Spielberg's Masterpiece

Rating: 9/10 (18 March 2003)

While trying to remember them off the top of my head, every other Spielberg film I've seen (with the possible exception of Saving Private Ryan) has been an over-sentimental crowd-pleaser. If you think about it, Schindler's List could well be accused of the same - it's all perfectly designed to tug at the heartstrings (especially the modern-day section at the end) and I've certainly never met anyone with a bad word to say about the film. The difference, the thing that makes Schindler's List different from all those others, is that no amount of schmaltz could diminish the power of Oskar Schindler's story.
Schindler's List is not a lyrical, wistful treatise on the horrors of war. For the most part it is a bone-crushingly upfront recounting of the personal and collective horrors faced by the Jews during the Second World War. Some of the more violent scenes are reminiscent of the opening from that other Spielberg classic, Saving Private Ryan. The difference is that while many of those in Saving Private Ryan became soldiers and put themselves in the line of fire by choice, the people in Schindler's List are innocent of any crime and absent of any choice. The indiscriminate killings and attitudes of most of the Germans, and particularly Amon Goeth (played excellently by Ralph Fiennes), chills to the bone, as does the well known appearance of the little girl in the red coat who provides one of the few splashes of colour in an otherwise aptly dark and dour film.
Oskar Schindler himself makes a transformation, from cold-hearted factory-owner using the Jews to make money into a man so disgusted by the crimes of his fellows that he puts his own life at risk to save others, that is so obvious and predictable that it should feel contrived. But it doesn't. And I have no doubt that there are other glaring faults throughout, but it would take a crass mind to even notice them, let alone write them down. The power and scale of this film (the amount of extras used is unbelievable, like one of Eisenstein's films) are the things that win out, and will continue to win out for generations to come. If Spielberg is remembered for just one film, it will surely be Schindler's List.