Redemption under sin
——A brief analysis of the movie "Schindler's List"
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A faint glow in the darkness, an analysis of the deepest part of human nature, director Spielberg shows us the crazy massacre of Jews by the Nazi Party in World War II from the most objective perspective, and the death-like silence and the urgent cry of life when it is about to pass away are intertwined with each frame, making the viewer feel as if he has personally entered the purgatory on earth, and the helplessness of life impacts the senses.
The film features Figure 1
The film is based on real events, telling the story of Schindler, like every indifferent businessman, who hired Jews for more benefits during World War II, until he felt the pity of the massacre, accepted the deep questions of his own soul, and began to act, taking advantage of loopholes in the organization of the German war economy to rescue thousands of Jews. The seriousness and extraordinary artistic expression of the film have reached an almost insurmountable depth. A film depicting the Holocaust of the Jews during World War II was also filmed, but it was the first to depict the awakening of a German conscience, despite the risk of rebelling against the Nazis.
Picture 2 of the film
The director uses black and white tones to make the film shrouded in a documentary-like real atmosphere, under the visual effect of black and white, all the good and evil are spread out in front of the viewer's eyes, and the high definition of human nature, peace and redemption points directly to the depths of people's hearts. Just as a corner of the long war years, it shows cruelty and violence everywhere. The shocking slaughter scene leads the viewer to think deeply about human nature and redemption. Because the film is black and white, the windows are white, the piano is black, the sky is white, the earth is black, the skin is white, the coat is black, the snow is white, the blood is black. The fears caused by death itself have lessened, and the despair caused by Nazi humans and people's despair about the future has been pushed to the limit.
Picture 3 of the film
The film begins with a symbolic montage, lit candles that burn out under the Jewish hymn, and finally smoke, and the director cleverly uses this seemingly quiet picture to herald the end of the Jewish people and the imminent start of the brutal slaughter. The director's cleverness is not to show the perfect personality image of the protagonist through a positive approach, but to show the true full picture of the characters little by little through the way of the side, using multiple close-up shots to describe Schindler's meticulous dress and elegant demeanor, portraying the image of a businessman with a good family, in high society and left and right. As a businessman, he has the characteristics that most businessmen have, such as liking to take advantage of small profits, always taking advantage of loopholes, and also having the treacherous and cunning characteristics of ordinary businessmen. He was also very indifferent at first, paying no attention to the life and death of the Jews. Schindler at this time was only a microcosm of a merchant who made a fortune from war, and the subsequent redemption made him a special case in the universal. The one-armed Jewish technician personally visited to thank Schindler for his employment, but Schindler scoffed at this incident, which fully demonstrated his businessman nature and laid the groundwork for Schindler's transformation in the subsequent plot, which was more supporting.
Movie cover
The director also vividly shows the audience a lustful man image with the help of multiple Schindler's mid-shots looking at beautiful women, and these indispensable character portrayals make the character have great complexity and ambiguity, and highlight the truth of the character image. As a businessman, Schindler could have taken pleasure in killing Jews like the Nazis, or stood by and had no responsibility or obligation to be a hero of the Jews, and his choice to save the Jews was actually enough. At the back, when the surviving Jew went to his grave to place a stone in gratitude for his saving, it was all worth it. Schindler deserves to be remembered by history, not only for the Jews who were saved, but for the whole world. The film's black-and-white photographs give the impression of historical change and create a documentary atmosphere. The film's themes are peace and red, and Schindler, as a German arms dealer, makes it clear to the audience throughout that he really wants to help the Jews escape every persecution by the German Nazis.
The film features Figure 4
"First-class wisdom is always contradictory" is perfectly displayed in Schindler, who is both selfish and indulgent, and who adheres to the moral bottom line of kindness, showing the brilliance of human nature, which is a real person, a perfect person. He is not a good person in the traditional sense, but he chose to do the right thing at a critical moment that did not benefit personal interests. War can expose a person's ugly face, but also show a person's shining side. Schindler, after seeing the tragic situation of the Jews, exchanged most of his property for the lives of the Jews, and his list printed the names of more than eleven hundred people, which was not only a list, but also a ticket to heaven, Schindler gave up a lot of things, but protected a group of lives, a nation. It was Schindler's redemption of himself, and his good deeds enabled more than a thousand people to survive. Presumably, this is the brilliance of human nature, the only shining light of the Nazis in this film. To this day, what is unforgettable is the thick list, and the girl in red who weaves through the crowd in the black and white picture, she is the hottest flame and the darkest corner of people's hearts.
The black and white tone is the film's main attempt, which adds a sense of history to the film and creates the main emotional tone of the film. The only color in the movie, the girl in red, represents a different meaning. Schindler was not the savior of the Jews, and it is equally worth considering the characteristics of humanity in his transformation. In this film, Spielberg uses lighting to reach an absolute artistic level. Oskar Schindler was a confused man, a businessman who had come to Poland to make money. At first, his light became hazy and obscured by shadows, but as the plot progressed, more and more shadows disappeared, making the character's image clearer. From darkness to clear expressions, they all convey a kind personality and a gentle humanity.
The film features Figure 5
In the Jewish physical examination section, the doctor judged the physical condition of the Jews at a glance. Jewish women, who had not yet undergone a physical examination, pricked their fingers with needles, used blood as lipstick, and used blood as blush. Chronic malnutrition has left them pale and thin, faced with death that does not know when it will come, and their faces pale out of fear. The desire to live is so strong, in such a terrible place, survival is instinctive. Therefore, in order to escape the massacre they put on blood makeup. At the very least, Death could come a day late. They never give up hope in life, even if their living environment is inferior to that of ants. Stan says the list is good, the list is life, and the surroundings outside the list are frightening.
The scene of a group of women and girls being sent to concentration camps is frightening. When they shaved their hair and lost their hair and sent it to the collective shower room, panic even spread to the screen.
In the shower room, a group of women, the same short hair, the same panicked eyes, struggled to breathe together. They don't know their fate. When the shower water spills down, they relieve the excitement of anxiety, and the expression and desire to take water with their mouths makes people feel close to death. For them, life and death are so close. At the time, they were not even clothed and were trapped in an unfamiliar crisis environment. As can be seen from this group of women, the Jewish people are deprived of any attachment and are deprived of a sense of belonging.
The film features Figure 6
But it's not just a depressing movie. On the contrary, it is a film full of humanity and warmth. Despite the coldness of the director's technique, it is all about human nature. The massacre is only the historical background of the film, and the discussion of human nature in the historical context is the main purpose of the film. The film focuses on the characterization, whether it was a murder of the century or not; Jews, who were imbued with slavery, entered their inner world during the special period of World War II. For example, the major was cruel but he would be emotional, and he fell in love with his Jewish maid. This plot setting not only enriches the content of the film, but also satirizes racial discrimination.
Confrontation
There are many violent scenes in this film, but the main use of side descriptions depicts the massacre, avoiding vulgar gore and deepening the shock. The director omits the violent process and directly shows the consequences of violence. For example, the Nazis tried to cleanse the Jewish quarters, and many Jews were sent to Auschwitz. After the train left, the camera did not capture pictures of the Jews, but took pictures of the items they left behind, such as mountains of leather shoes, ornaments, and even teeth, toy dolls and photos left by the Jews, poking straight into the hearts of the audience. These photos are magical and frozen in time. In the film, when the lens skims over a picture, it is a long shot but has a special montage effect. Slaughter show after massacre, bringing the audience to a violence show, but using no direct violence. This unusually frenzied atmosphere of slaughter is also amazing, with night and wind falling, that is, the time to kill. In an elegant and soft symphony, a pair of Nazi officers enter the picture, a scene in which the lights are very special, with light coming from the side. The officer's helmet glowed in the night, but the face could not be seen, making Nazism even more terrifying.
After the noisy footsteps, the camera is cut into the house, the music disappears, and the silence of the room is just an auditory contrast. Nazi officers searched every corner with stethoscopes, and soldiers armed with submachine guns were waiting. It was a parallel set of montages that the Nazis took snakes out of the hole on the one hand and pulled Jews out of hiding places on the other. In this scene, the surrounding sounds play a big role, the soundtrack is very soft, there is little emphasis on the role of ambient sounds, and the quiet atmosphere of the house is also emphasized. Police and personnel illuminated the house with flashlights and walked around on the floor, but the creaking sound made the room quieter, and the quieter the sound, the more inviting the atmosphere became. Spielberg is technically a thriller atmosphere that begins to take control of nature. The next second a Nazi soldier found a man hiding under a bed. This storyline has reached its climax. Two other groups of officers and men also found their targets. This storyline also reaches its climax, and suddenly the entire building is full of gunfire. The next second, the cheerful sound of the piano mixes the killing of soldiers with the sounds of the Jews, and the picture flickers on and off against the backdrop of the fire, but the audience can't see the murder, and then the camera cuts to the room where the piano is placed. An officer played the piano gracefully, gunshots rang out outside the house, and the killing was a carnival in the eyes of the officer.
The camera is cut into the street, where corpses are piled up. A Nazi major was washing his face and complaining that he was exhausted from killing people all day. The windows behind the building flickered, followed by the incessant sound of the piano, followed by a large panorama, and the windows of the street buildings that covered the entire block with the sound of gunfire flickered on and off. There is no doubt that the impact of this kind of picture is more profound than facing the violence, and the pleasant piano sound makes the viewer even more shocked.
The film features Figure 7
In one of the most powerful scenes in the film, Jews are loaded onto an ox cart and the recorded voice tells them to leave their luggage on the platform because they will be transported to another train and the luggage will not follow them. Instead, the Nazis took it to the back room, where they dumped and sorted out their belongings. In this room are piles of personal belongings, including photographs, shoes, combs and clothes, all disposed of separately. At the table sat a group of Jewish jewelers who were forced to classify and determine the value of the gold, silver and jewelry that belonged to them on the train. These piles symbolize the loss of millions of lives, not only material lives, but also the essence of the disenfranchised victims. A thousand hair brushes represent a thousand victims and a thousand lives.
The road through the labor camps is paved with tombstones removed from the Jewish cemetery, which is a replica of the actual road there. This path adds to the historical accuracy of the film, while also symbolizing the destruction of the Jewish race. Removing the tombstone from the cemetery represents a huge consequence of the Massacre. The Nazis were dissatisfied with merely clearing the existing Jewish path, denying many Jews their final resting places, effectively eliminating the existence of the dead. In addition, the Nazis forced the Jews in the camps to build roads, and they also understood the fact that they would soon be erased. The message is clear: the Nazis even believe that the Jews do not deserve the mark left behind, and only want to erase them from history.
The director created a distorted image of the German officer Amun, who was deeply in love with the Jewish woman Helen, and the inner struggle made himself tortured, and he had to use the punches and kicks of Helen to vent the emotions in his heart that could not be placed, showing the universal hatred of the Jews in the hearts of Nazi soldiers, indicating the indelible mark that the war of that era left on people's hearts. The gold appraiser stared blankly at the mid-shot of the Jews' gold teeth being poured on the table, which also reflected the cold-blooded nazi soldiers. The motion camera follows the footsteps of a child, creating an illusion that if you follow his steps, you can avoid bloodshed and go straight to heaven, but you fall into a deeper hell - a dung pit, which is constantly being fought for by children in order to survive, showing the helplessness of the war and making the viewer feel endless sorrow. The mid-shot of doctors lovingly feeding the dying patients to drink poison, and then the Nazi soldiers shooting at the patients shows that the Nazi soldiers are more cruel and able to deprive people of life than poison. At night, the Germans found a doctor to use a stethoscope to check whether anyone was hiding in the cracks in the floor, and the hearing monitor was supposed to give people hope for life, but here, it brought the message of death. Amun pardons the little boy who brushes the bathtub, but shoots the boy to death in the next moment, completely shattering the audience's hope for fascism, and they are like the embodiment of demons. The real horror is not the disgusting ways of dying, but the emotions that brewed before death.
The film features Figure 8
The little girl in red as a vivid color in the film, is the most obvious symbol of the film, her coat is the only color object in the film except for the candle, which symbolizes the only hope in this massacre, in the long-range shot, the girl walks on the street, the street ghosts cry wolf howls is full of killing, this scene of ingenious design makes the audience think that this is the director's beautiful fantasy in despair, is to give the audience hope, is the director's praise of life, is the beacon in the dark. She walked through the crowd and hid in the gate. Schindler saw her from a high place on the top of the hill and was drawn to her gaze, looking at her figure, and for the first time there was pity in his eyes, and the little girl made him ignore the violence that spread around him. For Schindler, she represents the naivety of the slaughtered Jews. The moment Schindler saw her marked his forced to face the horrors of the Jews and his own actions in terror during the Holocaust. Little girls also have greater social significance. Her red coat hints at the "red flag" that Jews waved to the Allies during World War II as a sign of supplication. A few years later, when soldiers dig up the victim's bones, Schindler sees the little girl lying in a pile of rotting corpses with shock in his eyes, and the director makes this scene a symbol of the entire film, declaring redemption from here. Schindler negotiated with Nazi officers for the sake of the Jews, at this time he was no longer a standard businessman, more like a redeemer, his psychology had changed completely, he cried loudly after all the dust settled, still regretting that he had not rescued more Jews, at this time he was more like a messenger of peace. The image of the typewriter is symbolic throughout the film, and in multiple close-up shots, each name is heavy and sentenced to death for the Jews, and only Schindler's list represents survival. While making the viewer feel endless sorrow, he also experiences a hint of redemption for human nature. The damage caused by war is never one-way. From a natural point of view, each massacre is automatically divided into the slaughtered and slaughtered parties. Spiritually speaking, some of the vulnerable individuals among the perpetrators are also experiencing a spiritual slaughter.
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War has brought death and fear to every corner of the world, and those ruling parties have not hesitated to wage war in order to protect their own interests, completely disregarding the lives of the people. War distorts human nature, but it is also the good side of human nature that is revealed. The Nazi Party, under the leadership of Hitler's Fuehrer, fostered an arrogant sense of racial superiority in which the Jews were a bunch of beasts with no human rights to speak of. And as Schindler said, the nearly one hundred and twenty lives that survived were more than he was thankful to himself. Because of the unique wisdom and hard work of the race, he was able to use this wealth to acquire a great deal of wealth, and then part of the wealth survived, because the Jews themselves had a higher surplus value of labor.
At the end of the film, the vast Jewish community heads towards their "holy place", which also reaches the climax of the whole film. Echoing the beginning, a cheerful Jewish music was heard at this time. The film gradually melts into the colors, under the blue sky, everything has come to life, symbolizing the hard-won freedom of the suffering Jews, the Jewish people stand in a row, slowly moving towards hope and peace...
The film features Figure 10
A massacre, a disaster, the director used an almost rational angle, truly restored those cruel pictures, everyone's image has flesh and blood. In any era, no matter how dark, there will be a flash of humanity; classic films will not feel dull because of the lack of color. A redemption reveals one's true colors, the hypocrites tear off their masks, and the truly good people believe that flowers can blossom in the mud.
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