Excellent movie

Rating: 10/10 (7 June 1999)

Schindler's List is undoubtedly one of Spielberg's finest films, and there countless reasons why. Spielberg is able to portray Oskar Schindler(Liam Neeson) as a womanizer, shrewd businessman, and profiteer of the war in a way that does justice to the character's complexity. Through the use of black and white he brings you back to the time of the Holocaust, while using color in the present to bridge the gap between past and present. In particular, the use of black and white to identify the Holocaust is appropriate given the brutal nature of the event. People dream in color, but they have nightmares in black and white. The scenes themselves help show the facelessness of the Holocaust and the horror it brought to its victims. In particular, there is one scene in which a number of Jews are forced into a shower expecting to be gassed. The looks on their faces, along with the moving music, makes this scene one of tremendous fright. Although in this scene the Jews are not gassed, the message of this scene is there- even when Jews were not being killed, they were subject to horrors beyond the imagination of the human mind- everyone was a victim, including those who were not killed. All in all, Spielberg uses the medium to his advantage and recreates in vivid detail much of the Holocaust, while also telling a story of how one overcomes his ignorance to help others in the end.