Random Thoughts — Page 50

Warbler said:

Bingowings said:

Qualify point 1 and who else would have made Schindler's Ark into Schindler's List?

ok:

Bingowings said:

 for his next dip into 'serious' cinema?

the way you said 'serious' seemed imply that you did not think Schindler's List was serious cinema.

Bingowings said:

It's an important film for Spielberg and may have been the point of entry for a generation of people who may not have yet engaged with that period of history but the film is as much about the film maker as it was about that first hideous moment when industrial mechanisation turned murder into a conveyor belt concern.

1. I never got the idea that Schindler's List was about Spielberg

2.  when you say "that first hideous moment when industrial mechanisation turned murder into a conveyor belt concern."  are referring to Schindler's List or the holocaust?

 

I placed a comma bracket around serious because it is arguable that even some comedy is serious cinema (as in to be taken seriously as an art) here the subject was more sober than say...people from outer space or killer sharks therefore 'serious'.

Naturally I was talking about the holocaust, not the film.

The one thing that marks the holocaust out from similar outrages was how the processes associated with industrial production were applied to the murder of millions.

There had been massacres before (hideous torturous death is nothing new).

The British invented the Concentration Camp (and to our shame we don't talk about that much) but the Nazi's were the first to produce Death Factories, fed by a complex transport network, which actually produced resources as well as disposed of the evidence.

This added a new layer of horror to those events.

Just as Schindler had his list the Nazi's too had a list based on their pseudo-science of racial purity. They turned people into liquidisable assets (as well as soap and lampshades).

Want a house? Report a Jew or a Red and it could be yours.

That disabled child of yours...bit of a drain on the tax payer...not very Spartan to keep the poor thing alive is it?

Point out a few fairies and we'll let you off with a beating if you get this Aryan lesbian pregnant.

To kill millions is one thing but this new 'invention' arguably made WWII even more horrific than WWI.

It was the machine tooling of a national identity anyone who didn't fit in was processed.

And if we think this is a German aberration from that particular moment in time we delude ourselves.

Bingowings said:

When he did he chose another bestseller, Schindler's Ark and while the final film does break ground for Spielberg (even if one of it most memorable sequences was lifted frame by frame from Zastiha ne noc) it have much more melodrama than the book (I don't object to the name change even if it was done for the most insanely stupid of reasons) and as a picture of that particular black mark on history it's shamefully simplistic.

if you say so.

Bingowings said:

Personally I'd make viewing of the nine hours of Shoah (1985) mandatory in all schools throughout the world rather than encouraging people to watch Spielberg's film a few times.

I may have to watch it sometime.   

Bingowings said:

And if we think this is a German aberration from that particular moment in time we delude ourselves.

I don't believe that is what Schindler's List was arguing.  

I guess my original point(and still remains), it that the film isn't about what caused Spielberg to make the movie,  its about Schindler, the Schindler Jews and what they experienced during the holocaust, and holocaust itself.  You criticize Schindler's List for not being Shoah, did it ever occur to you that it wasn't trying to be Shoah?  You criticized Schindler's List for it's somewhat "happy" ending.   I may be incorrect, did not Schindler really save some of the Jews?  Should Spielberg have falsely depicted all the Schindler Jews being murdered?   

http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/health/baring-it-all-the-barefoot-running-trend-2337336/

Warbler said:

Bingowings said:

When he did he chose another bestseller, Schindler's Ark and while the final film does break ground for Spielberg (even if one of it most memorable sequences was lifted frame by frame from Zastiha ne noc) it have much more melodrama than the book (I don't object to the name change even if it was done for the most insanely stupid of reasons) and as a picture of that particular black mark on history it's shamefully simplistic.

if you say so.

Bingowings said:

Personally I'd make viewing of the nine hours of Shoah (1985) mandatory in all schools throughout the world rather than encouraging people to watch Spielberg's film a few times.

I may have to watch it sometime.   

Bingowings said:

And if we think this is a German aberration from that particular moment in time we delude ourselves.

I don't believe that is what Schindler's List was arguing.  

I guess my original point(and still remains), it that the film isn't about what caused Spielberg to make the movie,  its about Schindler, the Schindler Jews and what they experienced during the holocaust, and holocaust itself.  You criticize Schindler's List for not being Shoah, did it ever occur to you that it wasn't trying to be Shoah?  You criticized Schindler's List for it's somewhat "happy" ending.   I may be incorrect, did not Schindler really save some of the Jews?  Should Spielberg have falsely depicted all the Schindler Jews being murdered?   

I criticised it for being a being an unnecessarily stylised, unnecessarily melodramatic, derivative, inaccurate adaptation of the book, made with a eye more on the film makers career arc than anything else.

I didn't criticise it for not being Shoah (I voiced an observation that Shoah was none of the above).

Stanley Kubrick said of the film:

"Schindler's List was about 200 Jews who lived. The Holocaust is about 6 million who died"

And I agree with that observation.

The unnecessary coda of the film is open to an alternative reading which a more wise film maker would have attempted to avoid.

Notably that the suffering of Jews in the holocaust justifies the diaspora and continued oppression of the Palestinians.

I don't for a minute believe Spielberg feels this is the case or intended that sequence to be ever read that way but see that sequence from the point of view of a Palestinian who has been kicked out of his country or penned into a Arab ghetto state.

Not all Palestinians fire rockets at Israel but none of them asked for a European invasion justified by the collective guilt of Europe and the support of America.

Bingowings said:

I criticised it for being a being an unnecessarily stylised, unnecessarily melodramatic, derivative, inaccurate adaptation of the book, made with a eye more on the film makers career arc than anything else.

just where was it inaccurate?

Bingowings said:

I didn't criticise it for not being Shoah (I voiced an observation that Shoah was none of the above).

I didn't criticise the facts of history but their depiction in the film and how pointed it was that Spielberg should pick that story over all others knowing his preference for sending the audience away with a positive emotional response.

Bingowings said:

Stanley Kubrick said of the film:

"Schindler's List was about 200 Jews who lived. The Holocaust is about 6 million who died"

And I agree with that observation.

1. it did show A LOT of the Jews being murdered.  It never glossed over the horrors of the holocaust, or tried to make it seem better than it was or anything like that.

2. just what is so wrong about film about the 200 Jews who lived?  Why is their story so unworthy to have movie made of it?

Warbler said : 

ok, Spiellberg likes films with happy endings. Schindler's List has a kind of happy ending, so what? ...just what is so wrong about film the 200 Jews who lived? Why is their story so unworthy to have a movie made of it?

What part of 6 million dead do you not understand?

Since I've stumbled into some sort of alternate universe Politics Thread, I think I can risk an ice cream picture.

Bingowings said:

Warbler said : 

ok, Spiellberg likes films with happy endings. Schindler's List has a kind of happy ending, so what? ...just what is so wrong about film the 200 Jews who lived? Why is their story so unworthy to have a movie made of it?

What part of 6 million dead do you not understand?

 

understand it quite clearly.   Spielberg didn't whitewash the holocaust.  He showed the horrors of a lot of it.  But he wasn't telling the story of the holocaust, he was telling the story of Schindler and the jews that he saved.   Perhaps you should try to remember that the movie was called "Schindler's List" not "The Holocaust".

Damn, I failed.

Where's Ripplin, anyway?  Did I ruin this place for him just like CP3S?

Warbler said:

Bingowings said:

Warbler said : 

ok, Spiellberg likes films with happy endings. Schindler's List has a kind of happy ending, so what? ...just what is so wrong about film the 200 Jews who lived? Why is their story so unworthy to have a movie made of it?

What part of 6 million dead do you not understand?

 

understand it quite clearly.   Spielberg didn't whitewash the holocaust.  He showed the horrors of a lot of it.  But he wasn't telling the story of the holocaust, he was telling the story of Schindler and the jews that he saved. 

But as I've alluded to already Spielberg chose that story out of all the others because he could make a holocaust film which fitted into his idiom.

Serving his career arch rather than the story itself.

Bingowings said:

Warbler said:

Bingowings said:

Warbler said : 

ok, Spiellberg likes films with happy endings. Schindler's List has a kind of happy ending, so what? ...just what is so wrong about film the 200 Jews who lived? Why is their story so unworthy to have a movie made of it?

What part of 6 million dead do you not understand?

 

understand it quite clearly.   Spielberg didn't whitewash the holocaust.  He showed the horrors of a lot of it.  But he wasn't telling the story of the holocaust, he was telling the story of Schindler and the jews that he saved. 

But as I've alluded to already Spielberg chose that story out of all the others because he could make a holocaust film which fitted into his idiom.

Serving his career arch rather than the story itself.

but he did serve the story,  that is, story he was telling - the story of Schindler and the Jews he saved.

so lets see.  Spielberg likes to make movies with happy endings.  He decided he wanted to make a movie involving the Holocaust.  He found a story involving the holocaust and that a 'kind of' happy ending.  It a true story, an interesting story, a story the seems to be worth of having a movie made of it.  Where's the crime in that?   

There is no law that says the Spielberg himself must make a movie directly about the holocaust itself, and depict all 6 millions jews being murdered.

Bingowings said:.

Serving his career arch rather than the story itself.

wow, a film maker wanting to serve his career.  Yeah, that's never happened before.

Bingowings said:

I thought Schindler's List was all about Spielberg not getting a single 'Oscar' for The Color Purple.

still don't see this.   I say it was more about Schindler and the Jews he saved.

There is a generally recognised international crime of holocaust denial.

By Hollywoodising the holocaust, overly stylising it, manipulating the facts to fit a Hollywood template and create a feel good movie about the thing, Spielberg has denied and distanced his audience from the horror of the holocaust.

Imre Kertesz said : It is obvious that the American Spielberg, who incidentally wasn’t even born until after the war, has and can have no idea of the authentic reality of a Nazi concentration camp... I regard as kitsch any representation of the Holocaust that is incapable of understanding or unwilling to understand the organic connection between our own deformed mode of life (whether in the private sphere or on the level of "civilization" as such) and the very possibility of the Holocaust.

Bingowings said:

There is a generally recognised international crime of holocaust denial.

a crime which Spielberg never committed.  He also never made the audience feel good about the holocaust itself. 

Bingowings said:

By Hollywoodising the holocaust, overly stylising it, manipulating the facts to fit a Hollywood template and create a feel good movie about the thing, Spielberg has denied and distanced his audience from the horror of the holocaust.

except he never denied nor distanced the audience from its horrors.  He depicted them in detail.

Bingowings said:

Imre Kertesz said : It is obvious that the American Spielberg, who incidentally wasn’t even born until after the war, has and can have no idea of the authentic reality of a Nazi concentration camp... I regard as kitsch any representation of the Holocaust that is incapable of understanding or unwilling to understand the organic connection between our own deformed mode of life (whether in the private sphere or on the level of "civilization" as such) and the very possibility of the Holocaust.

1. lots of people have made movies about events that happened before they were born.

2. not really understanding the rest of Kertesz's problems with the movie.  The movie showed the holocaust to be pretty darned horrible, if you ask me.  Just what of the holocaust should it have shown, that it didn't?

edit: I just did some research and found out that Kertesz is actually a holocaust survivor.  That explains his perspective, a little.   No movie could live up to the horrors he saw first hand. 

Sorry C3PX...

enough

ABC, I'm putting you on ignore.

*puts on flack jacket*

no.

yep.

Warbler said:

ABC, I'm putting you on ignore.

Your memory has since long put my words on ignore !

... Hahahahaaaaaaahaaaaaaaaaaaa ! (creepy cave sound FX laugh)

Better be laughing than crying, mmhh ?

Why the Off Topic section has to be so serious, even dramatic to some ?

Mmmmhhh ?

I guess... Question of practice.