Fascinating tale about the hope of life and the promise of safety linked to one man and several thousand others, unfolding amongst an ocean of carnage.

Rating: 7/10 (25 October 2010)

Schindler's List begins with the striking of a match and the consequent lighting of a candle in a small room; an action which illuminates the rest of the locale and sheds light on those in the form of people and items around it. Steven Spielberg's film is a piece which goes on to shed degrees of light on a man, whose titular list and what it incurs, is the harrowing but brutally honest subject for this three hour true-to-life experience. Shot in black and white amongst deathly downcast greys which combine brilliantly with chillingly cold white in the form of snow and general skyline, Schindler's List unfolds amidst a bleak time of murder and pillage but will go on to focus on a ray of hope or salvation in the form of Nazi businessman Oskar Schindler; specifically, his work on the Eastern Front during World War 2 that saw him save and aid a vast number of Jewish people destined for slaughter.
Liam Neeson plays the man, a factory owner of Czech origin living in the year 1939 about embark on a period of six or so years which will change his life and many of those he comes to interact with, forever. When we first encounter Oskar, he neatly lays his shirts out across a bed during preparation for an evening out; his room neat and very formal, large sums of spare money sitting idly in a nearby draw for whatever reason suggesting a rich or high lifestyle. The measure of the man in his charismatic abilities is are established when Schindler arrives at an function in the evening full of German Nazi officials; light entertainment in the form of cabaret as well as food and drink which is already flowing. When he first enters, very few people seem to know of him, but by the end of the evening he appears to have wedged himself in amongst everybody as the centre of attention and entertainment. At a function in which all of the other Nazi officials seem greyed out by the, Schindler comes to have a white ray of light fly over his face suggesting there's a little more to this man than just mere self-indulgence and death.
Schindler's goals are entirely infused with tendencies that veer towards Capitalism, his dealing with the Nazi party officials see him enter a business proposition that'll have him enter with nothing but come away with a great deal of something. The situation as to whether we are on the side of Oskar in the initial stages is additionally challenged when it transpires if The War were to end, Schindler's enterprise might falter so the longer that most of the activity happening in and around everybody at this time continues, it's going to be pretty good for business. Inbetween all of this, The Second World War reaches somewhat of an infamous crescendo in and around the locality of Central Europe; The Holocaust causing widespread Jewish demotion into set Ghettos, later followed by evacuations leading onto murder for them but a severe clashing of morality for Schindler whom comes to realise employing these proverbial lambs to the slaughter would go a long way in saving them.
The film is a high end piece of drama, balancing a character's gradual struggle with being able to offer salvation really well with its meshing of the war genre. Spielberg's gradual dragging of his lead away from a self-obsessed businessman always looking out for ways to make money out of the system into this mournful, regretful man makes for wonderful viewing. By the time he is weeping, towards the end, at what has happened or more importantly what hasn't happened in the saving of more Jewish people, we feel the need to weep with him - thus successfully aligning the audience with this figure whom was once how he was in his indulgent, Nazi function attending self. The comparison is somewhat bookended very simply in how it is both Schindler as a stand alone man and how the Nazis as a collective group go about the employment of the Jews and the manner in which they treat them in a physical sense. Where Schindler will come to offer hope and salvation in the shape of factory employment, regardless of ability or handicap, an early scene will see German soldiers ruthlessly eliminate an elderly man because of his inability to successfully carry out what it is they ask of him through their charging him with a task, namely, the shovelling away of snow so as to clear a public road.
Schindler comes to stand in direct opposition to a fearsome Nazi Captain of the S.S. named Amon Göth (Fiennes), Göth additionally being based on a true to-life individual. Like Schindler, Göth is running a business or operation in which management and organisation are key; but while both members of the Nazi party and sharing similar basic ingredients as to their respective action plans, the men couldn't be any further apart in character. Göth arrives on the scene, a Kraków suburb called Płaszów, to help in the construction of a new concentration camp; the house on the hill he's charged with living in a dominant position in which he is able to overlook all of his work – construction orientated or otherwise. Just as Schindler goes out of his way to 'select' an aide or assistant in the form of Ben Kingsley's Itzhak Stern, Göth himself goes through a similar process of 'selecting' a assistant he renders a maid-come-slave in the form of a young Jewish woman. The measure of Fiennes' performance as Göth is highlighted in his ability to have the motivational "tonight is history" monologue prior to a ghetto liquidation come across as just as chilling as the act of liquidation itself. The film is an exhausting watch; an enthralling character study set amidst dark and desperate times as a man's shifting viewpoints play out.