Could have been important

Rating: 6/10 (7 December 2001)

This movie treats one of the most important subjects of our century, i.e. the national socialist movement in europe which could have ended up in a disaster.
The acting and the cinematography are as good as it gets! However, since the purpose of the film is to be some kind of document on what happened in the camps in Germany and Poland during the nazi-period, I find the fact that Spielberg is making up things in the movie, such as the shooting of innocent jews from the balcony of a residence, somehow takes away much of its value as a document over history. My opinion is that there is no need for making up things and making them worse than they actually were in order to make a good movie about this era. Things were bas enough as they were; there is no need for making things up, especially things that couldn't even have happened (the location of the villa makes it impossible to shoot jews from the balcony).
To conclude: I find this to be a movie, well worth seing! However, it is not to be seen as a documentation of what really happened, which in my opinion is very unfortunate since that would have given this movie yet another dimension. In my eyes, this dimension would compensated for the loss of some of the more dramatic scenes in the movie. I guess my historian background somehow blew it for me.