One of the All-Time Quintessential American Films

Rating: 10/10 (5 August 2008)

Steven Spielberg's versatility can no longer be a question once you have seen Schindler's List, one of the all-time quintessential American films. Where his most commercially successful films have been fantasies with enormous suspension of disbelief and elements of childlike wonder, Schindler's List is unremittingly real, not only in its story and subject matter but in its portrayal of a horrific point in history. One of the most unforgettable sequences I have ever seen in a movie is the SS clearing the Krakow ghetto, sending in hundreds of troops to empty the cramped rooms and shoot anyone who protests, does not cooperate, elderly or infirmed, or for no reason at all. The strange unpredictability of the sequence is masterful, such as the heartbreaking point during when the lone boy desperately tries to find a place to hide. Or when one SS officer plays a piano and carries on a nonchalant discussion while machine guns massacre hiding tenants. As Oskar Schindler, perhaps Liam Neeson's greatest role, watches the carnage from the hills overlooking the area, and is profoundly affected, during one of the most oft-revered employments of color technique in contemporary cinema.
Oskar Schindler's story is so purely human, as opposed to what could have been a clearcut good vs. evil storyline in a film depicting the Holocaust. Schindler is a crass businessman from Czechoslovakia who takes advantage of the abundantly cheap work force of Jews to manufacture for the German military. He is a coldly opportunistic member of the Nazi Party, smothering the army with bribes as well as SS officials in charge. Funded by the military, he procures a factory for army mess kits. Not being shrewd enough to suitably run such an enterprise, he develops a connection with Itzhak Stern, played by Ben Kingsley in his best performance next to Sexy Beast, a functionary in the local Jewish Council who has contacts with the now underground Jewish business community in the Ghetto. They loan him the money for the factory in return for a small share of products for black market trade. Schindler makes the Nazis happy and takes pleasure in his wealth and status while Stern actually does the handling of the organization. When Stern suggests Schindler hire Jews instead of Poles because they cost less, this means that the Jews themselves get nothing. Their wages go to the Reich. Schindler's Jews are allowed outside the ghetto though, and Stern fabricate documents to guarantee that as many people as possible are deemed essential by the Nazi bureaucracy, which saves them from being transported to concentration camps.
Schindler is not doing any of this to salvage the lives of these people. He's doing it because of the financial benefits. His realization of his advantage to save lives comes slowly as a sincere and valid human evolution and progression. It is an essential unlikely hero story, true, self-effacing without airs, and humbling. It is however current that drives the epic depiction of truly mortifying horrors. There are many scenes even aside from the Krakow ghetto scene that may perhaps create blood clots in your head. Truly the most unforgettable performance is given by Ralph Fiennes, playing SS official Gothe, a relentlessly evil character in the coldest, cruelest sense.