Spielberg's cinema is simply great!

Rating: 10/10 (21 January 2002)

It's September, 1939.
Oskar Schindler is a Nazi-Catholic industrialist from Czechoslovakia, a bon-vivant who realizes that a nice long war in Europe might be an excellent situation for making money... So in a great opening parallel montage, Spielberg depicts the personal journey of one man and the massive journey of one race...
As thousand of families are forced to abandon their careers, properties and homes to live in overcrowded ghettos, the scene switches to Schindler, where he pays his way to get a fine table at a fancy nightclub in Nazi-occupied city of Krakow, the surviving gem of Poland's medieval cities...
Drinking alone, he scans the strange clientele and slowly sets about casting his nets on the SS German officers... He quickly plied them with food, caviar and French wine... And as a magician, overcoming every resistance, he transforms the separate tables of the cabaret into one joyful drunken party of wine, women, and song for the Nazi officials...
The two worlds come together when Schindler meets Itzhak Stern and offers him a deal... Since Jews cannot own businesses, they should work together... Stern's contacts can provide investors, and Stern's expertise can run the business, and Schindler will take care of the presentation...
In those same scenes, Amon Goeth is introduced...
Goeth is a flabby psychopath who comes to embody the evils of Nazi racism... He is in charge of the camp where the workers are housed and must be bribed and pampered if Schindler is to stay in business... Goeth's excessive cruelty is also part of the reason that Schindler is transformed from an opportunistic 'victimizer' to 'humanitarian.'
Liam Neeson portrays Oskar Schindler, the businessman with irresistible charm - the charm of the same magnitude that saved hundreds of innocent people and brightened Schindler's reputation among critical historians... As movie gradually progresses, Schindler's perspective changes much as when he himself states that "People die - it's a fact of life."
Neeson's flexibility as an actor is impressive... His performance is built on a combination of self-confidence, indecision, and doubt... His character is always evolving, yet always convincing... His transformation from 'war profiteer' to a "righteous" man is adequately slow and well developed... As the war draws to a close, Schindler decides unexpectedly to evaluate his life... He turns over his gains into a noble cause - and virtually takes his workers away from being swallowed up by the Holocaust... In one of the film's most touching scenes, Schindler goes to Auschwitz and fights for the freedom of the wives and children of his workers...
Ben Kingsley plays the role of Itzhak Stern, the timid gifted accountant, and the silent partner wary of his employer and the enemy... Stern (spared from the horrors of the holocaust) is also Schindler's good angel... He occasionally reminds the audacious man that he could get in a lot of trouble if his true motives are ever discovered... Kingley delivers history's judgment of Oskar Schindler in a touching moment: 'Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.'
Ralph Fiennes brilliantly portrays Amon Goethe, the complex study of a sadistic true monster... He is a heartless and cruel killer, with a complicated, twisted personality... Stripped to the waist and overlooking the prison yard, he leaves his mistress Ingrid (Beatrice Macola) in bed to shoot arbitrarily, with his scope rifle, slow-moving Jews from the veranda of his high villa...
Goeth despises Jews, yet he inexplicably falls in love with a shy Jewish maid, Helen Hirsch (Embeth Davidtz). Rather than allowing himself to touch her, and nearly committing the capital crime of kissing her, he remembers that he is supposed to hate her, and beats her ruthlessly for seducing him...
Goeth is a man to despise... But the full scope of his atrocities are not entirely shown... Spielberg shows carefully as much of the horror as the screen can bear...
The savage scenes are difficult to watch... Spielberg's camera pans to the pillar of dark smoke rising from the chimney stack into the frightening sky of Auschwitz, and to the lines of Jews unknowingly lead toward the gas chambers...
Spielberg captures the terror of the Nazi reign in the terrifying dramatic moments when stunned women and children are mistakenly sent to Auschwitz... The disturbing images of arbitrary murder are harshly realistic...
'Schindler's List' assaults the viewer with lasting images of Jewish prisoners announcing their names as they are registered, given work assignments, or separated into "essential" and "non-essential."
Spielberg focuses on children and uses them both as victimizers and victims... In a powerful way to personalize the slaughter without a single word, Spielberg colors the coat of a little girl as she is invisibly making her way, aimless and alone, through the chaotic destruction of the Krakow ghetto... (It's almost the same shade as the jacket worn by the young protagonist of Spielberg's 'Empire of the Sun', in a similar situation when he's alone in a mob and trying to find his way home).
'Schindler's List' is a tribute to those who lost their lives in the Holocaust, a dramatic recreation of that dark, frightening period during World War II... The horror is alleviated, slightly, by Janusz Kaminski's stunning Black and White cinematography... The lack of color reminds us of German Expressionist films, and allows Spielberg to be explicit without becoming tastelessly graphic... John Williams' tragic and somber, almost unnoticed score adds to the melancholy tone...
Spielberg's great visual moments - when, in a scene, Schindler joins the Nazis on the platform as they fire the cold water at the cars on the desperate, suffocating people inside...
'Schindler's List' is an outstanding movie... It has an important role in adding credibility to the Holocaust, and in Thomas Keneally's fact-based novel, Spielberg finds the right balance of redemption and sorrow.. He makes us watch and feel the extermination through the actions of Oskar Schindler...