Faithful, if imperfect masterpiece

Rating: 10/10 (2 January 2003)

For anyone to adapt the novel as well as Spielberg has, that person would have to be a genius. The story is long, involved, and makes no bones about the ambivalence and inconsistence of Oskar Schindler. The tale is not nearly as simple as that of rescue. The adaptation and direction are perfect ... with one exception. The ending is rushed, the melodramatic speech by Schindler is terribly out of tone with the movie, and the playing of "Jerusalem of Gold" over the placing of stones on the Schindler grave is ludicrous to anyone who is Jewish and over forty. The last ten minutes of "Schindler's List" are pure and unfortunate Hollywood, plain and simple.
But the film has so much power and masterful storytelling in it that these flaws are tiny by comparison. The performances are heartbreaking, the tension tight and often less predictable than anyone could think, and the touches of color in the black & white film are symbolically exact. What happens in this movie is such a powerful illustration of anti-Semitism and the backdrop of Nazism that it is unquestionably required viewing for anyone who needs to see how insidious and destructive prejudice is, and how the Holocaust changed the world of the 20th Century.
My father and I saw this in the theater. He survived Auschwitz-Bierkinau and Matthausen. When he walked out of the movie, he clucked his tongue and stated flatly, "It was worse than that." I was in tears for hours. The disparity in that moment said much more to me than the movie itself about the story Spielberg had taken upon himself to tell. So be warned that this film is not for the faint of heart. Oddly, the cynics will probably view this movie with inexplicable dispassion. After all, how could anything this horrible have ever taken place within our lifetime?