Schindler's List

Forgive the blasphemy, but just a coupla weeks back, I saw Steven Spielberg's classic, "Schindler's List" for the very first time. But in seeing it at this age and in my current circumstances, I think I pretty darn well ruined the film for myself.

Let me explain:

I don't know if it's plain some kinda immunization to death and destruction and mass murder or what, but for the first time, I felt a total lack of sympathy for the suffering of the hundreds of Jews. And as I realized this lack of sympathy, I simultaneously felt a sense of shock at myself. Spielberg's film is obviously meant to make the audience witness the horror of the death camps, the unthinking cruelty of the Germans, and against this backdrop, the charity of Schindler, who, as a businessman, is only capable of buying the Jews in order to keep them alive.

Well, in my opinion, all this highlighting of the suffering of the Jews is very fine and dandy, but was this any justification for what the Jews themselves have perpetrated in later years?? I am referring here to the seemingly unending conflict in Israel-Palestine. I felt a sense of anger in watching the film. The Jews themselves have spilt so much Arab blood, was that some sort of revenging themselves because of the massacres of the Jews down the ages? Having, as a community, faced so much violence, one would think they would be the first to want to avoid any more warfare in the name of faith, community, ethnicity, whatever.

I was talking about these conflicting emotions to some friends of mine later, and they also mentioned something very interesting. In the west, there is some kind of belief that this has been only genocide in world history. The suffering of the Jews has been glorified so much and the Holocaust heroicised(what's the right word here??!!!). What about all the other ethnic cleansings, genocides, mass murders in so many other nations world over since time immemorial?? Many of which western powers have themselves perpetrated or sponsored.

My parents,while watching this film, kept on going "tch tch, eeesh" and constantly shuddering during scenes of brutality. They kept on re-iterating what a cinematic classic this was. All this time, I felt infuriated, helpless and more and more angry. I couldn't divorce the Holocaust from my own experiences of history. I mean,since I was born, Israel-Palestine has always been a zone of seemingly perpetual conflict. And I am now twenty. The Gulf is still uneasy. I'm sure one cannot blame the entire Jewish community for the Israel-Palestine situation, but isn't the western world demonizing the entire Muslim and Asian community because of terrorism??

At the end of "Schindler's List", I got up feeling extremely disgusted and nauseous and realized I had probably ruined my reception of the film. But I couldn't help it! What are you supposed to feel at the end of a battle of such conflicting emotions? How do you react to the murder of a community which you know will turn out to be cruel, heartless warmongers themselves?!!! For the first time in my life, I didn't know what to feel.