The components Leni Yahil’s rescue triangle – acknowledgement, information and action – serve as a useful tool for evaluating the process of the making of the film “Schindler’s List” (1993). The result of this analysis positions its director Steven Spielberg as rescuer himself.
The process of making Schindler’s List commenced when Spielberg acknowledged that the life of Oskar Schindler as depicted in Thomas Keneally’s book Schindler’s List (1982) is “not just another Holocaust story.” Spielberg purchased the rights, and put the project on the back burner. Upset about what was happening in Bosnia and the attempted genocide of the entire Kurdish population, Spielberg eventually set out to make Schindler’s List, hopeful that a re-telling of the atrocities that occurred during the Holocaust would help banish intolerance, racism and violence for all time.
Spielberg’s expertise as a filmmaker is evidenced by his acknowledgement that for a Holocaust film to have success at the box office, creative decisions would have to be made to help mainstream audiences attach to and accept this interpretation of extremely depressing historical events. Notable of these choices is the engagement of key players, screenwriter Steven Zaillian, who created a densely woven personal drama; Polish-American cinematographer Janusz Kaminski (whose efforts are eclipsed only by Munich (2005), on which he also partnered with Spielberg); and Lead actors Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley and Ralph Fiennes, each incredibly talented but none a household name (even Kingsley, with his prolific resume was merely “Ghandi” at this point in his career). The team comes together with elements that combine to create an art film/Hollywood film hybrid with deep emotional impact that is extraordinarily well served and balanced by its intelligence, historical perspective and filmmaking expertise.
There are two areas where information helps shape this analysis of Schindler’s List. First, there is an assumption that moviegoers will arrive at screenings of Schindler’s List with a certain base of information – that they have an emotional and factual sense of the Holocaust as a result of general knowledge acquired through education and prior viewing of archival images. An audience therefore demands that a re-telling of history be fresh and unexplored as well as accurate, at least to the point that it does not conflict with what is already presumed as truth.
Second is the need for Spielberg to gather information that validates and completes Oskar Schindler’s transformation from opportunist to rescuer. Because Keneally’s book is a fictionalized biography, it didn’t explain Schindler’s motivations and didn’t sufficiently enough provide a map that would keep the film from being a mere exploitation of the Holocaust. Spielberg had never made a film based on anything that had ever really happened and embarked on exhaustive research that included visiting many of the sites mentioned in the book (that later were used as shooting locations) and collecting survivor testimonies, including those of Schindlerjuden. The available information reduces to the emotional core and key emotional message of the film: It’s not important why Schindler did what he did, it’s only important that he did.
Through the process of information gathering, Spielberg was actually able to touch history (among other places, Amon Goeth’s villa and Schindler’s apartment and factory). As a Jew, this had a profound impact on Spielberg who while researching a film wound up researching his own Judaism. The action he takes from that point balances the emotional and psychological elements of the Holocaust itself (through the characters in the film) with the emotional and psychological elements of its memory. It is for this reason that Schindler’s List succeeds.
Spielberg’s action is influenced by his impressive restraint as a director. Here (with the exception of emotionally manipulative epilogue set at Schindler’s gravesite), the “Spielbergian” contrivances of his previous films are replaced by passion, sensitivity and a brutal honesty that Spielberg himself admits went against his filmmaker impulses.
The making of Schindler’s List is transformative moment in Spielberg’s career that ironically parallels that of the film’s subject. While the moral payoff for Schindler carries a significant amount of weight, Spielberg’s payoffs are personal and artistic but result in a film that rescues a Holocaust story to remind our forgetful world of the tragedies that intolerance, racism and violence bring.
References
Schindler’s List (1993)
The Holocaust by Leni Yahil
“Film Art: An Introduction” by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson
Chicago Sun-Times film review by Roger Ebert
Filmtabs film review by Gunter H. Jekubik
The New York Times television review by Walter Goodman
Variety film review by Todd McCarthy
World Socialist Web Site film review by Bernd Reinhardt
http://www.filmspiegel.de
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108052/ (and supporting pages)
http://www.insidefilm.com/spielberg.html
http://www.schindlerslist.com/
http://www.yadvashem.org.il/