A Holocaust Movie without an understanding of the Holocaust ...

Rating: 4/10 (26 November 2008)

OK, first the good.
The acting is excellent. So is the casting. The movie-making is good. The choice of stories was phenomenal. The last scene (the one in color) was exceptionally powerful, deserving to be on the greatest scenes list of all time.
Now for the bad.
Schindler's List is a holocaust movie made without a fundamental understanding of the Holocaust. Yes, they get the bare bones facts right enough, but the movie is two dimensional at best. Everyone in the movie fits into a different category, with very little variation in characters within a given category. Either they are Jewish or they are non Jewish, and if they are non Jewish, they are either evil anti Semites or reformed heroes. If they are Jewish, they all act the same. Their reaction is uniformly "if only I could do something, I would, but I can't, so the only thing left is to live and die honorably, which means being silent when things happen." There is one Jew who can do something, but other than that, they are all like cardboard cutouts. For me, the impact of a movie comes from seeing people react to different situations, even painful ones, but from seeing REALISTIC and THREE DIMENSIONAL people reacting to situations. Schindler's List totally lacked that, so, to me, even though the movie is about something I am very interested in, the movie was exceptionally dull and uninteresting. It was not powerful at all. In addition, the historical accuracy was marginal.