Schindler's List *****

I understand it’s a true story. At the end of the movie, a large, brooding man stands before a crowd of Jews during a ceremony in Jerusalem, honoring him as a “Righteous Person.” Everyone is there to honor him. Before he starts his speech, the man looks at a silver watch on his wrist with the stretched bands. He pulls the watch off and looks at it.

“I could have saved one with this. I could have saved one more.”

As his eyes tear up, he pulls off the golden ring off his left hand – off his ring finger. After staring at it for a couple of second, the tears run down his cheeks and he said to the crowd, but more to himself, “I could have save another with this. I had this then. I could have saved another.”

There’s an old saying in athletics – great teams aren’t always great; they’re just great when they have to be. The line can be used for humanity as well. People aren’t always great; they’re just great when they have to be.

Oskar Schindler wasn’t great before 1939 and he wasn’t great after 1945. He was just great when he had to be.

The chief goal of the human race is perfection. That goal has never been achieved and probably never will. This is a bad thing I guess for our people, but a good thing for literature. Perfect people are boring. Take Shakespeare for example – King Lear was not perfect, Hamlet was not perfect, and Richard III was sure as hell not perfect. Great literature is about people overcoming personnel defects and worldly obstacles. Without that drama, great fiction could not exist.

For many years, certainly when I was alive, this man did not get his due by a long shot, but it appears because of Thomas Keneally majestic book, Steven Zaillian’s beautiful screenplay, Steven Spielberg’s brilliant film and Liam Neeson’s chilling performance, he will not be not be forgotten.

Schindler’s List is about as perfect a movie as there is. The acting is superlative; the camera work is remarkable and you could tell Spielberg was feeling this.

For those who don’t know (and shame on you if you don’t), here’s the story. Oskar Schindler was a member of the Nazi party by convenience only. He didn’t like what they were doing, but he saw a business opportunity here. To borrow Zallian’s line, “I finally figured out what I needed to be a success. War.” Schindler owned an enamel factory that produced pots and pans and others items for the German war machine.

One of the first executives he hired was Itzhak Stern, a Jewish accountant (playing so brilliantly by Ben Kingsley that I didn’t even recognize him; it actually took me two screenings to realize that it was Ghandi). Stern took the opportunity to convince his boss to hire as many of his doomed race as possible to save them from the gas chamber. At great risk to both of them, Jews of various abilities were saved from the gas chamber by these heroic men. I’m not a big fan of the adjective heroic since it is so over used, but in this case it doesn’t say enough. At the end of the way, Schindler save about 1,100 Jews from execution.

The story itself is dramatic enough, but it is the little touches that Zaillian and Spielberg add that make this film truly great. How better to describe the horrors of the Nazis that to have a bunch of Jewish women in a gas chamber waiting for execution only to have water spill out of the spigots instead of the noxious fumes? How about Neeson sitting on horseback while watching Jews being herded into carts destined for the concentration camps agonizing what his country is doing? There’s also the brutal scene where Amon Goeth, the sadistic Nazi (sorry for the oxymoron) played memorably by Ralph Finnes, stood on his balcony, bare-chested, gut hanging out, with a rifle on his shoulder, picking off people below him.

With all that in mind, my favorite scene was when Oskar met one of Stern’s recent hires for the assembly line and realized that he only had one arm. As you read this dialogue, keep in mind that company’s like Schindler’s were only allowed to hire “useful” Jews, so this man, if caught, might have put the whole operation in jeopardy.

“The man only has one arm,” Schindler told his accountant.

“He’s very useful,” Stern said as he tries to walk away.

“He only has one arm!” Schindler said incredulously as he chases after his assistant.

“Very useful.”

In many films, you can tell who the driving force was, but as I’ve discovered over the decades, with the truly great films, there are many driving performers. In the case of this film, there’s Zaillian’s script, Janusz Kamiński’s haunting black and white photography, the great acting, Michael Kahn’s smooth editing, and so on.

The great directors, like Scorsese, Lubitsch, and many others, can credit to their success the ability to hire good and appropriate people for each job, and then guide them to their vision while mostly staying out of their way. Spielberg has not always been able to do this, but here he did. And it shows.

With all that said, the main reason this movie achieved greatness is the subject matter for whom history finally paid his due. Let me put it this way – I see Oskar up here. I don’t see Amon Goeth.

The Trial of Billy Jack (- a lot of stars)

During The Trial of Billy Jack, the remake of the sadistically horrible Billy Jack, the title character tells his lawyer that “death” is his constant companion. Apparently, death doesn’t actually do anything, at least not to Billy Jack, it just hangs around. By the third hour of this movie, death was my only hope. I was even open to bribery.

By the way, that wasn’t a typo. Three hours. Three hours! Three God forsaken hours! Three hours of Billy Jack pulling off his shoes and socks off and kicking people. Three hours of Billy Jack whining about how the “system” is out to get him. Three hours. You go to hell, Laughlin. I hope you rocket to hell and burn in molten lava for eternity for inflicting this piece of feces on the world. I can’t believe someone read this script (written by guess who) and pulled out a real check and actually wrote numbers down, then signed it. What the hell is wrong with people?

Dolemite was better than this. At least, Dolemite was so bad it was funny. The only preaching (i.e. whining) in Dolemite was about the…uh…sanitary conditions in regards to some of the working girls.

The Trial in question is referring to the murder at the end of “Billy Jack – The First Abomination”. It was a very controversial case, considering the fact that, you know, he did it. There he goes. The Man’s sticking it to Billy Jack again. How dare they put Billy Jack in jail for killing other people? In all honesty, I was pissed off about the verdict as well. Involuntary manslaughter? I’m assuming this is over the Bernard thing after he raped Jean in “Billy Jack – The First Abomination”. If that’s the case, he wiped Bernard out in cold blood. I’m not saying Bernard wasn’t a swine and deserved to spend some quality time in agonizing pain, but so does Billy Jack as far as I’m concerned. Either way, it was murder. I can’t believe I’m analyzing this

The whole trial sequence lasts about 15 minutes - just enough time for Billy to explain to the court that the government is evil, the Marines are evil and he did the whole thing because of My Lai. You think I’m exaggerating? I’m just stunned that Laughlin, he of the Disraeli-sized monologues, actually kept this within 15 minutes. They probably let him off with involuntary manslaughter just to shut him up. Beside the point, I thought he killed Bernard because the kid raped Jean. How did Lt. Calley get into this? Maybe Bernard is a metaphor for William Calley. Sure.

Okay, so let me get this straight. The movie is called the Trial of Billy Jack, we’re 15 minutes in, the trial is over, and we’ve got 2 hours and 45 minutes to go. 165 minutes. Christ. The Ten Commandments wasn’t this long and that story might have been a little more, you know, significant. Don’t tell Laughlin that though. I really hate Tommy boy.

One hundred and 65 minutes. Gone with the Wind was only 42 minutes longer and that was unbearable. I can’t do this. I’ll be back.

That’s better. Seven old-fashioneds and a pack of cigarettes in a little over an hour and I’m ready to go. Well, the Freedom School, the place on Indian grounds that was the cause of all the problems the first time around, is doing well. They’ve expanded their curriculum to including band marching and belly dancing. Really.

Back when this was made, these Laughlin films were said to be wonderful for showing the plight of the Indians. I don’t get it. At least in Ford’s movies, the Native Americans fought back. Here they get their revenue by belly dancing them into the ground. To think that the incredible resourceful Native Americans would do that is in my mind offensive.

I like the true story better. The Indians take a tiny piece of land and beg for sovereignty from the feds. Once they get that they build the world’s biggest casino and send millions scurrying to Gambler’s Anonymous. When the money started rolling in, Uncle Sam, after damning the evils of gambling, of course, starts looking for his cut and, God bless them, the Indians respond with a short guttural verb followed by “you.” Sovereignty, remember. He he he. That’s how you stick it to the Man. Why doesn’t someone do a movie about this?

Where was I? Oh, so, some rich guy hates this school and does everything he can to polish them off. At least Ben Gazzara in Road House had a motive – greed. Unless the belly dancing industry has skyrocketed since I kicked off, these folks aren’t making any money.

Just when things look worse for the Freedom School, Billy Jack gets released. You’d think if the government is so against him, they would have left him in stir long enough for the Ben Gazzara guy to take over the school, but that’s neither here nor there, I guess. I spoke too soon, the F.B.I. is bugging the school because the kids start a newspaper and expose a scandal connecting American corporations (none specifically) to the energy crisis and the Israeli war. The Times dropped the ball on that one.

Thankfully, the “students” find and destroy the taps. They also invent a thinkymabob that, by analyzing a person's voice, can prove when someone’s lying. The person doesn’t even need to be in the room works just as well though the television screen or radio. Now this almost sounds interesting. Sounds like you could have the F.B.I. try to capture this secret and get thwarted by the very device they are trying to find. Of course, the thinnymabob is never mentioned again.

Now that Laughlin is out of jail, he has something very important to do before saving the little Einstein kids – vision quests. What the hell? Guess I’ve got to look this one up while pouring another drink.

I knew I was going to regret this.
“A vision quest is a rite of passage, similar to an initiation, in some Native American cultures. Vision quest preparations involve a time of fasting, the guidance of a tribal Medicine Man and sometimes ingestion of natural entheogens; this quest is undertaken for the first time in the early teenage years….” Whatever.
You pray to this guy, take mind altering stuff, nearly go insane and it lasts two to three days, just like watching this movie.

A bunch of stuff happens, a bomb goes off and the National Guard is sent in by the governor. In a subtle reference to Kent State, Laughlin has the Guard open fire on the school. After which, Laughlin defends the school against the soldiers (the platoon of soldiers, by the way) in a Mexican Standoff. Fade to Black

Of course, they don’t shoot him, just the kids. On one side you have a bunch of kids who can outsmart the F.B.I. and invent devices that N.A.S.A. couldn’t dream of and on the other side you have a guy who insists on taking off his sock every time he kicks someone.

There’s government efficiency for you.