Spielberg's successful attempt at a serious drama

Rating: 9/10 (30 March 2011)

At the time of this film's release, while he was the undisputed commercial king of cinema, Steven Spielberg had never been considered a 'serious' film-maker. With the exception of The Colour Purple he was known as a director of big-budget B-pictures. Many people criticized his films for being too syrupy and child-like. With the notable exceptions of Duel and Jaws this wasn't necessarily an unfair assessment. While his vision was unerringly on the pulse of the mainstream, it rarely had any edge whatsoever. So with the release of Schindler's List, Spielberg was able to offer something pretty bleak and hard-hitting. He was also rewarded at the Academy Awards, which was another thing he craved desperately.
The book by Thomas Keneally from which the film was adapted is a masterful and deeply disturbing account of true events in Nazi occupied Poland. It takes a documentary approach to events, as it is all from real accounts. It was, therefore, the sort of novel that had to be treated with the utmost respect if it was to be translated to the screen with any success. It has to be said that Spielberg was largely very successful in this challenge, and his film remains a powerful telling of this most harrowing, if ultimately uplifting, of tales. He wisely decided to film it in stark black and white which lends an immediate bleakness to proceedings and recalls old footage from the Second World War. When he does decide to inject a bit of colour, as in the little girl in the red coat, it works in bringing out the appalling tragedy of this little girl's life even more – it doesn't seem gimmicky. Another major plus for the film is in the performances. Liam Neeson has the right blend of charisma and humanity as Oskar Schindler but best of all is Ralph Fiennes as the camp commandant Amon Goeth; he played this character with extreme skill and brought to the screen a strangely complex presence. I certainly wouldn't go as far as to say Fiennes's Goeth was sympathetic – he was vile – but his underlying impulses and insecurities had interesting depth to say the least.
On the whole Spielberg handles things very well here. His trademark schmaltz is thankfully absent, and he does not hold back when he needs to ramp things up and show atrocities. Quite often Schindler's List is very unpleasant, and the director wisely doesn't sugar-coat things. The only place where he breaks is in Schindler's closing speech at the factory. This moment was melodramatic and totally unnecessary. The events depicted up to that point had been faithfully told from a historical point-of-view and they did not need that invented moment of emotional manipulation; what had gone before spoke for itself. This minor slip-up aside, Schindler's List did prove that Spielberg was capable to making serious films when he put his mind to it.