The List of Life

Schindler’s List
Steven Spielberg
USA
1993

Just when I thought I will never see a film more passionate and more beautiful than my long time Italian classic favorite “The Bicycle Thief”, this 1993 Academy Award Best Picture winner struck me like a lightning of humanity at its purest, tore my heart relentlessly nearly close to the sorrow thousands and millions of aggravated, humiliated, and profaned Jews experienced, and most importantly moved me in a place where questions about life and its importance, ironies, ambiguities, and catastrophic evil are constantly breathing intemperately. There have been a lot of films that made me misty eyed, also a number of films that made me cry, but “Schindler’s List” just has been so far the only film I found myself bursting in tears I never thought I contain. The equation of material things like car, watch, and a pin of gold and of a thing as simple yet as complicated like life made me feel that it is extremely unacceptable. In fact, to even think of these money and material possessions as a replacement to or something more important than life is sick and evil. The world has been so intellectual yet decadent and educated yet so greedy. Power seekers in order to be what they want needs to blind and so they become blind, not of their historical goals but of the simpler things like the life of many ordinary people.  The world honestly is gruesomely consumed by the doom of ravenousness and constant ignorance of harmony and humanity. Never in my life though I have believed that we will ever become the absolute peaceful world, the idea is so beautifully Utopian and it is never a characteristic of this planet and so the closest thing that we can do is to minimize chaos and maximize peace. The founding of United Nations is one my favorite historical point in our history.

Now, what made me abhor this never-ending asymmetrical relations of the powerful and the powerless and the conventionalized sacrifice of many else’s life for the power-seekers when from the start I know it is an incurable plague? I can’t be any more satisfied and inspired to that brilliance exceptionally delivered by Steven Spielberg—a director I first considered seriously good in the nostalgic “Artificial Intelligence” (with my favorite child actor ever—Haley Joel Osment), and then I admired in the groundbreaking “Saving Private Ryan” (with the Hollywood Apple of my eye—Tom Hanks), and now I adore in my favorite film of all time and all nation—“Schindler’s List”. The amount of wonder Spielberg added in the film is unthinkably great. After hearing a lot of stories from his grandparents, and some friends and acquaintances who have experienced the wrath of the Second World War, he conducted ardent research about the Jew survivors of the Holocaust that until now continues as he founded the Shoah--a visual library where all the conducted interviews of all living Jews retell the painful and harrowing experiences. The setting, the Jews of the 2^nd World War or the Hitler War as I am fond of substituting, is the best backdrop any storyteller can choose or have if you want to feel the spirit of life in its most unadulterated anatomy. These aggravated people of Jews forced to surrender their businesses and lands, robbed of their properties, detested in front of fellowmen, and scorned by (at least) the Nazis, perhaps alongside with soldiers at war, have brought forth the most exceptional amount of empathy I can manage to produce. Even with their seeming passivity, their downright hope and desire to survive with their family and loved ones definitely deserves respect. Their eventual inhumane and unnecessary death makes reviewing what the world provided them really painful and poignant. The cause of their horrifying death doesn’t cease with the end of the war which makes things very disturbing and worrying because the cause is nothing more or less than discrimination and it still plagues our society, and it may happen again. 

Spielberg makes Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) the absolutely perfect imperfect man to save 1,100 Jewish lives and to learn one of the greatest lessons ever covered in films. Schindler is a war profiteer, when the Nazis ruled Poland, they confiscated all Jew-operated and owned businesses. Being the wise man, he convinced the Jew owners of these businesses to transfer everything to his name thus making it a legal German-owned company. With the help of the accountant and a Jew Izthak Stern (Ben Kingsley) and Jewish working for the cheapest rates, Schindler makes more money than any man can ever live luxuriously for the rest of his life. If there is one thing that really made me emotionally and spiritually connected to this black and white film is its premise of money buying people and gold buying ideology. As of now I can’t think of any other as inappropriate yet dramatically striking irony in life than life and money, life and death is not even half of it. Schindler is able to send some Jews from other concentration camp to his factory and route trainload of Jews instead of transporting them to some other camps through bribing. It is not a rocket science; the more Schindler can bribe the captain of a camp, the more people he can get for his factory. At first, he wants Jews to work because their labor is too cheap that you don’t even feel you’re paying them but before the transfer to Auschwitz, he then wants more and more Jews in his factory not to earn anymore but to save lives. Schindler’s list is the list of life, it’s allegory to the book of life is wonderful. The transition between Schindler the businessman and Schindler the savior is ambiguous when I think it should be distinct. However, t is not a drawback at any serious ways instead it only interprets how discreet one German should be in sympathizing with the Jews.

One of my favorite scenes is when Schindler welcomes the male Jews off the train from the old camp to his new factory and said something like—“…inside are bread and hot soup waiting for everybody.” I will cry with those words if I am one of those Jews who wake up every morning to spend the rest of his day working harder than any animal while waiting for arrant Nazis to shoot him to his death. That bread and hot soup is not simply bread and a hot soup but words that will promise them that there is hope for them to live again like human beings. That factory is a sanctuary, the safest place for any Jew, and it is so overwhelming that those thousands of lives depends on one, only one person, and his money. While the train of the male Jews are safely routed to Auschwitz, the train where the female ones are ridden for some mistake have been transported to a different camp where sure they will die after some time. Stern tells Schindler about the error, and the lives of hundreds of Jew women and children, in a matter of hours or minutes, will either be saved or perished.

 

The ultimate best scene in the film and perhaps of all scenes from films I’ve ever seen is the long sequence at the end of “Schindler’s List”. The war ended and Schindler being a German needs to escape in that absolved factory, before he would take his car Stern and several other Jews melted a gold tooth and mold it into a ring with inscriptions saying—one who saves one life saves the world entire. His workers also make a letter explaining Schindler’s unbelievable predicament to the Jews in case he get caught, and every single Jews in the factory signed it. Schindler starts to cry saying he did not do enough. Stern consoles the man he has always seen the goodness even from the start asking him to look at those over a thousand he has saved. It wasn’t enough for Schindler, he wasted so much money before for wines, women, and good and sinful times, when all those money could have doubled the numbers of Jews who could have survived the war. He starts to begrudge at his car, saying that it could have saved ten more people and even at his Swastika gold pin which could be used as a bribe for at least one more life. Schindler bursts into tears as his people around try to hug him and comfort him, as the simplest way to thank him for letting them live the greatest gift the Lord gave us—life. As I break into tears alongside this cinema’s and history’s significant moment many thoughts outpours in my head, most of them I mentioned in the first paragraph but what makes me weak is that people will still continue to kill people for reasons conscious or unconscious, the Turkish film “I Saw the Sun” made me realize that. But as the film suggests, anyone can still do something, a change, a change that may no be perfect, universal, and absolute. We are not God to completely change the world, but we do have our spaces in this world, and there are people in the proximities of our hearts, our aspirations, and soul. No matter how small that change was for as long as it benefited even a single person provided with the purest intentions then the Jewish proverb—“one who saves one life saves the world entire”, will be our friend.

Adolf Hitler is the main and the most obvious culprit in this one of the history’s most dreadful and atrocious period in our world. The 2004 German film “Downfall” allowed me to reserve certain respect for this man they call the 2^nd Anti-Christ. For how monstrous he had done in our history, he was still a man, almost like a God the German nation trusted. Watching “Schindler’s List” doesn’t make me utterly hate Hitler after all. As a disclaimer, it is unsatisfying to learn that there is no accurate and absolute studies about the reasons why Hitler hated the Jews. Therefore while Hitler may have hated and wanted to eradicate the descendants of Jacob, I have to agree with some studies believing that the world have their own different share of this consummate hatred. Hitler is just one of those who hates even before he became Fuhrer of the German nation. Hitler was not the only one, all the people who are bigots, hypocrite, envious, narcissists, and ignorant are the real murderers. As I mentioned earlier, these different figures of evil have not been buried with the millions of body-casualties and this evil in the form of discrimination will still haunt millions of lives today and in the following generations to come.

I can’t thank the Lord well enough for destining me to witness this purifying film I now officially declare as my #1 in my Top 100 Films of all Time and Nation, Steven Spielberg and every single names in the credits of the film for producing a life-changing poignant work of art and history, the Video City near our house where I rented this DVD which even though I paid for a day of penalty is still worthy and even worthier than all of the movies I ever rented there combined, and all of the universe conspiring for this one in a million cinematic experience emblazoned in my heart and soul. More people should see this heart-rending, soul-breaking, moral-provoking black and white Holocaust masterpiece. “Schindler’s List” proves Hollywood’s undeniable power and influence and Spielberg demonstrates the universality of human experience. You don’t have to be a Jew yourself and you don’t have to have a family thrown at Kraskow ghettos, all you need to have is the heart for all the hundreds of thousand of Jews massacred in the Hitler War and some swamping deluge of cinematic talent of course. The frame by frame shots, composition, black and white contrast, simple camera movement, adept film editing, excellent sound design, and touching score still put this film in a heavenly pedestal. This movie simply made me so proud about my passion and enthusiasm for films.

Waking Up From a Beautiful Dream

Spirited Away
Hayao Miyazaki
Japan
2001

Everytime I watch animated films my first question would always be—“Why animate this thing?” Many answers may be given: in “Finding Nemo”, it needs to be animated because no production company can ever really shoot a real clownfish doing what Nemo the character is supposed to be doing under any ocean; in “Waltz with Bashir”, the Golden Globe-winning film has to be animated to achieve the high amount of surrealism in its visual interpretation of the Palestine Massacre. This film called “Spirited Away” from the home of the animes and mangas—Japan, requires the medium of animation because of its extremely highfaluting spectacles, from the grandiose castles and to the breathtaking changes in the landscape, to the bizarre creatures legendary, original, and archetypal, and up to the gaga temperament and eventual exhibition of powers by these strange creatures, thus creating the impossible and fantastic more possible and still fantastic. A related issue may arise though—in the advent of staggering technical achievements in film, is animation still acceptable? The early 21^st century marked the awesome and great effects of “The Lord of the Rings” and few more years later the eye-popping and completely unbelievable “Avatar”—an achievement the world has never accomplished yet. However this very attainment creates a little room for animation, at least for adult animation for venturing into the hundred of thousand still drawings and dubbing of human voices can reduce the animation as an excuse to technical limitations instead of artistic intentions. Just imagine watching an animated version of Avatar, isn’t it beyond dismay to resort to drawings instead of the live action people and their real movements?  In this sense only the animations intended for the children will be exempted to this critique. “Spirited Away” is thoroughly entertaining and has an excellent, competitive and edgy production value with respect to its time. Yet, seeing the film in a live action version with all of Japan’s or of the world’s greatest cinematic inventions will nevertheless bring this fantasy/adventure movie into an important Japanese cinema milestone. Filmmakers planning to produce adult animations need to be prudent and should have significant reasons in doing so because we don’t want animation to be a surrogate of cinematic inadequacy or worse, financial restraints.

“Spirited Away” is a highly amusing piece of film and I mean it seriously. It is outrageous and yet it remains adorable, more importantly it is oozing with audacity and charisma and most importantly it is flamboyantly edgy. The trancelike and surreal atmosphere of this other world where Chihiro and her parents are trapped is absolutely beguiling. It has an appeal of something that is present in every child’s most adventurous and wonderful dreams, a dream that even I used to have. The characters are also very interesting—the dragon-transforming green-haired ever-friendly but mysterious Haku , the hawk-like flying Yubaba with humongous head almost occupying half of any room, the ghastly yet friendly patron called “no-face”, the outside-world ignorant giant baby, the bouncing triple-head in Yubaba’s office, and a lot of others allow this adventure to leisurely continue and satisfactorily unfold. I honestly don’t believe that this film has the best storyline among all adventure movies in the world. What makes this film very appealing is the alienation of a supposedly normal girl into a world of strange and grotesque characters in a world decorated with generous resemblance into our own world with an extra fantastic touch. Even the tension created by the film is also amusing; it is not something that will keep you breathless but something that will give a smile on your face. Probably because this is arguably a family movie which is not suppose to generate anxiety and unnecessary trauma to the children that is why the excitement being produced is always cushioned with charm. 

I always divide adventure films into three parts: the background of the adventure, the middle part or the adventure proper, and the backlash from the adventure. The film is very much conventional in terms of the structure and genre which reflects the economic fact that it is nothing much else but a commercial family film though I fancy it as something more than that and this animated Japanese film is the best of its league. The background of the adventure is interesting. Chihiro is not very excited about their new house for one thing is certain—she misses her friends. Reluctant about looking forward for a different chapter in her life, she finds herself in the most bizarre place which will be her home for the next several days or weeks. The adventure proper is all about saving her loved ones—her parents who decadently turn into the fattest pigs I’ve seen after eating the tempting food displayed on the food stalls, and Haku, the mysterious boy who helped her escape their world. This is definitely the most obvious value the film wants to teach its children viewers. To survive and to survive the hope of returning back to her world with her parents she needs to be employed in that weird hotel for the mythic gods and goddesses. Chihiro’s objectives though becomes easier and easier for as time passes we realize that Tycoon is not really that ruthless, evil, and cruel. In some points I think everything seems surmountable because Yubaba reveals her real good-hearted character. But an objective should never be surmountable that is why the conflicts presented in the film are multi-layered because one would not be enough (one can’t be so convoluted and austere for a family movie). There is the introduction of Yubaba’s twin and her infringement with Haku, the devastation of Haku and his anticipated possible death, and the eventual effacement of her memories.  All of these conflicts are needed to consume our protagonists hope and trigger her determination. The backlash from the adventure is actually the part I am most looking forward to because this is the chance where many unexpected emotions may arise. This is also the part where you will feel torn apart—it is either you feel nostalgic about ending and leaving a lovable adventure or you feel hopeful about how your adventure is going to change your future. Backlashes are either tragic or triumphant, anything that has both is great (juts like what Terrence Mallick did in the last part of “The New World”), and anything that is neither is a waste of time. Family/children’s movies are all the time happily ended and I don’t think there any exceptions. “Spirited Away” definitely has a happy ended fate but what adds another pound of edge on this film is its sentimental spirit that is interestingly exclusive only with Chihiro, the breeze, the grass, and the trees, not including her parents. I felt the nostalgia of being forced to leave a world which at the first place you have always wanted to leave but you have eventually and subconsciously fell in love with. 

This adventure film has a beautiful and carefree spirit. It is an adorable, pleasant, and scrumptious animation. Satisfying the inner child among us all, “Spirited Away” is like a collected dream from all the adventures we were all dreaming of when we were young. A dream that will make us feel a hero of our own, something that makes us excited and proud telling it to our friends and playmates, a dream you wish you will dream every bedtime. This movie reminded me so much of the distant picture of my childhood, the lazy afternoon at the yard, the milk before turning off the bedroom light, and the beautiful mornings I have woken up with those overwhelming happiness from adventurous dreams. That is what this film is about—to remind us of the forgotten joy of dreaming like a child.

The Ballad of Guiseppe and Pasquale

Shoeshine

Vittorio de Sica

Italy

1946

Three years ago in the darkened Videotheque of the Film Institute where only the projected images in black and white lit the 70-seater room, there sat a first year student destined to be swept, captivated, and deeply moved in the next one and a half hour by the 1949 Italian film being shown—a classic film called “The Bicycle Thief” by the neorealist master—Vittorio de Sica. For the longest and most significant period in my life, that movie remains to be the ultimate and still unprecedented cinematic experience I ever treasure. Appreciating the Auteur Theory by Andre Bazin, there’s nothing like hoping to see another work of de Sica and there’s nothing like the three-year wait to finally see one for these Italian Film Classics are unfortunately too rare. Just like real precious gems, these films you really have to dig extensively to find.

Socially and morally provoking, “Shoe Shine” is a story of two unfortunate shoe shine boys who are jailed for being involved innocently in some trade of stolen goods. A deconstruction of the crimes, misdemeanor, and mistakes of the adulthood with some apparent references to the government and judiciary system which are both obviously operated by the adults, the film is a harrowing tale of children’s impending tragedy the grown-ups perpetuated. Definitely admiring that there is no blatant appointing of the culprits, instead de Sica focused on the two boys and their fellow juvenile prisoners and never, not even a single second that he visually blamed someone in the film. The question—“Whose fault really it is?” is story-wise of the particular adults which are Guiseppe’s brother and his friend, but the subtlety I am talking about makes recognition of the exact culprits irrelative instead it initiated an overwhelming arrest of all the culpable in a much panoptic scope. 

 

Born in Italy after the dreadful and devastating 2^nd World War, Italian Neo-Realism is a cinematic movement tackling the life of those in the margins, or of the working classes from the most mundane to the most sensible minutes of their life. Attempting to center the attention to this preface, neo-realists interpret their films in a simple narrative structure such as in “The Bicycle Thief” the story is simply about the search for the stolen bicycle. No multi-layer POV or time-frame needed like in an Alejandro Gonzales-Inarittu films for creating a more convoluted storyline would rob the audience of the empowering potential of a prosaic experience. However, “Shoeshine” doesn’t really fall much to such criteria. A certain level of complexity is thus present in this 1946 classic. Two shoeshine boys are imprisoned separately on two different cells. Interrogated by the police, Pasquale thought that the policemen are beating Guiseppe and made him confess that it is his friend’s brother who asked them to sell the fabric without knowing they are stolen. Guiseppe on the other hand misinterpreted the situation and blamed Pasquale for thinking that he betrayed him and his brother. This complexity mirrors the world of the adulthood making such part in the film so heart-rending and saddening. All of the elements in this part work interestingly—the jail as the piece of space they are spending youthful days of their lives, the fellow minors as the alike fragile souls, the policemen as the apathetic authorities dictating their deportment, and the legal system as the intangible God shaping their becoming elusive future.

One of the best things I really admire about De Sica is that he delivers a beautiful earthy atmosphere to his works. There is a consistent patch of gloom scattered from start to finish and relieving splash of humor from time to time. “The Bicycle Thief” and “Shoeshine” are films telling stories from a different time and country but it incessantly look and feel so earthbound and exquisitely unglamorous. An impalpable emotion perhaps is this feeling that I feel so alive in these two films (though I felt more significantly alive with The Bicycle Thief).

The most “neorealist” part in “Shoeshine” arguably is the provoking uncertainty at the end. In “The Bicycle Thief” the camera closes up to the face of the protagonist after stealing someone else’s bicycle and being chased by the town people. The restless and hopeless look in his face leaves a question to us what is in future for him? Extremely parallel to the worry of what future the Italians are going to experience after the war? In “Shoeshine” Pasquale furiously whipped Guiseppe thinking that he is trying to runaway with the horse the two of them bought when in fact he is only trying to escape from the policemen. Guiseppe accidentally fell on the bridge and hit his head to a stone from avoiding the wrath of his friend.  Guiseppe seemingly dead already, Pasquale crying and shouting his friend’s name, and the horse running and fading away into the darkness.

Any film lover from the Philippines in the 21^st century would lie if they say they never ever felt the power and influence of Hollywood in the country’s cinema or even in their general idea of movies. One of the things that made watching De Sica films a lot easy and entertaining is the fact that it is already almost similar to the Narrative system of Hollywood—a storytelling Filipinos and most people in the world are very familiar, so familiar that it makes non-Hollywood Narrative films nothing but an artistic crap. This is also another reason why I enjoyed “Shoeshine” better than Ingmar Bergman’s “The Virgin Spring”. Bergman’s work I believe has more virginal and more timeless content in a simpler form than De Sica’s however, the theatricality Bergman embellished “The Virgin Spring” is verging on obsolete today. There are over-exceeding frames in some scenes and unfortunately lacking in some others like the scene where the maiden protagonist has been raped by the two herdsmen. Some camera angles are unhelpful to what is taking place on the story failing to capture the total intensity of the scene. I am sure there is an explanation to that Bergman film but pegging the contexts today then it is an odd film. “Shoeshine” on the other hand even being released 13 or 14 years earlier than “The Virgin Spring” is more timeless in terms of the many elements in filmmaking. The “corrupt-looking” editing is almost zeroed.

“Shoeshine” is a pleasant and provoking film. Though aboveboard, I wish to humbly express a feeling of a slight disappointment not inside the film but of that inevitable expectation I unintentionally collected all throughout the years. “The Bicycle Thief” remains to be the most important masterpiece at least from out of all films I have seen and “Shoeshine” is a little bit not even half of the former but again, I can’t emphasize it that much—this film is certainly very good on its own.