Now fans of films like Schindler's List will claim that they reveal truths too. But I can't see much difference between Spielberg's so-called serious movie and his boy's-book movies. Schindler's List simply rehashes Spielberg's inflatable, one-size-fits-all myth about how a clever, resourceful character can outsmart a system.
Is that what the meaning of the Holocaust boils down to--Indiana Schindler versus the Gestapo of Doom? Schindler is a Hollywood producer's self-congratulatory fantasy of how giving people a chance to work for you is doing them a big favor. What real courage did it take to make this movie? What new understanding of the Holocaust did it reveal?
Spielberg could have made a really courageous film if he had dared to make a movie sympathetic to the SS, a movie that deeply, compassionately entered into the German point of view...
Of course, Spielberg could never make that film even if he tried to, because it would require too much insight on his part. And if he did make it, it would not get Academy Awards. It would require viewers to think. And thinking, real thinking, is always dangerous. Audiences might be forced to confront truths that they would rather avoid. Instead of affording them another opportunity to revel in their own virtue, they just might be made to squirm a little.
-From Baffler Eight via L.A. Rollins
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