h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

'The ending however, is emotionally manipulative claptrap'

It's certainly manipulative, but I hardly think it's claptrap. I don't think that the Schindler Jews who took part in it would see their gesture that way. Better that than having one's emotions manipulated by a squidgy rubber puppet who wants to go home.

It's claptrap because it is wholly unneccesary to the narrative of the piece (it's not even an 'architecturally necessary lump' as Forster described the eding of 'Passage to India') and serves no other purpose *other* than to manipulate the audience.

I can't disagree more. After the penultimate scene where they are seen walking along the landscape, wouldn't you want to know what happened to them in later life? I certainly would. Even if it only functions as a device, it's a masterful one, as it sets Schindler's legacy in its modern context. The descendants of Schindler's Jews numbered about 6000. The Jewish population of Poland now numbers about 4000. If you have to manipulate the audience in order to drive a point like that home, I'm all for it.

Wellit seemed pretty obvious to me that as there were people left to tell tyhe story that there were survivors.

I'm afraid I just found it offensive in not only it's assumption that I couldn't work out what had happened for myself and in its blatant attempt to manipulate me into forgetting that Schindler wasn't a saint, but a hard-nosed business man who profited from it all.

So why does he set up a factory with the intention of never producing a servicable shell from it? Hardly the action of a 'hard-nosed businessman' with profit as his primary objective

There are more than two sides to every story. Schindler was no philanthropist, and a short reading round the subject would show you that. Even Kenneally never set out to make him appear as a saint in the original book.

No, I never said he was. And he isn't portrayed as such in the beginning of the film, just someone who is on the make and who's conscience kicks in belatedly. Rather like a lot of us, I suspect.

Suffice it to say that to be honest whether Shcindler was ana ngel of mercy or the devil in disguise makes little difference to the artistic merits of the film, which are many. I merely feel it has a rather unnecessary ending. It's not a huge deal.

No, I can see your point. One feels that one has been through the emotional mill quite enough by the time one gets to that point.

I'm with Blues on this one. It's a powerful enough film without having the survivors come on at the end. That's the Americans for you though *shrug*

Is the ending problem not a recurring Spielberg problem? He does seem to have a problem in finishing a film without soem further assault on the tear - ducts, to the point where it actually becomes resistible. As evidence: "Schindler's List", "Minority Report", "Saving Private Ryan". "A.I.". Any of these would have benefited from having the very last sections snipped.

I think, on recollection, that the ending of Schindler's List isn't gratuitous. Watching that film left me in a state of emotional numbness up to that point, when I found the overwhelming last scene quite cathartic. It was well done, it worked, and its effect wasn't unwelcome.