Real Cruelty in Imaginary Gardens

Representing the Holocaust

An essay from a class I took while doing a year in Austin, Texas, about the difficulty of putting the Holocaust onscreen. Especially if you have the sensibility of a child who thinks that everything is going to be OK…

The Definitive Article? Representing the Holocaust in Schindler’s List

 

   “Writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.”

                           -Theodor Adorno

 

How can the unspeakable events of the Holocaust ever be explained to an audience without a dilution or simplification of the horror? In terms of cinematic representation of the Holocaust, Annette Insdorf writes: “Filmmakers…confronting the Holocaust face a basic task – finding an appropriate language for that which is mute or defies visualization.”[1] Any filmmaker attempting to recreate the events of the Holocaust faces both a huge challenge and a huge responsibility. Such an attempt may seem like an exercise in futility, in the face of such incomprehensible murder – as Theodor Adorno suggested. However, this is not to say that attempts have not been made. There have been numerous films dealing with the Holocaust. As I have said, each film carries with it a massive responsibility. Schindler’s List perhaps most of all. It has established itself as the definitive Holocaust narrative for a number of reasons. I want to examine the dangers of this, and explore why Schindler’s List does not fulfill its aims of performing as a master narrative of the Holocaust- and, indeed, if such a thing can ever be possible.        

   By its nature, Schindler’s’ List was (and still is) the most visible of all Holocaust narratives within film.  The attachment of Steven Spielberg to the project, virtually meant that this was always assured, as it meant the world’s most successfully commercial director was to tackle one of the world’s most complex and powerful issues. Spielberg had approached the film studio Universal about the possibility of filming Thomas Keneally’s novel Schindler’s Ark on its publication in 1982, but he knew then that he “would need to find considerable maturity as a filmmaker first if he was to meet the emotional challenge that it involved.”[2] Spielberg would not begin making the film for ten years. Despite this period of “maturing”, there were still huge doubts about Spielberg’s ability to tackle such a subject when he did come to make it – “the release of Spielberg’s film was awaited with a certain trepidation, encourage by the director’s proclivities for the spectacular and his tendencies to excess.”[3] This was, after all, the man responsible for Jaws, Jurassic Park and The Indiana Jones trilogy. However, upon its release in 1993, Schindler’s List was greeted with huge critical acclaim; the Variety review called it “a remarkable work by any standard, this searing historical and biographical drama…evinces an artistic rigor and unsentimental intelligence unlike anything the world’s most successful filmmaker has demonstrated before.”[4] The film was also hugely successful at the box office, taking $317,100,000 worldwide[5] – an extraordinary amount for a film about the Holocaust, shot in black and white, with a running time of 3 hours 16 minutes, and featuring no major stars. The film won seven Academy Awards – including best picture – and Spielberg’s first for best director.

   This unprecedented critical and commercial success for a film of its nature firmly established Schindler’s List as a “cultural phenomenon.”[6] Oprah Winfrey “declared on national television that…seeing Schindler’s List…made her a better person.”[7] The release of the film brought Holocaust discourse into the mainstream. Indeed, it can be said that “Schindler’s List has penetrated historical consciousness on a global scale and has transformed the image of the Holocaust as perceived by millions of people all over the world.”[8] Spielberg took on great responsibility when embarking on the project, and it seemed through the reaction to film that he succeeded in justifying this responsibility, and that he was vindicated in his decision to tackle the subject. However, there are dangers in having one film that “not only preserve[s] the Holocaust in the world’s historical memory but also define[s] the shape and dominant imagery of this memory.”[9] There are clear questions to be asked here. How accurate is the film’s portrayal of the events of the Holocaust, especially as it is a Hollywood production, and therefore has commercial interests at heart? What are the connotations of having this particular representation of the Holocaust at the heart of an audience’s perception of it? And, perhaps most importantly, do we, as that audience, deserve to accept a film (and therefore inherently artificial) that finds a positive, “happy” conclusion in the face of such horrific realities (as Schindler’s List undoubtedly does) as a definitive Holocaust “memorial”?

   Spielberg “referred to himself as ‘bearing witness’ while making the film. He was quoted as saying that he had experienced the events of the film ‘as any witness or victim would have. It wasn’t like a movie.”[10] This attitude to the filmmaking process suggests that Spielberg considered himself to have moved out of the realm of the “movies” and into one of historical documentation. This is reinforced in certain technical elements within the film itself. Most of the film is filmed in black and white, and hand-held cameras are used extensively during the crowd scenes, serving to create a “documentary and newsreel effect.”[11] This technique again suggests Spielberg’s ambitions as a historian – “for [him]…filming in monochrome was clearly a matter of authenticity and the striving for verisimilitude, part of the realist style of his desire for history, for a film that would be ‘true’ to the record.”[12] The black and white filming immediately distances the audience from the film, placing them in the future, beyond the events of the film. The modern day color prologue and epilogue also serve to position the main body of the film historically, distant to an audience.

   So, what is the version of the Holocaust presented by Spielberg as “historian”? While the film revolves around the titular character of Oskar Schindler, the film is by no means simply about Schindler himself. Ora Gelley suggests that “we cannot read Schindler’s List, as some reviewers claim, merely as one Holocaust story among many.”[13] This is because Spielberg attempts to condense many “established” Holocaust images into the film – “the director is seen to have raided the archive of Holocaust data and images, carelessly appropriating and recycling fragments from a wide range of sources and media in order to create a “total” cinematic effect.”[14] Thus the film presents the audience with something of a “master narrative for the murder of the Jews in Europe.”[15] The film follows a familiar linear narrative of Holocaust events – Jews from the countryside arriving in Krakow, their subsequent removal to the ghetto and following liquidation, the degeneration into arbitrary murder and the horror of the concentration camps, and finally the end of the war and the camp liberations. Throughout, Schindler acts as our focus, while the Holocaust plays out around him. In this way, Spielberg attempts to create not only an accurate historical record of the actions of Oskar Schindler, but also of the Holocaust itself. Not even Spielberg would deny that condensing this history accurately into a three hour film is not only impossible but also dangerous – especially when the resultant film becomes as exalted as Schindler’s List. Whether or not he would accept his film as a Holocaust master narrative, that is what it functions as.

   When viewed in this way, the two main problems within Schindler’s List become clear: certain historical inaccuracies, and, more importantly, the parts of the film that clearly bear the stamp of Steven Spielberg and Hollywood – that is, the sentimental and cinematic moments that detract from Spielberg’s case for historical relevance. Generally, the film appears to indeed maintain a certain amount of historical integrity – the legacy of Schindler’s list certainly remains today – but, of course, a certain amount of artistic license has been taken. After all, the script is based on Keneally’s novel “which had already taken a few liberties with the truth.”[16]

   An example of these problems is evidenced in the Auschwitz section of the film, when a trainload of Schindler’s female Jewish workers are mistakenly re-routed to the camp. In terms of historical accuracy, this event certainly did happen, but in the film Schindler “secures the release of the women prisoners…after a few hours of hard bargaining…It actually took him three weeks to free them.”[17] Despite discrepancies such as this, Spielberg makes no massively erroneous modifications to the truth during the film and, after all, “although historical films lay claim to history, artistic license is invoked to explain discrepancies from historical fact: It is, after all, a movie.”[18] Of course, such “retelling” of various events are necessary to maintaining the fictive structure of the film, but the problem arises when Schindler’s List is taken not just as a film, but as a document. However, in regards to the idea of Schindler’s List as a true historical document, small details such as the rescue of the female workers may detract from its authenticity to a degree, but it certainly does not render the entire film irrelevant.

   More damaging, however, are certain cinematic techniques that the film uses when portraying events. The Auschwitz sequence is hugely manipulative placing the audience in a position “to anticipate viewing the ultimate atrocity.”[19] In the film, we have seen the arrival of the male Jews at Schindler’s factory, to relative safety. The women, they (and the audience) are assured will follow shortly on another train. On this train, the women allow themselves time to be somewhat relieved, and they share a joke. After the relentless horror of the first half of the film, it seems that these characters may have escaped with their lives – until a small child gestures cutting his throat towards the train as it goes past. The audience is positioned within the train, with the Jewish women, and a feeling of dread spreads. This fear is compounded as the train arrives at its destination and an on-screen caption informs us of what we already know from the menacing black buildings and lines of Nazi soldiers –  it is Auschwitz. The women are herded from the train, have their heads shaved and are stripped of their clothes. Then it becomes apparent that the women are destined for the gas chamber – and Spielberg’s camera places the audience directly with them. However, the chamber turns out to be a real shower room, spraying the women with water and creating an outburst of joy. The audience is spared the horror of what was promised.

   Whether it happened that way or not in reality, cinematically the sequence is hugely manipulative of the audience’s emotions, one of several “lump in-the-throat moments straight out of the Spielberg Manual of Style.”[20] What do moments such as this ultimately mean to the films claims to historical accuracy? Sara R. Horowitz argues: “the protracted scene uses the historical memory of mass murder to manipulate viewers; the women fearfully await the suffocating fumes of Zyklon B and the audience wonders whether it will view real killing.”[21] This manipulation is undeniable, but more damaging is Horowitz’ suggestion that the sequence almost equates to Holocaust denial: “the film ends up affirming the arguments of the deniers…The spray of shower water which finally allays both the women’s fear that they will perish and the audience’s fear that they will witness this murder, also seemingly refutes the reality of the gas chamber.”[22] While this may be going too far, the sequence does demonstrate remarkable irresponsibility, especially when accepting Schindler’s List  as a master narrative of the Holocaust. Although we have the witnessed the escalating atrocities against the Jews throughout the film, we are spared the ultimate horrors of the gas chambers, and are even allowed with a joyous moment of survival. Considering the vast majority of murdered Jews who were never allowed such a moment, it certainly seems that Spielberg has sanitized the Holocaust to a certain degree, offering the audience something far more palatable than actual reality.

Geoff Eley and Anita Grossman argue that the scene is necessary and indeed successful – “the gas chambers had to be there, and this was a way to so it that was watchable, didn’t break any ultimate taboos, and didn’t violate our sense of senses of historical accuracy too egregiously.” This argument in itself raises one of the most pertinent questions about Schindler’s List and Holocaust films in general: should they be watchable? Especially within the constraints of Hollywood, Spielberg would indeed have not been able to show the real gassing of the prisoners, but if his method of avoiding it is sanitized and therefore damaging, how can it be represented? This is not to say that representation of the Holocaust should not be attempted, but in terms of viewing Schindler’s List as a definitive document, the film’s avoidance of the realities of the gas chambers seriously undermines its credibility, and certainly gives credence to ideas that the film sanitizes and to some extent trivializes the event – “obliterating, or at least neglecting the fact that in the “real” Holocaust, most of the Jews died…most of the victims sent to the showers were gassed…the film actually distorts the “reality” of the Holocaust, or at least leaves out too many other “realities”, and especially that most common and typical reality of all, namely mass, industrial killing.”[23]

However, Eley and Grossman also argue that the sequence actually does not allow the audience an escape – “our relief at the rescue can’t be enjoyed, for the line in the other direction [to the released prisoners] is too long, descending unrelentingly to the gas…Spielberg avoids dwelling on the truly unseeable: we are forced to look…long enough to register the knowledge, but not too long. This preserves the distance, positions us as survivors, but leaves the mass reality of non-survival on the screen.”[24] While this may be true, it could be argued that to be positioned as survivors denies the true horrific implications of the Holocaust. And while we do indeed see prisoners descending to their deaths, these characters are anonymous – they are not, like several of the women in the shower room sequence, the characters that we have been following throughout the film. We have no emotional attachment to them, and ultimately they are faceless numbers rather than human beings.

The character the audience is asked to most closely identify with is, of course, Oskar Schindler himself, and we witness his “spiritual metamorphosis”[25] from a wartime privateer whose actions are based solely on economics, into something approaching a hero and, Horowitz argues, into “one of the Christ-like saviors that populate Spielberg’s films.”[26] The focus on Schindler means the film “invites us to identify less with the victimized Jews…than with an almost inexplicable heroism, as we watch a man risking not only his money but his life.”[27] The fact that in a Holocaust film this “hero” was German caused controversy, but the very fact that the film chooses to portray any kind of hero at all – be it a German, a Jew, or anyone else, raises serious questions – “films…such as Schindler’s List seem to dishonor the enormity of history by asking us to imagine heroes and villains.”[28] Again, we witness a certain sanitization – Schindler’s heroic actions offer a glimmer of hope amongst the chaos, to some degree an alleviation of the incomprehensibility of the Holocaust, and certainly a way for an audience to “deal” with what they have been faced with throughout the film. This is highlighted in the film’s (color) epilogue – we see the real Schindler Jews and the actors who portray them in the film laying stones upon Schindler’s grave. A caption informs us that “There are fewer than four thousand Jews left alive in Poland today. There are more six thousand descendents of the Schindler Jews”. What is the film trying to achieve by using this statistic? It certainly delivers a positive conclusion to the film, and it almost invites us to accept Schindler’s actions as a vital cog in the continuation of a Jewish/Polish race. And while the film’s final caption dedicates it to the memory of the six million murdered, these victims are absent in any meaningful form at the film’s conclusion.

Through the attributes of Schindler and his operation, “Spielberg’s is an evil we can live with, made in Hollywood, one that can be defeated by skill and perseverance, willpower and determination. This is troubling because so many of the millions who perished had no less will, no fewer skills, were in no way inferior to the survivors, and yet they ‘drowned’.”[29] The film delivers a message that it was possible to survive the Holocaust – and while for some it was, for most it was not. Finding positives within the Holocaust through the actions of individuals seems irresponsible given that unprecedented numbers of individuals were reduced to nothing, and for this to be the lasting impression given by Schindler’s List, especially when viewed as a Holocaust master narrative, means that we as an audience are given a way of dealing with the event that we perhaps do not deserve. In this way, the film refuses to “open the way for the horrifying distortion of humanity which was perhaps the most authentic element of the Holocaust.”[30]

So how can any film possibly manage to deal with such a situation without succumbing to the need to find positives and offer the audience a way out? Roman Polanski’s The Pianist succeeds where Schindler’s List does not. This film centers around a survivor rather than a savior – Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish Jew. And while the film, like Schindler’s List, follows a historically familiar path through the events of Holocaust, it is based virtually solely around Szpilman and his own struggle, thus eschewing the pretence of a “master narrative” that Schindler’s List carries. Of course, The Pianist was not, and never will be, viewed in the same light as Schindler’s List, and all the importance that became attached to it, and this may be what makes it seem more effective – despite its critical success (Oscars for best director and best actor), it was by no means as visible as Schindler’s List, or as commercially popular. Another important difference is that the film works because it offers no answers. There is no way out for the audience in this particular Holocaust representation, and in many ways the film comes far closer to an accurate representation of the horror than Spielberg’s.

The film’s tagline – “Music was his passion. Survival was his masterpiece”[31]– belies the truth behind the film. Szpilman is no hero. His (undoubtedly extraordinary) survival in the face of such horror does not come from any particular “heroic” action, it is purely a matter of chance, and it reduces him to an “animal state.”[32] In the end, his survival rests on his ability to play the piano – and on the appreciation for his playing from the German soldier who discovers him, allows him to live and even helps him to a certain degree. However, this soldier is far removed from the ultimately heroic Oskar Schindler – Polanski creates the impression that he is motivated simply out of weariness and indifference, rather than any perceived notion of courage or goodness. These concepts do not exist in the realm of The Pianist – “in refusing to make survival a matter of morality and ethics, but instead a matter of accident, Polanski refutes the rhetoric of Good and of Evil…being Jewish is another accident of birth, an accident that sealed the horrific fate of millions of Europeans.”[33] The film is far more nihilistic than Schindler’s List – Szpliman’s survival remains ultimately meaningless in the face of what went before, and this is how the film derives its power. The Pianist offers no answers, and this is what gives the film its “accuracy”. When considered, there are no answers to the Holocaust.

I do not mean to suggest that films made about the Holocaust need to conform to a certain pattern of storytelling in order to “succeed”. However, when a film as visible and important as Schindler’s List comes to act as a definitive document of Holocaust history, questions have to be asked. Spielberg’s determination to create “a document, not an entertainment” (as he called the film at its premiers in Krakow)[34] means that the film has become firmly entrenched in modern Holocaust discourse, but has sanitized and made acceptable to a modern audience an event that perhaps should remain as difficult and troubling to consider as it is. The film, after all, is a Hollywood version of the Holocaust – and as such will never truly reach the authenticity that Spielberg obviously desired. And while it is important that the Holocaust remains in public view and discussion, as I have said, any film attempting to portray the Holocaust faces a huge challenge and huge responsibility when it comes to dealing with the subject.  Schindler’s List, establishing itself as a master narrative of the events and offering, as it does, an “answer” to the horror ultimately fails at this challenge – when truly considered, there is no “answer”. Omer Bartov, discussing Spielberg’s focus on the survivors and the heroic Schindler, writes: “placing the [dead] at the center of this tale would not only have made the genocide itself unbearable to contemplate but would also have profoundly shaken our own belief in the viability of civilized human existence.”[35] Perhaps this is a reality that we just have to accept, as difficult as it might be.

 

 

 

 

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