Allen - The Businessman & The Martyr

In the film Schindler’s List, Spielberg chooses to employ the style of the documentary to present the character of Oskar Schindler and to explain the significance of his achievements. The film’s narrative is composed through an interweaving of the two primary types of scenes: 1.) photographs and video footage taken of the concentration camps, train stations, Jewish ghettos, and personal photos, and 2.) interviews recorded with several Holocaust survivors from varying nations; the voice-overs of these interviews providing the entirety of the film’s dialogue. The story of Oskar Schindler is told solely through the testimonies of these Jews who were saved from the death camps through Schindler’s actions.

Considering how monumental Spielberg’s Schindler’s List is purported to be, I personally found this lack of direct characterization of Oskar Schindler to be misleading and incomprehensive in the telling of his story. Spielberg’s film seemed to concern itself primarily with evoking empathy from it’s audience with a juxtaposition of the interviewer’s anecdotes to black-and-white images of suffering and destitution. While this of it’s own merit makes for a bracing, artless depiction of the worldwide tragedy that was the Nazi genocide, it fails to provide a suitable portrait of the film’s namesake.

What is divulged about Schindler’s persona is that he was a shrewd businessman who enjoyed parties and socializing, especially in making powerful friendships with the high officials of the Nazi regime. It is in these traits that lend the credibility to Schindler’s overarching goal in involving himself in the affairs of the persecuted Jews: cheap labor, innumerable workers, and profitable partnerships formed through this quasi slave trade made possible by the war. This financial opportunity was presented to Schlinder as a wellspring of profit with the added perk of being herald as a savoir by “his” Jews. This is not to say that wealth was Oskar Schindler’s sole motivation for rescuing over one-thousand Jews from termination. Given his charismatic and jovial disposition, it is likely that Oskar Schindler felt genuine compassion for the people he saved and vice versa. Even if Schindler happened to be indifferent towards the prosperity of the hundreds of lives he saved it would not change the fact that he cared for and sheltered them while the rest of the world butchered and ignored them. To grant a mass of people such hope as that is the mark of a savior, if not a hero.

The film Good Evening, Mr. Wallenberg is presented in direct contrast to the optimistic tone that threads through Schlinder’s List. The film is styled as a character-portrait inside a historical drama. It’s intention is to reverse the expected conventions of the hero/savior narrative and expose the audience to the unpredictability of the Budapest massacres. Raoul Wallenberg (portrayed by Stellan Skarsgard) is introduced as a key member of a prestigious household awash in wealth and opulence. He has no initial interest or awareness of the Nazi’s terrorization of Europe’s citizenry until he witnesses the man dying after jumping off the freight train destined for Auschwitz. It is thus Wallenberg’s sentimentality for the Jewish plight that incites his decision to leave his comfortable life and devote himself to the underhanded work of bribery, forgery, smuggle, and other such sideways methods necessary to barter with the Nazi command.

Instead of receiving both wealth and limitless gratitude from the Jews like Oskar Schindler, Raoul Wallenberg is under constant threat of having his operation disintegrate in front of him. Wallenberg is constantly engaged with the German military—making deals for the postwar security of officers, greasing palms to stay the bloodthirsty ranks from both Nazi and Fascist Hungarian forces, and the spreading and maintaining of misinformation—in order to save as many as can possibly be saved, cost non-withstanding. Although Raoul is selfless and dedicated to his work, he is plagued by constant reminders that no matter how powerful his influence is, he cannot prevent the daily murder of Jews in the open streets.

We observe the degeneration of Raoul’s steadfast attitude into a desperate fanaticism which worsens as time goes forward. Each day that brings the Russian army closer to Budapest escalates the scale of publicly-displayed savagery. By the film’s climax we see many Jews renounce their status as living beings, and proclaim themselves already dead, thus resigning themselves to the inevitability of the Nazi agenda.

In consider these two characters as they are expressed through film, one must designate Wallenberg as truer to the titles of hero, martyr, and protector of his people. Schindler contracted salvation for his Jews through the relative distance of business, whereas Wallenberg resisted from the very front lines; playing the favors of both sides in order to bring sanctuary to a disparaged people.