The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 81, No. 15, Ed. 1 Friday, January 14, 1994 Page: 11 of 16
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ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
THE RICE THRESHER FRIDAY, JANUARY 14, 1994 11
Oscar Bait
Spielberg, Neeson excel in 'Schindler's'
BY KRISTIAN LIN
In spite of everything 1 still believe that people
are really good at heart
—Anne Frank
Diary
After the release of the moronic Jurassic
Park, many film critics (myself included) had
written off Steven Spielberg as a case of perma-
nently arrested development who would never
find his way out of the cinematic never-never-
land he had created for himself. Well, you may
never see so many film critics eating so many of
their words as now. No film about the Nazi
Holocaust can adequately prepare you for
Spielberg's latest and greatest film, Schindler's
List. The maturity the director displays is truly
bewildering.
Based on Thomas Keneally's biography,
Schindler's List begins with the outbreakofWorld
War II. Wealthy Czech-German businessman
Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) sees the war as
an opportunity to become even wealthier and
indulge his expensive tastes in food, clothes,
cognac and women.
When the Germans begin segregating Pol-
ish Jews into ghettos, Schindler agrees to use a
number of them as slave labor in his enamelware
factory in exchange for saving their lives. But as
the Nazis intensify their program of genocide,
Schindler voluntarily goes deeper into debt to
save the Jews in his employ.
What makes this film uniquely powerful is
the restraint shown by the filmmakers. Shot
mostly in black-and-white, this three-hour film is
wholly unlike anything Spielberg has done. The
big crane shots and tracking shots, the under-
lined emotions and the swelling music are all
gone. Instead Spielberg makes extensive use of
the handheld camera, which adds to the imme-
diacy of the experience. The black-and-white
footage photographed byjanusz Kaminski gives
the film a newsreel look. The camera records
events with journalistic detach ment, which para-
doxically deepens the horror.
Spielberg leaves countless painful visuals in
the brain—a30-foot-high stack of human corpses
and firewood being burned by soldiers, the win-
dows of Krakow's skyline lit up by machine gun
fire, Jewish children diving into a latrine to hide
HE'S STILL THE CUTE ONE
from the Nazis. In other films shootings are
sanitized; here they're shown in terribly graphic
detail.
Screenwriter Steven Zaillian, who wrote and
directed last summer's Searching for Bobby
Fischer, adapted Keneally's book into a screen-
play. Zaillian refuses to give us one-dimensional
characters and manages to keep his sentimen-
talism under control. By giving play to conflict-
ing elements in his characters, he makes them
more lifelike. Like Spielberg, he doesnt play to
the grandstand.
Atthecenterofthisfilm is Neeson's Schindler.
Spielberg and Zaillian don tglossover Schindler's
womanizing and love of money, nor do they give
him a big speech denouncing the cruelty of the
Nazis. In his biography, Keneally admits to be-
ing mystified at the change Schindler under-
went from war profiteer to humanitarian. The
The camera records
events with journalistic
detachment, which
paradoxically deepens
the horror.
filmmakers dont try to account for it; instead
they let the change in Schindler's character
come about slowly and silently.
Neeson is up to all this, and turns in a perfor-
mance of heroic proportions. This is especially
so in his final scene — it's the emotional high
point of the film.
No less heroic, in his own way, is Ben Kingsley
as Schindler's Jewish accountant Itzhak Stern.
The pairing of Neeson and Kingsley is, of course,
inspired. Neeson's good looks, large frame, rich
baritone and relaxed charm contrast with
Kingsley's sharp features, slight physique, nasal
tenor and nervous diffidence.
British actor Ralph Fiennes, who bears a
certain resemblance to Laurence Olivier, plays
Commandant Amon Goeth. Goeth oversees
Schindler's workers. He's the type of villain who
goes out on his balcony in the morning with a
long-range rifle and picks off a few prisoners as
casually and methodically as if he were shaving.
But he's not the stock Nazi villain one usually
finds in a Hollywood movie. Spielberg and Zaillian
give him a set of insecurities centered around a
beautiful Jewish girl (Embeth Davidtz) picked
from the ranks of the concentration camp to be
his housekeeper. His feelings for her may be as
close to love as this monster has ever experi-
enced, but as a good Nazi and one of the Party's
main killers, Goeth must repress these feelings.
When Schindler is briefly imprisoned (for
kissing a pretty Jewish girl at his birthday party),
he finds an unlikely ally in Goeth, who says, "The
Jews have this strange power over you. You can
feel it when you get close to them. Some of my
men have been afflicted with this. They should
be pitied, not punished." Fiennes strikes the
right balance of complacency and denial in his
delivery of this little speech. Had he delivered it
another way, his whole performance, and a
good portion of the film, might well have
collapsed.
Spielberg and Zaillian's reserve has
even spread to John Williams' score,
which is one of his best Rather than
indulge in histrionics (the way he
did in Jurassic Park and many
other films), Williams knows
when to hold back; some of
the most powerful scenes
are the ones without
music Like the cam-
era, the music
remains a detached commentator on the action.
The solo violin music is played by Itzhak Perlman.
The overall impact of th is film isnt shattering
or depressing, butmore thought-provoking. This
film explores the mysterious nature of human
good and human evil, and the extremes of both
that a crisis such as the Holocaust can bring out
In abandoning the techniques that made him
a huge commercial success, Spielberg has turned
into a great filmmaker. Who would have thought
the man responsible for Hook would come to this
only two years later? Perhaps the real mystery in
Schindler's List is the wondrous transformation
effected by a great story such as Oskar
Schindler's.
'Paul' not quite live enough — buy the old albums
BY MARC HIRSH
For those of us who either missed Paul
McCartney's New World Tour or were just too
cheap to spring for the AstroDomically high
ticket prices, the former Beatle has released
Paul Is Live, an all-new live album consisting of,
well... all those songs he played on his tour.
Or at least as many as he could fit on a single
CD without repeating any of the songs from
Tripping The Live Fantastic, his last tour album.
So don't expect "Get Back" or "Hey Jude." This
is slightly more obscure stuff, though songs like
"Michelle" and "Penny Lane" should be familiar
to almosteverybody.
Still, the question remains: why? Paul Is Live
makes three of his last five releases live albums
(the third was h is limited ed ition Unplugged d isc,
which apparently wasn't subject to the same
restrictions as Fantastic, as three songs from
that album appear here). Paul seems to be con-
tent with making albums without actually com-
ing up with new material.
Paul's ostensible motive of wanting to give a
memento to those who came to his concerts is
honorable enough (although Houston is absent
from the locales at which the album was re-
corded, so I guess those of yo« who went saw a
lousy show), but it's hard to recommend Live to
the person who wasn't there.
For the most part, it's not Paul's fault Al-
though he is obviously not the spring chicken he
once was, he's still got a great voice, and he
sounds like he's having the time of his life. Only
occasionally is his voice not up to snuff, as in
"Magical Mystery Tour" and "Paperback Writer,"
but in other places, like "Michelle," you'd never
realize that nigh on 28 years had passed since
Rubber Soul.
It's not the band — mostly. It's not their fault
that they're not the Beatles. Ex-Pretender Robbie
Mcintosh is a capable enough guitarist to play
George Harrison's parts without sounding like a
gutless imitator, and guitarist/bassist Hamish
Stuart does an admirable job backing
I
Will we still need him, will we still feed him, when he's 64? It's not too far away.
McCartney's vocals. Blair Cunningham's drum-
ming occasionally borders on pedestrian, taking
the edge off of songs like "Lady Madonna," but
on the whole, the band is competent enough.
The songs themselves are mostly bulletproof.
Even a lousy band would have to work to sink
songs like "All My Loving," "We Can Work It
Out" and "Penny Lane," especially when the guy
who wrote and sang them is standing front and
center. Granted, most of McCartney's newer
material isn't as good as his early work, but even
"Hope Of Deliverance" and "Looking For
Changes* from his most recent album, Off The
Ground, fit snugly alongside Beatles classics.
The other songs from that album aren't as lucky.
Where the album falters is in the fact that the
songs don't sound that mud} different from the
originals. This is good if you're going to a
McCartney concert but makes for an unneces-
sary addition to your album collection. "Let Me
Roll It" is just fine here, but buy Band On The
iff PAUL, PAGE 12
Celtic duo CeiK's Muse does
their acoustic thang tonight,
right down the street at the Rod
Uon. The show starts at 9 p.m.
and wM only cost you $3.
DlverseWorfcs presents three
performances of "Annie Sprinkle:
Post-Post Porn Modernist" tonight
thrau^i Sunday night at8pjn. (Sunday's
performance Is for woman only.) The
conceptual artist/AIDS awareness
snokaanMion't neribmnnca wM include
w e|rwi iviiinniw rnnnivwiw
works titled "Public Cervix
Announcement" and "Bosom Ballet."
Diverse Works Is at 1-10 at North Main
and can be reached at 223-8346.
Itching for an exotic vacation already7
Soothe your cabin fever with Hidden
Hawaii, the new film
playing at the Wortham
IMAX Theatre in the
Museum of Natural
Science. Show times are
every hour until 8 p.m.
Monday through
Thursday, 10 p.m.
Friday and Saturday and
9 p.m. Sunday. Call639-
IMAX for more info.
The Mucky Duck presents the Austin
Lounge Lizards in concert tomorrow
night at 9 p.m. Sez Claudia Perry at The
Houston Post, "(They are] one of the
few bands to understand the key role
that Stuckey's played in the Civil War."
The Duck Is at 2425 Norfolk; caN 528-
9999 for the skinny.
Sund^jm^rks the opening of a new
Museum of Fine Arts exhibit, "The Alton
Chasanoff Photographic Collection:
Tradition and the Unpredictable." The
exhibition will feature works that
Mustrate the complete and utter dtoorder
of life. Hope they didn't photograph my
closet.
Sewall Art Gallery presents the
ongoing exhibit "Enlightening the
Classics: 18th-century Etchings
of Ancient Roman
±4 Architecture."
c D |
Hanszen College
presents that celluloid classic, Blazing
Saddles, tonight in Chem Lec. The show
costs a dollar and plays at 7, 9 and 11
p.m.
If you missed Six Milks'
neato madcap improv
show tost week, take heart: The
CoffeeHouse presents a free
*** " ^ . CgmedySportz match at 9
p.m.
18
t u e
19
^ ^ ® Friends of Fondren will
hostyi reception honoring members of
the Rice community who had books
published bi 1993. 7:30
"20 p.m., Famsworth Pavilion.
^ ^ ^ Rice Media Center
presents Metropolis, the German
expressionist classic, at 7:30 tonight.
Admission is $4.25.
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Howley, Peter & Epperson, Kraettli. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 81, No. 15, Ed. 1 Friday, January 14, 1994, newspaper, January 14, 1994; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth245857/m1/11/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.