(no subject)

I remember disagreeing with my father about that scene with the pen in Schindler's List, about twelve years ago. He found it de trop, I guess. Oskar Schindler has been found out, and he and his Jewish factory workers are getting into cars and trucks to make their getaway--as I recall--and he's holding a gold pen and suddenly realizes aloud that he could have saved x number of additional Jews by selling it, y number more if he'd sold his fancy car etc. He'd saved over a thousand human lives already but you see his point. And that's what's too much about the scene, I guess: there's people you could save right now if you looked carefully. Then more people after that, and so on. Any philosophical or religious acceptance of the equality of your own life with that of another person (as a whole, moment by moment, whatever) renders this realization intolerable. Ben Kingsley's character's response was of course pragmatic--Schindler had done far more than his share, i.e. more than what others were doing, and what had been saved surpassed valuation.

But not against a larger quantity of similar invaluables. And not more than what he should have done, given his own beliefs. Schindler's pain, the pain of pure regret, is the sudden exposure to a nauseating gulf between what you say about yourself and what you are.

And that opens every can of worms at once, doesn't it?

More on which later but I'll be happy for any input meanwhile.