is a study in evil. Psychology and sociology fail to explain how a middle class, well educated German officer can behave as he did. Only the existence of evil in the life of a man and the system which he represented can explain it. In one scene in the movie, Goeth leaves his mistress in bed, goes to his balcony and in sheer boredom picks up his rifle and shoots a number of random Jewish prisoners in the camp below his house. Having relieved his boredom, he then goes to the bathroom to relieve his bladder. The utter banality of evil has rarely been so well expressed in any movie.
What is more complex in the movie is how the urge to do good at any cost has to grow slowly and fitfully in the life of Oskar Schindler. Schindler is a playboy businessman, a womaniser and a racketeer, determined to make as much money as he can out of the war. Jewish labour for his ceramic factory is cheaper than ordinary Polish labour and so he bribes the Nazis to allow him to employ Jews while he himself takes up residence in an apartment from which a wealthy Jewish family have recently been evicted.
It is as he witnesses the slaughter of the clearing of the Krakow ghetto that the true nature of the Nazi party to which he belongs becomes clear to him. But even then the famous list of the movie's title, which saves his workers from extermination, is a last minute rescue plan. In the moving final moments of the movie, Schindler is not elated that his workers have survived the war against all odds. He is guilt ridden that he did not save more. As he tears his Nazi party pin from his jacket and declares that he could have sold it and got two more out, at least one, it is a powerful scene which stays in the memory of anyone who has seen the movie.
Schindler's List is not regarded, in technical terms, as Spielberg's best work. Some of his less 'serious' movies, like ET, are better examples of the story teller's art. But it is almost certainly the work for which he will be remembered. He reminded a generation that was in danger of forgetting the Holocaust, of why we must not forget and why such evil must be named as evil. Other movies followed in Spielberg's wake and are worth watching - The Pianist, Life is Beautiful and The Boy with the Striped Pyjamas to name three.
But if you get a chance watch Schindler's List again (or for the first time) on this 20th anniversary. It will not be 'enjoyable' but it will move you afresh, it will stiffen your resolve to name and stand up to evil and it will remind you that even desperately flawed individuals like you, me and Oskar Schindler, can still make a difference. And if you are a Christian, remind yourself at the end of the movie that evil has been defeated and that all these evils (even genocide) will disappear when Christ wipes every tear from every eye and death and mourning and crying and pain are things of the past.
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