Spielberg's attempt at serious filmmaking

Rating: Null/10 (10 August 2002)

There are many things I admire about this film. Spielberg is certainly one of the few Hollywood directors with European sensibilities; on some occasions during the film one is reminded of the works of black and white greats Ingmar Bergman (The Seventh Seal) and Andrzej Wajda (Ashes and Diamonds). However, I think that the problem with both of Spielberg's WWII movies is that the boy from Cincinnati never actually lived through the war (he was born a year after its completion) so while he may be able capture its goriness to last splattered fragment of human skull he never captures its horror. As it is, many of the supposedly dreadful sequences of Nazi brutality play more like smut than anything else. Also, the silly and rather racist Anglo-German, Anglo-Polish and Anglo-Russian accents were distracting and completely ruined the film's authenticity. Spielberg should have hired an international cast and used subtitles but, then again, he probably wouldn't have made as much money. Which brings me to this say that the only thing that prevents Spielberg from making "The Great American Movie" is that he is a crowd-pleasing blatant sentimentalist. Notice the simplistic ending that scores easy points for Schindler. Finally, it would have been courteous to the other 7 million non-Jewish victims who perished in the Concentration camps if Spielberg had at least acknowledged their existence.