Powerfully disturbing film with lack of credibility/unnecessary storyline of Oskar Schindler

Rating: 7/10 (13 April 2001)

No doubt a powerful and disturbing film about THE MOST tragic time in humanity, and it broke my heart to see all the mistreatment and the carelessness/complete disregard for human life. I can't help wonder, though, if the story is really credible. Why would a German businessman risk his life and undergo bankruptcy to save people that his very people were against? If this story really is true, I doubt he did so out of the kindness of his heart, but more for reputation-boosting. I expected a lot from this film, after all, it outlines something horrifying and truly a tragedy, but I couldn't help thinking that this film undermined the sensitivity of this subject by including a greedy, selfish, profiteering, womanizing German businessman in the story. I think that if you really want to learn more about the Holocaust, it should not be through films such as this, but through actual real-life documentaries that include no "other" unnecessary characters/stories, but truly tell the real pain, the real hurt and loss of the Jewish people who were treated so badly just because they believed differently from others. Regardless, there were some truly powerful moments in the film: The pictures of the starving prisoners who were forced to strip and be inspected by Nazi doctors, who would determine whether they could work or whether they should be killed. The little girl in the bright red dress, the only color, the only sunshine, in an otherwise gray, dark period of time, the very essence of innocence, and her symbolism later in the film when her lifeless body is wheelbarrowed over to the ever-growing pile of dead bodies that were to be incinerated. When Amon Goeth's young Jewish maid asks Oskar Schindler why he shot an elderly woman who was just passing by, bothering no one, looking at no one; his reply: because she meant nothing to him, she was just one of those people who neither bothered nor pleased him, just that she was just a random person with no meaning to him, was the reason why he so cruelly took a life so easily.
I do think this film is worth watching, no doubt, but please don't automatically assume you know everything about the Holocaust because you watched this film; this film portrayed life less harshly than life for the imprisoned actually was. Please watch documentaries on the Holocaust, research more through books and legitimate media, if you want the true facts.