Bioethics

Reflection on the movie, Schindler’s List

Schindler’s List is an emotionally draining movie. It is themed according to how

one would expect a war movie should be, especially if the focus is not on the war
itself but on people who composes and characterizes the war. Schindler’s List is a war
of people’s emotions, of conflicting and intertwining people’s emotions. This
interplay of emotions define the powerful message of the movie, that is,
intersubjectivity of sufferings among the characters, both the oppressors and the
victims. The encounter of such conflict and cooperation is symbolized by Oskar
Schindler, a blackmarketer who saw the war as a source of money and Amon Goeth,
the barbarous camp commander who massacred thousands of Jews. Conflictual on
the perspective of the primary character, Oskar Schindler vis-a-vis his capitalistic
tendency to see an opportunity in war, and later on, how the brute reality of war
transformed this business acumened prospective into a heart-rendering realization of
his of the value of people as people, as an end, and not as a means. This struggle of
Schindler corresponds to the struggle of Amon Goeth , although not in the sense of
the project of Schindler, but to his own project of trying to understand the attaching
emotional make-up of Schindler, as a man, and as a German, in relation to the Jews
and his inability to understand his own emotions face-to-face with Schindler’s open
display and acceptance of his hated enemy, the Jews. Furthermore, Goeth struggle
over his inner emotional conflict towards the Jews that culminated into a display of
abrupt compassion, though short lived, that ended in his shooting of the boy and his
manhandling of Lena, highlighted an image of a confused man of his own power and
emotions. On the other hand, however, both Schindler and Goeth are guilty of
collaborating with one another into the heightening of the sufferings of the Jews. For
one, the compassion of Schindler towards the Jews is cruelty for Goeth, vice-versa. In
fact, both are intrinsically influencing and reinforcing one another, whether explicitly
or impliedly.
In our society today, there are people like Oscar Schindler and Amon Goeth.
They both exemplify the two sides of humanity. Intoxicated by power and money, one
decides to be slaved by it and become a willing tool in trampling the rights of others
to live and in dehumanizing humanity. The other, intoxicated by power and money,
decides to use the money and power to redeem his intoxification by helping others.
These people, the likes of Schindlers, are said to be the flames that gives a hope to a
decaying society, like us. Confronted by greed, poverty and corruption, what we need
are the Schindlers to inspire the Goeth’s in all of us.
I don’t think man is inherently bad. Man is, by nature, good. Natural law ethics
dictate that man is grounded in a certain universal human values that is intrinsically
good, because by itself, nature is good. This goodness in man, that is, a manifestation
of a nature that is good is discoverable by reason which is also an offshoot of being
good. Thus, from all its angles, the fall that man may experience is something that is
not relative or subjective to man, but rather a situational enforcement that can be
tempered and redirected to what is truly man in its natural standpoint, a good.
Therefore, no one is by itself bad or evil but only by circumstances, sometimes
beyond the control of the person himself. From this perspective, a Schindlerian
method of intervention is necessary, that is, a form of moral conscientization where
the basic platform to stage the change is the same platform that produces and spawned
madness in Amon Goeth. If power begets power, then good can also begets good in
man, no matter how evil that man maybe.
What prevents people from realizing their goodness, just like what prevents me
from letting go people that I love most in realizing their best potentiality is the
thought and fear of acquiring a lack in one’s life instead of a fulfillment for helping
others attain freedom. It is sad to know the truth later that what one is possessing is
not power but emptiness, and the only way to compensate such emptiness is to project
an ambiguity, a pseudo-courage that borders on madness and horror.
The movie, Schindler’s List is a reminder of how fragile the world is contra
greed and lust for power. It shows how man is vulnerable to such temptations and call
for a murderous rampage for an ideology that propagates a false consciousness and
perspective of humanity. Only the nagging presence and the constant tapping, like a
conscience, of that goodness in every human being is keeping at bay the evilness that
lurks like a shadow to spawn and consume humanity. Schindler’s List is a timely
conscience in a world slowly being ravaged by hatred, prejudice and chaos.