Saturday, March 13, 2004
Which is More Depressing? Schindler’s List or Bridget Jones’s Diary: A Comparison
Schindler’s List is a movie about man’s infinite capacity for hatred and cruelty; and how one race of people, motivated by prejudice, wiped out twelve million souls, leaving pain and misery in the vacuum.
Bridget Jones’s Diary is about one woman in her thirties who is dissatisfied with her job, her weight and her love life. She fears that she will never find love and happiness and she spends most of her nights drinking alone in her apartment, watching TV.
Being both Jewish and a pathetic urban single, I react strongly to both stories… but given that I am sad and lonely at this instant, and a murderous totalitarian police state that will murder people is not imminent… at least not until after the November election… I find Bridget’s story has more personal resonance.
Advantage: Bridget Jones
Schindler's List stars Liam Neeson, playing Oskar Schindler… who starts out as a self absorbed war profiteer and learns the value of life and compassion.
Bridget Jones’s Diary stars Renee Zellweger who put on 30 pounds to play the role of an overweight, sloppy woman. At her heaviest she weighed in at a whopping 140…
I would have to cut off both of my legs and one arm to weigh 140.
Advantage: Bridget Jones
In the end of Schindler's List, Oskar saves over a thousand lives and is beloved among the survivors of the Holocaust, although his personal and professional life is doomed to fail ever after.
In the end of Bridget Jones’s Diary, Bridget falls in love with stuffy lawyer Colin Firth, proving that there is someone for everyone.
Having neither saved thousands of lives nor fallen in love, I find it hard to compare these two. What I fear however, is that my life will be closer the Schindler's List ending… without the life saving and tree planting on the Avenue of the Righteous. This actually makes the Bridget Jones’s Diary ending the more depressing, because having the happy ending rubbed in my face makes me want to eat many, many ice creams.
Game, set and match: Bridget Jones’s Diary.
