one of the greatest modern masterpieces

Rating: 10/10 (13 October 2007)

While this is not my personal favorite out of all of Steven Spielberg's films, I do have a powerful appreciation for "Schindler's List" and I do credit it as the best Holocaust film ever made and probably Spielberg's third-best lifetime achievement and every time I watch some of the film's most graphic and heart-wrenching or even just plain disturbing sequences, I can understand the director's emotional weaknesses he had during filming of the project and he had every right to be so. I find it amazing that somebody who needed so much emotional assistance from friends and family could pull off a film with such amazing detail and craftsmanship. It just comes to show how much of a genius this man really is.
"Schindler's List" is a film that stretches at least close to, or even over, three hours in length. At times there are instances where I think maybe the film could have dealt with just one less conversation between stars Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) and Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), but once I get down to the last fifteen minutes of the film, I know it couldn't have been any shorter than it is. But "Schindler's List" is not just a film about displaying the unjustifiable tyranny and suffering caused during the Second World War, but it also explores the man who saved 1100 innocent lives: Oskar Schindler, who began caring about nothing but himself. Schindler as we first see him in the film, is married, yet he is a womanizer. He bends the law to profit during the war, he initially cares next to nothing about the Jewish people being tortured and shot by the Nazis. He's nothing more than a unsuccessful businessman who suddenly sees an opportunity to make a name and fortune for himself by benefiting from the suffering of others. And yet, as we go on later in the film and learn to understand him, the man is totally transformed, as indeed he was in real life. And he ends up giving everything he has and forced to lead the rest of his life alone and without success, to save the lives of over one thousand innocent Jewish people whose people were being tortured and killed just for being Jewish.
While Oskar Schindler is definitely one of the greatest heroes...both on screen and in real life, Amon Goeth is undeniably one of the most horrifying villains of all time. Here, he is portrayed unbelievably convincingly by Ralph Fiennes. The character of Amon Goeth, as well as the entire Nazi party in the film, symbolize the vile cruelty that the biased Nazi party in real life would place upon their prisoners. We see a scene in the film, where they not only kill them for fun, but also make experiments out of their prisoners. Such as lining up a few men against a wall, sticking a rifle barrel to the stomach of the nearest one, and seeing how many of the men behind him the bullet will still strike. And then afterwards, walking up with a pistol and ruthlessly killing the survivors. Amon Goeth is even more terrifying, in some scenes, he shoots at workers for no apparent reason other than to kill time. And yet while the film explores the cruelty of Goeth, it also explores the other sides of him and how he could still be a friend and even a reasonable businessman who other Germans. The friendship that develops between him and Oskar Schindler never steers in a wrong direction, as one might expect, and they remain good friends throughout the entire film, despite their differences in outlooks upon the Jews.
The music score, composed by masterful John Williams, is one of the finest scores ever composed for a film. Masterful films gets masterful music scores to go along with them and heighten the tension or drama or whatever is necessary for a scene. The opening scores of the film, as they mostly revolve around Schindler's first dives into success, are cheery and intriguing and later on, as the emotional parts begin to arrive, the soundtrack becomes heart-wrenching powerful and sad. The last fifteen minutes of the film are truly amazing and simply rips one's soul apart. And with William's amazing music in the background, you cannot ignore it or refuse to take it seriously.
"Schindler's List" is filmed almost entirely in black-and-white and it seems most appropriately that it is. I personally can not imagine what it could have seemed like in color. Well, maybe I can, but I cannot imagine it being as pure and artistic with color. It was meant to be black-and-white, because it was meant to be as much like a documentary as possible. And by using actors and actresses who are talented, yet mostly unknown names to the public, it brings more convincing appearances to the film.
This is one of the greatest films ever made. And nobody else could have done it any better than Steven Spielberg himself. He did not live in a concentration camp or experience the suffering the Schindler Jews did, but he knows enough about it and brought his visions to the screen with absolute perfection. "Schindler's List" is a film that will never be forgotten and will probably never be overpowered by another Holocaust film in drama or purity.