"I can't wager Helen in a card game." Amon Goeth (Spielberg)
Spielberg's simplistic view of heroes and villains, his unproblematical approach to a topic that reveals a profound horror by seeing its complexity, is at the root of the film's error. The savagery of Nazism isn't to be located in the whims of a deranged brute, but in assumptions nascent within our entire civilization. Nazism was a manifestation of a political, economic, and philosophical world view that still is implicated deeply in our basic institutions. It is precisely the type of phenomenon that Hollywood is ill-equipped and uninterested in representing. (Sharrett 2)
Choruses have followed a trend toward passivity since ancient times. This is ironic, given that they preceded and gave rise to drama in ancient Greece. In the Dionysian festivals, choruses probably sang of traditional myths. Eventually a few individuals standing apart from the chorus began to act out the stories. The tendency even in Greece was for the importance of the chorus to diminish and of the actors to increase (Mendell 124-125). In one early play, Aeschylus' Eumenides, the play is named for the chorus of furies, who dominate in the play. By the time of Senecan drama, the chorus does not always play a significant role in the action, nor is it always onstage. He tends to use the chorus to mark the divisions between the acts and to dispense stoic observations (Mendell 129, 134-135). Such a reduced role accentuates the passivity of the chorus. "Seneca's Chorus seems to have been invariably absent during the process of the action" (Cunliffe 35). The same is true for much of Schindler's List. However, if the trend in which Seneca participated tended to disembody the chorus, Spielberg re-embodies the chorus with a vengeance. When the German and Jewish choruses come together, people suffer and die. We see the Jews shorn, beaten, shot, disinterred, cremated, and even see their teeth piled up to have gold fillings removed. We see the Jews herded, forced into cattle cars, stripped of clothing, and paraded for inspection. Yet the action that makes the difference takes place elsewhere.
The primary action takes place between Schindler and those he encounters, especially Amon Goeth, his "dark double and dangerous antagonist" (Schickel), his "dark brother" (Keneally 171). Senecan drama is full of larger-than-life figures who take action while others watch. Such characters fit into the stoic philosophy as well. Stoic writings are full of this elementary conviction that men are either actors on a stage or witnesses in the orchestra" (Rosenmeyer 50). Schindler and Goeth play out their drama while the little people watch. In this movie, the term "little people" applies literally. Schindler and Goeth were big men in real life. Neeson and Fiennes, who play them in the movie, tower over others to the point that Sharrett redubs the movie Schindler and the Seven Dwarfs (Sharrett).
In addition to making his Jewish chorus passive, Spielberg simplifies both choruses, playing to stereotypes and removing most of the moral ambiguities that Keneally depicted. Gone are the Germans bureaucrats and industrialists who aided Schindler because they sympathized with his cause. Raimund Titsch, for example, risked his own life to smuggle food into Plaszów to feed the prisoners in the factory he managed (Keneally 18). Later he would help Schindler write the list, which included Jews from both men's factories (Keneally 291). Spielberg transfers the job of helping compose the list to the Jewish Stern. In the movie, the Germans who aid Schindler do so because of his willingness to show them "gratitude," that is, to give them bribes. The sadistic Goeth offers to help Schindler keep a factory apart from the Plasz˘w work camp, not from any humanitarian motive, but because "You know the meaning of the word 'gratitude'" (Spielberg).
Spielberg also streamlines the Jewish chorus. We do see the Jews frequently outwitting the Nazis, but primarily in passive terms. Thus the movie preserves Poldek Pfefferberg's escape the wrath of Goeth, his men, and his dogs, which he accomplished by stacking luggage and pretending he had been ordered to do so. Goeth was amused because Pfefferberg, a former member of the Polish army, had come to attention and clicked his heels to give his report. "Of all today's doomed, not one other had tried heel- clicking" (Keneally 187). Goeth laughingly dismissed this "little Polish clicking soldier" (Keneally 188). What we do NOT see in the movie is this "little Polish clicking solder" become part of a squad of fifteen commandos in Brinnlitz training with weapons supplied be Schindler (Keneally 347). Spielberg also reduces the moral ambiguities of the Jewish experience. The Jewish police are corrupt in the movie, but that corruption generally works in favor of the other Jews, as when the corrupt Jewish policeman takes bribes to release Jews into Schindler's care. Omitted are the officers who turned in other Jews, who extorted money, who helped clear the ghetto, and who beat other Jews (Keneally 96, 99). So too at the end of the movie, the Schindlerjuden mark their liberation by walking abreast over a hill to the background strains of "Yeroushalaim Chel Zahau" ("Jerusalem of Gold"), in what seems almost a grim parody of scenes from The Sound of Music. In Keneally's account, some Jews marked the departure of Schindler and the SS by lynching an unpopular German Kapo, a prisoner who had been given authority over other prisoners (Keneally 376). Spielberg focuses moral ambiguity in his hero, Oskar Schindler.