Trading badges

In my opinion one of the greatest movie scenes ever shot is the badge scene in Schindler's list. It is right at the end of the movie when Schindler reflects that what he has done was not enough, that he could have saved more people. He has wasted too much money, he kept the car that would have bought 10 people, and the gold NSDAP badge he wears would have bought at least one more life. At first it would seem that the audience is drowned in a tide of sentimentalism. But something happens that blocks the impending catharis; the tide recedes, yet we are still unable to draw a breath. For when the tide recedes, that which repelled it stands revealed: the grotesque. The schock comes not from identification with Schindler and his remorse that more lives could have been bought, but from the realization that life has a price. A puny badge is equivalent to that which should be beyond all worth. If Schindler's trading at first glance seemed heroic, now we are forced to realize the truth of Adorno's claim: "There is no right life in the wrong."