Missed the Point

Rating: 8/10 (23 September 2014)

I don't want to say that this film is bad. I am part Jewish, though my family, at least the part that I know about, was already in the the U.S. I hate that this is THE film about the holocaust, because to say anything negative about the film has become almost an antisemitic statement, as characterized by the Seinfield episode where Jerry has sex in the movie theater playing this film.
This film is just not a top ten film any way that you cut it. The acting is good. The camera work is stellar. This is a beautiful film. There are parts to this film that are pure genius. The concept of fleeting life and showing characters shot dead and flailing lifelessly are amongst the most poignant and cinematic in the history of film. So why is this film "over rated." It was Kubrick that once said that this film is about hope in the face of loss, and the holocaust was about that very loss and the failing of humanity to stop it. Like many of Spielberg's films, this is a melodrama that attempts to educate us about this tragedy through our heart. So much of the plot is dedicated to the womanizing of the title character to exhibit his arc. This is a film about one man's redemption in how he saves the Jews.
It is much in the way that Saving Private Ryan is about redemption in combat and saving that one man. This films are about saving things with tragedy in the backdrop. The tragedy and the random horrors of life are never treated seriously. While Schindler's Jews survived, many of the Jews that even made it to the end of the war did not. Many more did not than did. By trying to show civilization's humanity during a period of time where it did not exist, you attempt to own history and look down at it from a place of contempt. We know so much better.