Heart-touching

Rating: 9/10 (27 August 2017)

You might not have heard about Oscar Schindler but you will definitely want to know more about him after watching the movie. He is credited with saving the lives of more than a thousand Jews during the Holocaust. He was named Righteous among the Nations by the Israeli Government a few years after the end of the Second World War. Righteous among the Nations is awarded to those non-Jews who helped Jews during the Holocaust in various ways such as providing them food or shelter, arranging escape out of Germany and German- occupied territories, etc.
Schindler's List is based on a 1983 novel, Schindler's Ark. It tells the story of the efforts of Oscar Schindler, a German, to help Jews during the Holocaust. Played by Liam Neeson, Oscar is not an easy character to comprehend. It takes you time to fully understand who he is. He is a person who might come across selfish to you at first. He is an opportunistic businessman. He comes across as one who, even during the wartime, is trying to find opportunities to make money rather than worrying about people's lives. But deep inside, he has a heart bigger than the most and at a time when Jews were struggling to find a helping hand, he helped more than a thousand Jews. He is not a person who will give you sympathy for you are going to lose someone close, but he is one who would take actions to save your closed one and not tell you when he does. You can see this in the movie when a Jewish lady approaches him begging to get her parents out of the concentration camp and into his factory. At first, he not only denies her help but also lashes out at his assistant showing frustration how his for-profit factory has come to be known to people outside as a charitable harbor for Jews. But you can hear the pain he feels for that lady and all the other Jews in his frustrated voice. Later in the scene, the lady's parents are shown being escorted out of the concentration camp into his factory.
The movie starts with how Oscar Schindler, in the midst of the Second World War, sets up a factory manufacturing pots and pans to supply to the German army. Oscar hires a Jewish accountant to manage the factory. While the account runs the factory enormously profitably for Schindler, he hires many Jews who would have otherwise ended up in concentration camps. By getting German SS guards to believe that they have the important skill sets required for the factory, he cleverly sneaks many Jews out of the concentration camps.
As Oscar is setting up his factory, the German SS is brutally evicting all the Jews out of their houses and moving them to ghettos and later to labor camps. As Oscar and his wife helplessly watch eviction of a ghetto from a hill overlooking it, he realizes the dreadfulness of the war and that he needs to look beyond the factory profits and help the Jews. The atrocities that the Jews face will touch your heart. In a scene of a labor camp, as little children are being taken away by German SS guards from their mothers, a child runs away to hide. He tries a few places including outhouses but finding them occupied by other children, he dives through a toilet seat in a toilet pit to hide. The fear of life on the face of the little child as he settles in the toilet pit will bleed your heart.
As the war progresses, the state of the Jews worsens. The SS plans to exterminate all the Jews and hence gradually starts moving them from labor camps to concentration camps. Oscar's pots and pans factory are not considered important enough for the war effort to continue employing the Jews anymore but he is determined to keep the Jews in his factory, by now called Schindler Jews, from the concentration camps as he devises a new plan.
Despite the dark and sad story-line, the movie has many snippets of humour. As Oscar's manager is cleverly hiring Jews in the factory by keeping the SS in dark, he also hires an old man without a left arm as a metal polisher. The state of the old man is sad and the act of the manager is kind. But the subtle humour in the situation is difficult to miss when Oscar comes to know about the old man and frustratingly asks his manager how the old man is useful for the factory.
Overall, Schindler's list is a heart-touching and a powerful movie that will force even a cold heart to warm for a moment. The movie is engaging and will keep you engaged for the entire three hours. It is a must-watch. I give it a rating of 9 out of 10.