Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

Try _Life is Beautiful_ as a little gentler; but still pretty damn emotive.

I did not find Schindler's list a very good movie. Now, this might have to do with the fact that the Holocaust was not news to me. Eli Wiesel lived across the street from me when I was little; I can't remember learning about the Holocaust, that's how early I learned about it. The movie was clearly pitched at middle America, not at kids from Manhattan who thought of Jews as being modal Americans.

But I didn't think the movie was ... useful. I thought it was all about Schindler saving "his Jews". It was about Jews as objects to be fought over, and not about Jews as people who had agency, but who were also the subjects of this horrible human tragedy. As such, I thought the Jews receded to the background. There's a reason why almost all of the good acting was by actors playing non-Jewish roles; that's where the meat of the film was (Kingsley was wasted in this role, IMHO).

Spielberg actually corrects some of these problems in Amistad, making the African characters more central, even if the film overall was a stinker.

Riddle me this -- Spielberg makes three films out of penance: Schindlers, Amistad, and Saving Private Ryan. Why is (IMHO) Private Ryan by far the best of the three?

Of course, it strikes me that Brad may be saying that the film was "rougher" in the sense of more powerful, in which case you should feel free to ignore everything I've said here. Movies are a subjective experience. If a movie moves you, who am I to say otherwise.

J. Bradford,

And where is your commentary after viewing the Berg video? The world wonders...

Do you recall thinking at one point, "Wow, a wet t-shirt scene in a film about the Holocaust!"

I'm wondering about whether to read Art Spiegelman's Maus. Any of you read it?

I had very big issues with Schindler's List. In general I thought it was a cop-out. If you ever read Art Spiegelman's Maus, a central feature was that his father never talked about Holocaust because he felt guilt that he had survived. Survival didn't necessarily bring out the best in people, even if they were victims. Survival was ugly. Schindler's List was too sentimetal to reach that understanding of humanity. The Jews in Schindler's List are strangely passive. There's that scene at the end of the war where there are all sitting down in the road waiting to be told what to do. Something tells me that people who didn't know where their next meal would come from would be a little more active.

There's also that scene where Schindler orders the Nazi guards to go home, which they meekly do. Then Schindler breaks down and starts to figure out how much more he could have sold and how many more he could have saved. He could have pawned his ring and saved one more. The truth was Schindler left in the dead of night with a trunk full of jewels as his security.

Given all that, that movie showed what a gifted image-maker Speilberg is, I don't think anyone tops him.

Does Ann Marie's Academy of Academic Excellence and School of Deportment have a cinema appreciation course? If so, I'd like to recommend the following viewing materials:

City Lights
Duck Soup
To Be or Not to Be (1942 version)
Casablanca
Singin’ in the Rain
Rear Window
The Seven Samurai
Rio Bravo
Some Like It Hot
The 400 Blows
Dr. Strangelove
A Hard Day’s Night

These are all personal favorites, all classics of one kind or another (though some relate to current events as well), and I focused on movies that were neither too "young" (e.g. "The Wizard of Oz") or too "mature" (e.g. "The Godfather") for a bright eleven-year-old.

If, by some chance, your family has already seen most of these movies, could I recommend a few more?

They made us watch it in high school -- I remember thinking that seeing it again was going to make it less effective. I still think it's a bad idea to force kids to watch it, but I don't think it loses too much the second time around.

Julian.

Maus is very good. Very personal, very cathartic for Spiegelman (as far as I deduce).

Both Maus books, plus the Diary of Anne Frank, has given me all I need to know about the horrors of living in Europe during the Reich.

Also, tangentially, I think MAUS really helped make Graphic Novels respectable reading, and not just for comic books.

I agree wholeheartedly about the high quality and power of Maus. Schindler's List was quite overrated I thought, and more Spielberg than history. I recall that Kubrick once expressed a desire to have made a Holocaust movie and on being reminded of Schindler, he said something like "that wasn't about the Holocaust. In the Holocaust 6 million people died. In Schindler, 600 people lived."

I find that something that often is missing in discussing this film is the technical achievement Spielberg accomplished. Yes, it's terrible to watch at times, and difficult, but it's really a wonderful film-qua-film--maybe Spielberg's best in that regard (but it's hard to compare, as Jurassic Park is also a great technical achievement).

In any event, I try to watch the movie once a year. Ralph Feinnes performance gets better each time--it's really amazing. But, it takes repeated viewing before you can get past the emotion and appreciate the film on a technical level, I think.

Also, I agree that the movie, in part, is a cop-out. If there's one thing we know about Spielberg, it's that he CANNOT, as a constitutional matter, make a movie with an unhappy ending. And if there's any subject that deserved an unhappy ending, it's the holocaust.

Think about Minority Report--that movie is brilliant until the last 20 minutes, when he forces a happy ending on to a film that should have ended in a wonderfully dark and depressing manner.

in any event, my two cents.

Julian,

I agree that Maus is an amazing, moving work of art. It's a very personal story, of course, and a remarkable chronicle of the period from the '30s onward.

For me, one of the saddest, most affecting bits is when Spiegleman's father briefly mentions Art's older brother, and then offhandedly remarks, "Of course, he did not come out from the war." The elder Spiegleman is also very detailed in his descriptions of the hiding places, and the layout and function of Auschwitz.

By all means, read it.

The Pianist is one hundred times as excellent as Schindler's List.

But for pure educational purposes, Shoah is unsurpassed.

I was really shocked recently to hear someone refering in all innocence to Jews as "Schindler's People".

Alain Resnais. Claude Lanzmann.

Spielberg is crap -- a kind of middle class propagandist. I keep thinking his movies get worse and worse, more absurd with each attempt at "depth", but then I saw ET the other night, and it was just horrible. He should have been a visual designer for real directors.

You want to see a horrible movie of German brutality during WWII? Something NOT CRAP like Schindler's List? Go and rent the Soviet film "Come and See" (Idi i smotri) - then you can talk about "rough". 50 MILLION russians died during the Nazi invasion, according to the most recent estimates....

Rent "Come and See" (Idi i smotri) by Elem Klimov, then you can see more clearly how childish Spielberg is. Everyone who is so gungho for war - ever - should watch that movie.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091251/

We're taling about children here and that means
you must ask is Schindler's List appropriate for
your kids no matter how smart and clever you (I)
believe them to be. I would start with the
adaptation of Jane Yolen's The Devil's Arithmetic.
There's a made for TV movie about the Warsaw
Ghetto uprising which I liked but my wife had
trouble with. I personally wouldn't submit a
child to The Pianist- films are sometimes rated
R for a reason.

'kay, I bought Maus.

In regards to David's post:

>> Schindler's List was quite overrated I thought, and more Spielberg than history. I recall that Kubrick once expressed a desire to have made a Holocaust movie and on being reminded of Schindler, he said something like "that wasn't about the Holocaust. In the Holocaust 6 million people died. In Schindler, 600 people lived." <<

David, you hit the nail on the head. Spielberg is possibly the most over-rated director of all time. The comment by Kubrick showed the difference between a brilliant director (like Kubrick) and a manipulative con artist (Spielberg). Kubrick respects the audience, Spielberg only tries to conn them.

Perhaps you could comment on this observation: Many movies have been made about Jesus and many have been made about the Holocaust. Why have a vast majority of movies on either subject been so bad?

Faber est suae quisque fortunae - Every man is the artisan of his own fortune. (Appius Claudius Caecus)

Laudatores temporis acti - Praisers of time past

Argumentum ad ignorantiam - Arguing from ignorance

Me transmitte sursum, caledoni! - Beam me up, Scotty!