Spielberg's best film

Rating: 10/10 (18 August 2016)

I understand that as someone who considers herself a movie buff, it is a great sin that I had not seen Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List before last Sunday afternoon. In my defense though, the film came out when I was one year old. I was too young to understand the subject matter much less to bring into a movie theater. Well, I have atoned for my sins and finally watched the movie. I turned it on expecting it to be a film that I know I should admire but for some reason am not grabbed by. On top of that, I have usually associated Steven Spielberg with Jurassic Park, E.T., and Hook before I can even allow myself to recall that he directed Saving Private Ryan much less other films on its same level of dramatic intensity. Point being, I was not expecting Schindler's List to move me. Well, not only did it hurt me to watch for all of the intended reasons, it stirred up an anger and sympathy in me unlike any film I have ever seen before.
This is the only true masterpiece that I have seen by Steven Spielberg. Here he develops a careful touch in evoking outrage and fear through the quieter and even more casual (for lack of a better word) moments. He does not take the easy way when it comes to getting the audience to sympathize with the victims of the Holocaust. He shows every excruciating detail, emphasizing that the most horrifying aspect of this section of history was not what was being done to the Jews, but how the people committing these crimes against them felt about it. He does not even paint our main hero of the film to be a morally superior individual looking to change the world.
Oskar Schindler (played splendidly by Liam Neeson) is the main hero of this film (as I'm sure you could guess). He is the reason that 1,100 Jewish men, women, and children were able to escape the damnation of Auschwitz. He uses an artillery factory in Czechoslovakia as a cover to give these people work, keeping them out of the government's clutches. However, he is no Martin Luther King, Jr. Helping people is only his main priority in the last third of the film. Beforehand, Jewish people were, at best, cheap employees for his startup enamelware factory. In one early scene, a gentleman comes into Schindler's office to profusely thank him for the job. Soldiers of the S.S. nearly killed him, but his status as an employee at Oskar Schindler's factory made him "essential to the war" thus sparing his life. Schindler shows little acknowledgement of the gratitude. Quickly shaking this employee's hand then waving him off. The impression this moment leaves on Schindler is only to inquire with his accountant, "Did you notice that man had one arm? How is he useful in my factory?". Who would have guessed that this insensitive individual would turn out to risk and spend everything in the name of saving the lives of others? Later mourning that he did not save enough people? I certainly wouldn't have.
Ralph Fiennes playing Amon Goeth puts the film on a level of brutal historical honesty that I have never seen before. He wakes up in the morning and goes to his bedroom balcony, carrying his rifle like a fresh cup of coffee. He carefully aims at one of the prisoners then shoots, killing her merely for target practice. After patting himself on the back for keeping up his skills with a gun, Goeth goes back inside thinking nothing more of the murder he has just committed. This is his morning routine in the same way that anyone else would wake up, check their watch or phone, then get up to make coffee, etc.
Strangely enough, thanks to Spielberg's marvelous direction, this is not Amon Goeth's most sickening scene. During one his shifts, Goeth is rampaging a Jewish ghetto. In this mass, stroboscopic shooting which lights up the hallways like a fire, Goeth takes a cigarette break complaining to a colleague "I wish this night were over". His colleagues agree; they would like their shifts to end so they can go home to their wives and families, to read their books, put on music, anything just as long as it means they get off work as it is being a particularly annoying shift this night. There is no word to describe the level of consternation, anger, disgust, and countless other similar emotions that I felt in that singular moment. I had to pause the movie and collect myself, remembering that Goeth and his cronies cannot hear me screaming at them, condemning them for not only what they did but for feeling no remorse.
In some of the best Holocaust movies I have seen, the Nazis are loud, filled with pride for their blonde-haired, blue-eyed glory, and become quickly frustrated with any Jews who they come in contact with. There is little to their characters except for the uniforms. In this film, they are parallel to humanity. They enjoy music, partying, joking, and complaining about work like most people. To the rest of the world, their work is one of the most unforgivable crimes in history, but to them it is a day at the office. It is "paperwork". The fact that Steven Spielberg takes the time to bring up that side of them is profoundly poignant. It is through those less obvious moments of atrocity that Schindler's List ascends to a whole new level worth of respect.
The best film I have ever seen about the Holocaust and probably one of the best movies I have ever seen period. Thank you Steven Spielberg for your time, effort, and dedication toward respecting the victims of this heinous and hellish event in history.
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