A Masterpiece, the second time around.

Rating: 9/10 (5 July 2000)

Believe it or not...I rented this movie back in 93 or 94 when it was first released, and didnt understand much of it and didnt even watch all of it. I turned it off out of boredom and confusion. At that time I knew nothing about WWII, nor did I really care.
Lately, I have been reading alot about WWII,Hitler,Himmler, and have been reading survivor stories from concentration camp survivors, particularly Auschwitz. I have also read many stories on the other concentration camps, and have come across many more stories of camp and ghetto survivors, and have read them all with sadness, but with interest. I have even had the pleasure of corresponding with an Auschwitz survivor and Schindlers List seems VERY realistic as to what actually happened in the camps and ghettos.
The movie is very easy to understand if you have basic knowledge of WWII and the holocaust. Liam Neeson plays Oskar Schindler, a NAZI businessman who wants to hire some camp jews as cheap slave labor to work for him (as many many companies did back then). These people that work for him are treated with a little respect and given decent working conditions. Soon many other Jews are depserate to work for him, as they realise that could mean they will not die in the camps. Oskar starts to get extremely irritated when he learns that the evil camp SS Amon Goeth (played by Ralph Fiennes) is killing many of his workers without good cause and wants the killings to stop. He then finds out that many of his workers will be sent to Auschwitz, where death is almost certain, unless something is done. He then uses his power and money to bribe many high ranking Nazi officials to bringing his workers to another country via train to have them work in a plant, where they will be saved from execution. Although he loses just about everything in the process, saving the lives of more than 1000 Jews proved worth it in the end, afterall, "You save one life...you save the world entire." I was surprised they even threw in a small role of the "Angel of Death", the evil Dr. Josef Mengele, who basically was responsible for the death of many many Jews, via the gas chamber, and his horrible, cruel,useless experiments. He was the one at Auschwitz who walked around determining who was fit to work, and who should die. If you were an older person, sick, weak,or had a small child, you were most likely sent to the gas chamber.
This is an outstanding movie and I'm very glad I rented it. I highly recommend it to everyone. Kudos to Steven Speilberg for this masterpiece.