Heartbreaking

Rating: 10/10 (22 January 2004)

**********POSSIBLE SPOILERS!!!**********
To this day, this film has made an impact on me. It shows how the one man can make a difference.
Oskar Schindler(Wonderful performance by Liam Neeson)is not a saint: He is a lousy husband, a womanizer, drinks too much, and has no luck in business. Poland provides the stuff of his dreams. He opens a business and makes money, he has a nice house, nice clothes and money. Unfortunately, it comes at the expense of the Jews of Poland. He uses their labor (They don't get paid for the work they do for him) and their homes(A Jewish couple was forced to leave their home, which Schindler eventually takes).
Amon Goeth (A Chilling Ralph Fienes)arrives to create a forced labor camp outside Krakow and proceeds to "liquidate" the ghetto. This part of the film is incredibly brutal: men, women and children are shot to death throughout the ghetto as a little girl in red (Equally chilling, since the film is in black & white)wanders through the horror.
What Schindler does at this point in time, watching the little girl in red, is to become a hero. He begins to use his wealth and power to save the Jews that are working for him. However, when the labor camp is closed and the Jews are marked for Auschwitz, he comes up with a plan: Buy the workers. With the help of his accountant Stern (Brilliantly played by Ben Kingsley), he creates a list of the workers, a list of people to be saved from the gas chambers of Auschwitz.
From start to finish, this film is a history lesson. You see the good the can happen (The change in Oskar), as well as the evil that men do (Goeth's morning "target practice" on the labor camp workers is horrifying). Spielberg created a masterpiece in film making, as well as an object history lesson of the Holocaust. Have the Kleenex at hand whenever you watch this film.