Spielberg's most powerful movie

Rating: 10/10 (7 December 2005)

Prior to making Schindler's List, Steven Spielberg was known for Close Ecounters, E.T. and the Indiana Jones films - not exactly the kind of resumé studios would trust when searching for the ideal guy to direct a Holocaust drama. Then again, Scorsese passed on the project because he felt only a Jewish filmmaker could get it right (plus, he was still recovering from the controversy surrounding The Last Temptation of Christ), Billy Wilder said he was too old (but he did contribute to a first draft of the screenplay) and Roman Polanski stated he just wasn't ready to face his childhood nightmares yet (he did nine years later with The Pianist). Spielberg received a lot of criticism before the film was released, purely because of his back catalogue. Of course, it is now a fact he proved everyone wrong with what can be considered the best, most affecting of his serious movies.
Based on Thomas Keneally's bestseller (deftly adapted by Steven Zaillian), the film tells one of the most amazing true stories of our time, one that stands out as a testament to courage and selflessness in a time as brutal and inhuman as World War II. The story is that of Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), a German industrialist who first came across the "Jewish situation" in Hitler's Germany when he decided to employ Jews in his factory in order to save money. He wasn't an outspoken anti-Semite, nor did he oppose the Nazi regime - to him, it was all about business. Case in point: when he first meets his new assistant (Ben Kingsley) and the latter says he's a Jew, Schindler's matter-of-fact answer is: "And I'm a German.".
The famous list doesn't enter the game until much later, when the cynical businessman witnesses the horrors perpetrated by the SS, particularly the stunningly cruel Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), and decides to use all his power and influence to save as many innocent lives as possible. His actions, which could have cost him his life had he been discovered, will go down in history as one of the most extraordinary events of all time.
If told the wrong way, Schindler's story would have ruined Spielberg's career. Luckily, the director made the wisest choice possible, opting for a documentary-like approach to the material: the film is shot in grainy black-and-white, as if it were a newsreel from that period, and the realism is most evident in the concentration camp scenes - Spielberg doesn't linger on the violence or sanitize it, he just shows it exactly as it was. The one element in color in the whole picture (a girl's red dress, reminiscent of Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now) isn't a concession to the somewhat cheesy sentimentality that is occasionally present in Spielberg's filmography, but a tool to highlight the tragedy of it all. The sobriety of the direction is reflected in every other aspect of the picture, most notably John Williams' Oscar-winning score and the three main performances: Kingsley's talent was never in doubt after Gandhi, and Neeson and Fiennes will probably never do better than here (although both have managed to get pretty close, thankfully).
This painfully real film is a precious means to remember the past and think thoroughly about one of the worst things that ever happened to people, an atrocity mankind hopefully won't repeat, not even in a thousand years. It's a look on the past that serves as a warning for the future, and as such, its power will never diminish.