Arguably Steven Spielberg's greatest film ever.

Rating: 10/10 (2 April 2002)

Steven Spielberg's epic portrayal of the Nazi Holocaust is one of the most powerful films ever brought to the big screen. During production, Spielberg is said to have stood in the cold on location in Austria and cried, being partly Jewish, as he imagined the horrors that all of those people suffered during the second World War under the oppression of the Nazis. It is clear that at least some of this emotion transferred over into the film, and the end result is startlingly effective and moving. Sure, Spielberg has had several other films that have been amazing and memorable, not the least of which, obviously, are ones like Saving Private Ryan and Amistad (oh shut up, Amistad rocked), but in my opinion, the shocking realism achieved in large part through the documentary style filmmaking gives Schindler's List the boost needed to surpass the also brutally realistic Saving Private Ryan.
The story involves a Nazi who exercised his humanity and attempted to free as many Jews as possible from being killed in the concentration camps. Steven Spielberg has been often criticized for being overly sappy or emotional in his films (this was, of course, long before Spielberg himself criticized Roberto Benigni's Life Is Beautiful for virtually the same thing), and this may have happened in Schindler's List as well, but in this case, if he was sappy it was for good reason and with great effect. At the end of the film, Liam Neeson's Oskar Schindler has saved a tremendous amount of people who would otherwise have died, but he doesn't seem to notice this as he emotionally laments all of the possessions that he still has that could have been used to save peoples' lives. This is especially effective because of the fact that he was a much more materialistic opportunist at the beginning of the film before he began to pay attention to his conscience.

As he did with Saving Private Ryan, Spielberg creates a film with Schindler's List that is absolutely unflinching. He does not shy away from the horrific things that happened to the victims in the concentration camps, and he does not sugar-coat his presentation of it at all. The time period is re-created and brought to the screen with stunning and disturbing realism, and if it weren't for the quality of the presentation, it could almost seem that we are watching stock footage of the concentration camps themselves rather than a scripted and edited film.
Spielberg's emphasis on the emotional element of his films comes into play most powerfully in the closing scene of the film, as a very long line of people  the descendents of those that he saved during the war  walk through a cemetery in the modern day and place flowers on his grave. Schindler was unsatisfied when the war ended because he felt that he could have, and should have, saved more people, but during this scene it becomes abundantly clear that he really made a difference, and that his accomplishments were important and long-lasting.
With Schindler's List, Steven Spielberg once again demonstrates his tremendous skills as a filmmaker. 1993 is a testament to Spielberg's filmmaking skills, because this was the year that he directed Schindler's List, the Best Picture of the year, as well as Jurassic Park, which was the most popular film of the year. These two films are a perfect example of the two main types of films that Spielberg is so adept at creating. There are the fun and exciting films, like Jurassic Park, E.T., Hook, the Indiana Jones films, and the more recent A.I. Artificial Intelligence, and then there are the films that are historically accurate and are made to deliver powerful messages to the world in reference to the events portrayed in the film, such as Amistad, Saving Private Ryan and, probably his most powerful yet, Schindler's List.