My Friday overnight accommodations in Whitewater were with Marshall, and I was about to say that it was great fun – but I’m not sure that’s the best way to describe the evening we spent together, since over three hours was spent in front of the television watching “Schindler’s List” – and I was seeing this incredible film for the very first time. The experience was moving, disturbing, uplifting, enlightening, chilling, shattering, haunting. . . but not fun. Not even a little bit.
I don’t think there are too many mature adults walking around who haven’t seen Schindler’s List – but somehow I had not yet had that privilege. It may sound incredibly shallow and trite to say this, but when this film was first released in theaters, I just wasn’t in the mood. I almost deleted those words from the screen just now because they look awful in black and white- but the truth is that you can’t just waltz into a movie theater and take in a film like Schindler’s List. . . and somehow there was never a night when I was ready and able to see it, emotionally or mentally. (The same thing happened back in the mid 80’s when “Gandhi” came out. I desperately wanted to see that film – and especially wanted to experience it on the big screen – but my graduate school responsibilities just didn’t make it possible. That’s a film I have yet to see, even on home video.) And even after Schindler’s List came out on video, I felt like it had to be the right time to properly take it in – and moreover, Marshall had told me repeatedly that he really hoped that he would be there whenever I watched this film for the first time. In other words, he wanted to watch me watch this film for the first time. And it occurred to Marshall that last night might be that long awaited opportunity for us to sit down and watch this film together. And although his suggestion/request very much caught me by surprise – we would be so much more likely to spend an evening watching “La Boheme” – I gradually warmed to the idea. . . joking at one point that agreeing to this was how I was going to pay Marshall back for the free room and board.
I was tired and drained after a LONG day at the NATS competition (I walked in the door at 7:45 that morning and walked out the door at 6:35 that evening) and as I settled into Marshall’s couch after consuming a large meal of Chinese food, I wondered if I had it in me to remain awake for a movie that’s more than three hours long. I also remember thinking that nothing could be more disrespectful than nodding off during Schindler’s List.
I need not have worried. I don’t think any film has ever gripped me as tightly and potently as this one did, and my eyes were riveted to that screen from the first moment to the final moment. I cried. I cringed. I gasped. I groaned. And there were many times when I could hardly breathe. This is a masterpiece- one of those exceedingly rare films where I would not change a thing. I only wish that the most horrible images we saw had been the fruit of a filmmaker’s imagination rather than chilling truths from the pages of history.
Many scenes will haunt me for the rest of my life – like the sight of husbands and wives being torn from each other’s arms as the Krakow ghetto is evaculated. . . or when that little boy frantically searches for a hiding place in the concentration camp, and finally finds shelter in the most foul and awful place one can imagine. . . or when those women get off the train and only slowly come to realize that by mistake they have been brought to that infamous place known as Auschwitz. . . or when a factory worker is thrown to his knees, about to be shot, and tries to explain in trembling voice why he had assembled so few hinges that day . . . or the chilling sight of the Nazi commander sitting on the balcony of his villa overlooking the camp, rifle in hand, using the defenseless Jews as target practice . . .
How did such a thing happen? How did decent people allow such a thing to happen? And what makes it possible for people to survive such horrors without being swallowed up by their own anger and bitterness? That question has occurred to me again and again as I have spoken over the years with various survivors of the Holocaust- but that questions resurfaced last night as I watched that amazing final scene in which . . .
skip this if you haven’t already seen the film . . .
real life ‘Schindler Jews’ and their descendants are seen visiting the grave of Oskar Schindler. . . including some of the actors in the film shown walking hand-in-hand with the people they portrayed. If I knew about that final scene at one time, I had forgotten all about it, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. That’s the moment when a powerful story from the past becomes something alive and present today.
Among the many questions this film raises for is this unsettling one: Who would I have been if I had been alive in this time and place? If I had been a 48-year-old Lutheran with a wife and a nice job, would I have been willing to risk all of that for the cause of justice? And if I had been a 48- year-old Jew, what would I have done in the midst of such horror? Would I have been courageous? Cowardly? Some mix of the two? I feel grateful to ponder those questions from the relative safety of my couch- and grateful that the horrors I was watching could be stopped by pushing the pause button. Of course, for those who lived through this – and for those who died in the midst of this – there was no such easy avenue of escape.
God bless Oskar Schindler and the good he tried to do. And God bless Steven Spielberg for telling his story so powerfully and compellingly.