Schindler’s List

Rating

Director

Steven Spielberg

Screenplay

Steven Zaillian (Book by Thomas Keneally)

Length

195 min.

Starring

Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, Ralph Fiennes, Caroline Goodall, Jonathan Sagall, Embeth Davidtz

MPAA Rating

R (For language, some sexuality and actuality violence)

Review

Hundreds of films have been made about the tragedies of the Holocaust. Tapping into his heritage, Steven Spielberg tackles the 20th Century’s most heinous atrocity in the film Schindler’s List.

The film chronicles the life of Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), a war profiteer who has a change of heart as he witnesses first hand the destruction of which the Nazis are capable.  Neeson gives his career high performance in the film, bringing Schindler starkly to the screen.

Schindler runs an enamelware factory near Krakow where he hires Jewish workers in an attempt to keep them employed and safe during German occupation of the town. The Jews are kept more or less as prisoners in the ghetto of Krakow. They can move about within the walls of the city freely but cannot leave. As the Germans press for more strict treatment of the Jews, Schindler works with his bookkeeper Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley) to create a list of his employees that he can use to keep track of them and ensure that he always has the necessary labor and, indirectly, saving their lives.

Complicating matters is the German commander Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes) who Schindler plies with money to keep happy and tries to convince him of the tenets of mercy. Goeth teeters on the brink of respectability and through an impressive performance by Fiennes, we feel a surprising touch of compassion for a man who would be responsible for carrying out Hitler’s orders of mass extinction.

Despite shooting entirely in black-and-white, director Steven Spielberg conveys through Schindler’s List and desperate and emotional time for Jews in the German-occupied states. Detailing life inside the ghetto as well as taking us inside the notorious Auschwitz-Birkenau prison camp, Spielberg helps bring us into the lives of these tortured people. For those who were not alive during World War II, the images are riveting. We are able to finally understand what it was like for these mistreated people.

Schindler’s List is as much about the difficulties facing the Jews as it is about Schindler’s attempts to keep his workers safe and out of the death camps. Death and blood are starkly framed against the colorless backdrop. The one scene in the film where color is used, a little girl wandering through the war-torn streets of a city looking for a place to hide wears a pink coat. She is seen later in the film and that one scene is perhaps the film’s most unforgettable.

Everything works in Schindler’s List. The cast is superb, the overall design of the pic is beautiful and haunting, and the story is compelling. Arguably one of the best films ever made, Schindler’s List is the most moving film ever committed to celluloid. Though documentaries have featured actual footage of the events of WWII, this film recreates in such vivid tones that it is impossible not to feel like you are there, seeing these events first hand.

Though many audiences will be reticent to watch the film, fearful that it will bring too many heart wrenching, painful emotions to the surface, it is imperative that they do so. Although it may be too violent for children, we owe it to ourselves and to the future of our people to see such things. Schindler’s List helps to highlight how intolerance and bigotry can shape our society and only through understanding the past can we hope to prevent such atrocities for the future.

Review Written

January 9, 2007