Unmoved by Hollywood Holocaust

Rating: Null/10 (26 October 2000)

I wonder why it is that I was so unmoved by this film? Given the subject matter and the undoubted expertise of the director and cast, I was surprised by my reaction. Maybe the real-life events are so fresh in our memories. There is no shortage of extant newsreel footage. We`ve all seen the real archive shots of the concentration camps and been moved to tears by them. SCHINDLER`S LIST, beautifully shot in glossy monochrome, is a million miles away from the coarse-grained newsreels. It looks like an expensive Hollywood movie, and that`s part of the problem. If Spielberg chose monochrome for its realism, why then did he resort to the trickery of pinpointing the girl in red? Either you want realism or not. Most people I have spoken to thought the treatment of the little girl in red was wonderful.But it annoyed me intensely for its manipulation of the audience. I also felt that some of the performances where not as they should be. Liam Neeson failed to convince, especially in his final breakdown scene.Ralph Fiennes just about got away with a one-dimensional "nast nazi". Only Ben Kingsley gave a totally believable and absorbing performance. If all the other performances had been of this high level we may have had a truer and therefore better movie. The only time I felt any real emotion was in the final section, when we saw the real survivors and relatives.Who needs glossy Hollywood biopics when reality is so available. The staged fictions of SCHINDLER`S LIST will always be insignificant when measured against the newsreels Can anyone ever make a convincing Holocaust movie? Probably not.