Wow

Rating: 10/10 (7 March 2014)

Steven Spielberg has made his own Holocaust museum. In Schindler's List (Universal), an adaptation by Steven Zaillian of Thomas Keneally's book, Spielberg has created a 184-minute account of the fate of Kraków's Jews under the German occupation, centered on the German businessman and bon vivant, Oskar Schindler, who devised a ruse to save 1,100 Jews from the Auschwitz ovens. A closing note tells us that in Poland today there are fewer than 4,000 Jews but in the world there are 6,000 "Schindler Jews," survivors and descendants.
For this film Spielberg has done the best directing of his career. Much of his previous work has been clever and some of it better than that, but Schindler's List is masterly. He has, with appropriate restraint, shot it in black and white (except for two closing sequences in color). Janusz Kaminski's superb cinematography uses shadows like prosody— illuminates with shadows. Michael Kahn has edited with intensity and line, never breathless, always fast. (One demurral: the inter cutting between a Jewish wedding in a camp, a wild German officers' party and a German officer's boudoir romp is heavy.) John Williams has arranged a score, with Itzhak Perlman doing violin solos, that for the most part is quiet: Jewish melodies on woodwinds or a small children's chorus under scenes of inhumanity.
STANLEY KAUFFMANN