Cat's Away 2: Second viewing of a one-timer

This is my fourth post in a nightly viewing series occurring while my wife is off gallivanting in other countries.

Schindler's List has been kicking around the upper reaches of my Flickchart for some time now. It had been nestled somewhere between 50th and 100th for some time, but then a big win jumped it inside the top ten. That was a bit of a skewed result, part of the fallout of a decrease in my enjoyment of The Empire Strikes Back the last time I saw it. It's back down to 35th after that aberration that shot it temporarily all the way up to #7, but 35th is still incredibly high for a film I've seen only once -- easily my highest ranked one-timer. In fact, you have to go all the way down to 83rd to get the next movie I've seen only once: Malcolm X.

Well, it was time to do something about having only that single viewing.

Schindler's List was a one-timer in the most literal sense, that I had seen it only one time. But it was also a one-timer in the way you hear that (word? phrase?) most commonly used: You might find it brilliant, but you can only stomach seeing it once. Length is also a factor in movies that are sometimes classified as "one-timers," but behemoths like The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King are easier to take down multiple times despite their bloated run times because they don't have wrenching subject matter. The three-plus hour run time, combined with the Holocaust, tend to make a second viewing of Schindler's List an unappetizing proposition indeed. (Unless you have someone to make out with, eh Jerry Seinfeld?)

But Schindler's List is a movie I knew I loved, and though it's sad and horrifying, I knew that I didn't find it difficult to watch, per se. My larger issue was finding it difficult to find the time to watch it, and if you are going to rewatch something like Schindler's List, how useful is it really to watch it in four 45-minute chunks?

Enter Cat's Away 2. Time to see Schindler's List for the first time in 24 years and figure out if it really deserves to hang around the upper echelons of my chart.

Not that I've been finding it easy to carve out the time anyway. Wednesday night was complicated by my sons staying up until nearly 10 o'clock playing in their bedroom, and one of them having a bout of diarrhea that came on too quickly for him to get to the bathroom in time. (At least he was wearing a "Pullup," an overnight diaper.) Then there was the little detail that Hurricane Irma played havoc with my wife's travel plans to her final destination, and because of power outages and lack of WiFi, I had not heard from her in about 36 hours. A call from her sister just before the kids' bedtime, inquiring whether I had heard anything, made my background concerns real, and I spent the first 45 minutes or so of List fretting about it and checking my phone for a possible email from her. When I finally got it, I breathed a sigh of relief and could finally "enjoy" the movie -- if that's the right word for it.

I'm not going to go into a detailed analysis of Schindler's List, but I do want to make an observation about why I continue to love it, which also sheds light on another film with certain things in common with List, with which I also recently fell in love. That film is The Battle of Algiers, which is similar to List primarily in this way: It's an anachronistically black and white film that depicts true event in history. When I watched Algiers, slowly going from mildly bored to fully engrossed and agape, I put my finger on what makes it so interesting: It seems like less of a film than an historical document, an artifact that shows reality rather than someone's fictitious interpretation of it. The color scheme, or lack thereof, is certainly manipulating us in creating this impression, as it feels like something that was really from the era it purports to be from. The commitment to realism of both films cements the impression.

This commitment to realism is especially impressive for Steven Spielberg, who has made numerous other "important" films, but none in which he so clearly repudiates his innate sense of theatricality. Spielberg's "movie instincts" often serve him well, but they might hamper him in any attempt to give us a documentary-style film. Even though Spielberg is justifiably one of the most successful and beloved filmmakers of all time, Schindler's List is as great as it is because it does not feel like a film Spielberg made. That may seem like a contradiction, but I don't think it is for the following reason: This is the film, more than any other, that proves how little he was limited by the conventions that might otherwise seem to define him.

There's very little in this film that feels like an indulgence. One of the reasons the ending, when Liam Neeson's Oskar Schindler finally breaks down in tears, is as powerful as it is is because Schindler has been a model of composure prior to that. In the ultimate in life-or-death stakes, Schindler has been playing a role so hard, with such subtlety and with such a sense of how important his perfect performance is, that when he can finally afford to drop character he drops it totally, collapsing in an emotional heap. Spielberg's own dedication to craft has been equally fierce. He rarely gives in to anything like sentimentality in this film, a film that might call for it more than any other he's made, and Schindler's breakdown at the end helps us recognize the restraint that has thus far been on display.

It was interesting to me how well I remembered this film I hadn't seen in almost a quarter century. I suppose it's indelible like that. I might not have needed to see it more than once to appreciate or even confirm its greatness, but I'm so glad I have.

And does it deserve to be near the top of my Flickchart?

Hell yes.

It's almost Thursday night, and I'll finally get a respite from viewing experiences that crack the 150-minute mark. I really, really need it.