Alex Russell

In “Worst Best Picture” we search every single Best Picture Oscar winner of all time from 1927 to present to uncover the worst of them all. Conventional wisdom says that 2005’s winner Crash is the worst winner in history. We won’t stop until we’ve tested every last one. Read the the first, our review of Crash, here. Posts will be relatively spoiler free, but there may be some details revealed. Today’s installment is the 1993 winner Schindler’s List. Is it better than Crash?

When I set out to compare 85 movies to Crash, my goal was to legitimately see if any of them were worse. Some, like Casablanca and Gone with the Wind, become difficult to write about because the premise is so ludicrous. Movies like The Sound of Music, The Deer Hunter, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and It Happened One Night are entrenched, iconic pieces of film history, and when writing about them it can be easy to slip into a “duh, it’s Casablanca” mode. There are all of those movies, and then there is Schindler’s List.

I had seen bits and pieces of it through various showings when I was in school, but I’d never sat down and watched all of Schindler’s List. It’s powerful, as you know, but it’s remarkable how powerful it still is if you know everything. The challenge of making a movie like Schindler’s List is that your good guys and bad guys will be immediately and totally clear, and you need to find a way to make it more complicated than that. Who is Oskar Schindler and what is he doing? And how do you tell a story this delicate but still make it a massive, massive hit, like only Spielberg can apparently do?

If you’ve somehow missed it, it’s the true story of Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), a rich German industrialist who fills his factories with Jewish workers to save on wages. It’s a shrewd move, and the film is about the developing humanity inside Schindler as his world becomes more and more about the Jewish plight inside Nazi Germany. He originally hires them because they’re cheap, but through the brutality of the (other, it’s import to note that Schindler is, himself, also a Nazi) Nazis, Schindler becomes deeply sympathetic and hatches a plan.

With the aid of his assistant Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley) he creates a list of Jewish names to be saved from transportation to Auschwitz. He creates his own fake factory where nothing is created, staffs it with Jewish “workers,” and bribes the guards and higher ups in the Nazi Party to avoid detection. His factory actively does not create weaponry for the Germans, which doubles up the amount of non-aid he’s able to provide. He’s using “workers” and not producing anything.

It’s a heroic story and it’s told in thrilling fashion. The Nazis feel both like people and like monsters, which is a nice touch to keep some humanity about the entire experience. One of the important lessons in an atrocity is to remember that many of the “enemy” forces aren’t deranged or psychopathic, they’re standard, normal people. That’s what makes evil so insidious, and it’s an important component here. Most of the Nazis in the film aren’t cartoonish, snarling, monsters, and just as in life it’s too complicated to just pick out maniacs. You need to fear the good man who will do nothing, one of the great lessons of the Holocaust.

The Best Part: Neeson’s role is incredible, and I’ll go with his portrayal rather than spoil any one scene, if you haven’t seen it. There’s one to mention — that one — but I don’t want to give it away, to preserve the horror.

The Worst Part: I mean what I said above about the humanity of evil, but if there’s a mistake in all this it’s in Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes). It’s a fine performance, but he’s clearly “crazy” and it takes away from the experience a bit.

Is It Better or Worse than Crash? It’s really difficult to talk about this one and it should be. It’ll always be called “powerful” and it should be. Crash never asked to be compared to it, but that’s why Crash shouldn’t be a Best Picture winner. That’s one of many reasons, there’s also dozens, dozens more.

Worst Best Picture Archives: Crash | Terms of Endearment | Forrest Gump | All About Eve | The Apartment | No Country for Old Men | Gentleman’s Agreement | 12 Years a Slave | The Last Emperor | The Silence of the Lambs | The Artist | A Man for All Seasons | Platoon | The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King | The King’s Speech | Rain Man | The Departed | The Bridge on the River Kwai | Marty | Gigi | It Happened One Night | Driving Miss Daisy | Shakespeare in Love | Wings | Midnight Cowboy | Rocky | Gone with the Wind | Chicago | Gladiator | Cavalcade | The Greatest Show on Earth | You Can’t Take It With You | The Best Years of Our Lives | The Godfather | Casablanca | Grand Hotel | Kramer vs. Kramer | The French Connection | In the Heat of the Night | An American in Paris | Patton | Mrs. Miniver | Amadeus | Crash, Revisited | How Green Was My Valley | American Beauty | West Side Story | The Sting | Tom Jones | Dances with Wolves | Going My Way | The Hurt Locker | The Life of Emile Zola | Slumdog Millionaire | The Deer Hunter | Around the World in 80 Days  | Chariots of Fire | Mutiny on the Bounty | Argo | From Here to Eternity | Ordinary People | The Lost Weekend | All the King’s Men | Rebecca | A Beautiful Mind | Titanic | The Broadway  Melody | The Sound of Music | On the Waterfront | Unforgiven | Million Dollar Baby | My Fair Lady | Hamlet | Braveheart | Oliver! | The English Patient | Lawrence of Arabia | Cimarron | One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest | All Quiet on the Western Front | The Great Ziegfeld | Out of Africa | Schindler’s List

Alex Russell lives in Chicago and is set in his ways. Disagree with him about anything at readingatrecess@gmail.com or on Twitter at @alexbad.