On the Verge of Sanity

Rating: Null/10 (11 December 2003)

Spielberg's craftsmanship in direction had to wait the ultimate praise until 1993, when he produced the extraordinary epic "Schindler's List". It was the film that brought him the first Oscar, the first Golden Globe, the first David Lean (BAFTA), and most of the directing awards existent at that time. And yet, the king of blockbusters produced a work that was greater than him, a work that rose above humanity. Even John Paul II considered it as the best film of all time in what was to be known as The Pope's Oscars.
"Schindler's List" is the adaptation of Thomas Keneally's novel about Oskar Schindler, 'a German bon vivant, speculator, charmer, and sign of contradiction', who during World War II saved the life of more than 1000 Polish Jews. It was the only important thing in the life of a small industrialist who gained popularity under the Nazis, and who disappeared into oblivion just as the war ended. 'He was fortunate', would remark his wife later on, that 'between 1939 and 1945 he had met people who had summoned forth his deeper talents'.
We are exposed to crude cruelty and absolute goodness, both touching each other and dismissive of any contradiction. The Black and White negative gives the great charm of "Schindler's List". We are transposed to the forties so elegantly, and so passionately, that we become one with the setting. We feel the coldness of the concentration camps, the smell of burning bodies, the breath of hiding children in the communal toilets. Everything is captured as if by our own eye, when we suddenly get to notice a yellowish flame of a candle, the little girl dressed in a red coat hiding from the SS. A masterful cinematography under the eye of Janusz Kaminski.
It is not a film you watch for the end, but one you absorb and regurgitate. The time passes as passionately as the events of the film, so boredom is the last thing on one's mind. And how can you be bored with such an impressive cast, most giving the performances of a lifetime? Liam Neeson is the perfect Herr Direktor Schindler, full of charisma, capable of cruelty, unbothered of changing women like underwear, and still a man that would not produce a gun that can shoot in his factory, that would lie, and risk his life for as many souls he could save. And then there is a young Ralph Fiennes playing the sadistic SS Commander Amon Goeth. We have a total transformation towards brutality, inhibited lust, sado-masochistic alcoholism, the complete loss of power and humanity  all characteristics of the best supporting performance the screen has ever witnessed, probably second only to DeNiro's portrayal of Vito Corleone in The Godfather: Part II. Ben Kingsley is the tender, honourable, devoted Itzhak Stern, Oskar's right hand throughout the entire war. Caroline Goodall and Embeth Davidz give two memorable performances as Schindler's wife, and Goeth's Jewish maid.
"Schindler's List" is one of those films that lack the ability to be summarised in a few words. It is an experience in itself. It teaches, though not dogmatically, that Heaven is relative, that beauty is salvation, that the love for life matters more than the integrity of our own souls.
Excellent picture of the most horrid period of the last century. Perfect for an evening of meditation. A perfect classic.