#8 ‘Schindler’s List’
Holocaust Through the Eyes of a Capitalist with a Conscience
Let’s talk about Schindler’s List, Steven Spielberg’s harrowing, impeccably crafted, and morally loaded three-hour journey through the Holocaust—viewed, of course, not primarily through the eyes of the six million victims, but through the redemption arc of one wealthy, philandering industrialist who finally grows a soul.
Because if history teaches us anything, it’s that even genocide can be reframed as a tale of one good man’s awakening.
Liam Neeson plays Oskar Schindler, a Nazi Party member and war profiteer who realizes—somewhere between boozy banquets and counting his ill-gotten gains—that maybe using Jewish slave labor isn’t such a great look. What follows is a slow-burning, emotionally manipulative metamorphosis: he goes from self-interested scoundrel to tearful savior, purchasing Jewish lives like luxury goods, racked with guilt only after the slaughter has reached an unbearable crescendo.
And yes, Spielberg renders it all with his signature mix of sentimentality and virtuosity. The black-and-white cinematography is stark and lyrical. The violence is unsparing. The famous girl in the red coat—subtle as a brick, but undeniably effective—remains lodged in the cultural consciousness like a collective wound. But let’s not confuse powerful filmmaking with flawless storytelling.
Because for all its importance, Schindler’s List is still, fundamentally, a film about a white man learning. Learning that genocide is bad. Learning that human lives are worth more than their labor. Learning that you can’t bribe your way out of the end of the world. Meanwhile, the Jewish characters—those actually enduring the camps, the ghettos, the selections—are often flattened into symbol or spectacle. They suffer, endure, and die heroically, but rarely do they speak. The camera loves their pain. It rarely gives them agency.
Ben Kingsley’s Itzhak Stern is the dutiful conscience figure, a walking moral compass there to quietly nudge Schindler toward righteousness. Embeth Davidtz plays Helen Hirsch, the abused maid of Amon Göth, rendered with tragic dignity but used mostly as a vessel to show us how monstrous Ralph Fiennes’ Göth is. (Spoiler: very. The man is a walking, shooting id.) The women, the children, the elderly—they exist largely to be imperiled, so that Schindler can be haunted.
And that’s the central problem. Spielberg, for all his skill, can’t resist framing the Holocaust as a story about hope. About one good man. About how even inside the machinery of fascism, capitalism can be bent toward morality. Which is convenient. And comforting. And deeply misleading.
The Holocaust wasn’t a stage for individual heroism. It was the systematic, industrialized annihilation of an entire people. Schindler saved 1,200. That’s extraordinary, yes. But placing the spotlight solely on him risks reducing the horror to one man’s redemption narrative—a feel-bad-then-feel-good story that allows viewers to leave the theater sobbing, but absolved.
Yes, this is an essential film. Yes, it is art. But it is also a lesson in narrative framing: even the greatest atrocities will be filtered through the lens of a powerful man in a suit, having a crisis of conscience.
3.5 out of 5 gold rings
(One for the filmmaking. One for the cast. One for the gravity of the subject. Half a star for the attempt to honor the victims. The missing 1.5? For the silences, the erasures, and the sheen of redemptive capitalism.)
