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Summary: Stark & Troubling Look At The Realities Of The Holocaust!
Review: This is an extremely troubling, scrupulously accurate, and endlessly compelling screen adaptation of Thomas Keneally's non-fiction best seller depicting the events surrounding Oscar Schindler's acts in saving hundreds of Polish Jews from certain death in the concentration camps by employing them in manufacturing "essential materials" in war-time Poland. Steven Spielberg negotiates his way carefully through the potential minefield of controversy in his stunningly graphic and emotional portrayal of the plight of Polish Jews as the Germans began their preparations for what became the "Final Solution" to the "Jewish Question" in the occupied sectors of Poland in the early 1940s. As a serious student of 20th century history, I am indeed impressed by the care with which Spielberg has faithfully recreated the details of the occupation, from Schindler's initial entrepreneurial preoccupation with exploiting Jewish investors and workers for his own profit to the moral indifference and cruelty of Christian Poles toward their Jewish countrymen. The scenes early in the movie depicting the Jews being forcibly ejected from their homes and the trail of local residents taunting and abusing them is among the powerful on film, as are the later episodes showing the barbarism of the Nazis both within the Jewish ghetto and in the streets, casually murdering Jews as simply as squashing a noisome mosquito. The story line provides the viewer with a profound opportunity to be an eyewitness to one of the most shameful and sorry periods in modern world history, as we witness just how base and cruel ordinary human beings can be. The cast, of course, is absolutely terrific, from Liam Neeson to Ben Kingsley to Ralph Fiennes. In particular, Fiennes' brilliant portrayal of a Nazi officer capable of such casual violence as to nonchalantly order a Jewish engineer shot because she corrects an error made by incompetent German military engineers gives a glimpse into the maddening darkness and banality of evil. Once again, modern American film shows us why serious cinematic efforts like this must be actively sponsored and appreciated. If a photo is worth a thousand words, this breathtaking film is worth a library. It accurately illustrates in its short three or four hours duration more about the individual reality of what world war meant to each of the millions of noncombatants who perished at the hands of evil incarnate than any book may do. This is a movie I plan to use to teach European history to lethargic high-schoolers to wake them out of their self-absorption into an active interest in the world. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to better understand what the Holocaust meant, and how it happened.
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Summary: Steven Spielberg's magnum opus to date!
Review: Schindler's List is such an emotionally shattering and gripping movie that no true words can even describe it. There are scenes in this movie that will live in your memory forever. The performances from Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, and Ralph Fiennes are flawless. The soundtrack is also great, with sad, classical music from the great John Williams and violinist Itzhak Perlman. The last few scenes of this movie are so moving, inspirational, and touching that you find yourself literally crying when Oskar Schindler says to Itzhak Stern that he could have got more Jews out of the concentration camps. When Schindler suddenly breaks down and cries, he is so magnificent. I think that crying emotionally on-screen in movies is a greater and better acting style than others. Liam Neeson can act in the last scene he's in, and in general. He should have won the Oscar for playing Oskar Schindler in this movie. Director Steven Spielberg really created a true masterpiece with this movie. This movie should be shown in every history class there is in high school. It is a triumph!
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Summary: Spielberg's Magnum Opus
Review: Steven Spielberg has gotten a pretty bad rap for directing movies which catered to the mass populace. There's nothing wrong with that, especially if you can make scads of cash (and I wouldn't mind having ten percent of Spielberg's gross). In recent years, Spielberg has started making more serious films in an effort to show that he can be taken seriously, and he has suceeded brilliantly. Of course, his first effort was 'The Color Purple', which earned the dubious distinction of winning the Best Picture Oscar without winning Best Director. Whether Spielberg's Oscar for Schindler's List was an attempt by the Academy to make amends can be debated, but the film itself has Spielberg's trademarks: an epic with fabulous cinematography and a compelling musical score. And the story is is like a novel with its twists and turns and engrossing plot, only it's a true story. The story of Oskar Schindler is compelling: a Nazi opportunist ingratiates himself into the hierarchy of German occupied Poland and wins a contract to supply the German army with essential war material. Of course, Schindler's factory employs Jewish slave labor, but that's besides the point for Schindler, as long as he makes a profit. Schindler's turn from ardent Nazi to humanitarian who saves the lives of his workers (those who are on his list of life) is the primary theme of the story, but the outstanding acting performance is put in by Ralph Fiennes, who portrays the sadistic Amon Goeth (and should have gotten an Oscar-he steals the show from Liam Neeson in my opinion). Historically, the real Schindler acted probably out of less than honorable motives, perhaps acting out of a sense of self-preservation and a feeling that some of the people he saved could help him out in his later years, perpetuating an unfortunate prejudice which still exists to some extent today. The irony was that Schindler died penniless and forgotten except by those people on the list who owed their lives to him One of the best scenes in the movie concerns a train full of concentration camp inmates headed of to Auschwitz or any one of the concentration camps. Goeth and a group of officers are relaxing on a hot summer day and the train is stopped at a siding. The people in the train are dying of thirst and heat prostration. Schindler somehow convinces some SS soldiers to spray the train with water hoses, giving the people relief. I forget the line, but Goeth remarks that Schindler is a great sadist, for he has given people condemned to die a glimmer of hope. A powerful scene and pure Spielberg. Some have criticized the movie for being too long, but I think it flows pretty well and it is a delight to see Amon Goeth get his just desserts, for despite the uniform, Goeth was no soldier and represented no military tradition. Of course the last couple of scenes were a bit contrived, but all in all Spielberg does a good job and this film may be more of a legacy than Jaws or ET.
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Summary: I was awe inspired while watching rthis masterpiece unfold.
Review: Great work and great job by all. Spielberg did another greeat movie expierence by me. I really liked this tremendously! Wow what a movie this is!
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Summary: One of the greatest movies of all time
Review: I can make that statement for a number of reasons. All in all it is a superb movie, practically a work of genius. The fact that it almost hurts to watch the movie only makes the impact stick more. This is the movie that proved Steven Spielberg's status as a great director. I mean, come on, which is better: ET or Schindler's List? The acting in this movie is wonderful, and I congratulate the actors on doing such a wonderful job in this movie. A great ensemble cast was needed to make this movie what it should be. And I see absolutely nothing wrong with the choice of making the film in black and white. Like many other people I think it made it much better and deprived us of seeing the goriness of the Holocaust slaughter. I really cannot think of anything bad to say about this film. I don't think anyone can. It is truly one of the greatest works of art of all time.
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Summary: I'll keep this brief..
Review: WOW! I avoided this for years because of its dramatic content. I just watched it... Somehow, Spielberg manages to present all the misery and horror in a viewable manner. The black-and-white filming no doubt mutes the goriness. And there is even humor: Schindler's selection of his secretaries, the repetitive threat which "extra paperwork" for the SS poses to the lives of his employees, the naivete of the Jews whom Stern (Kingsley) is busy saving by misrepresenting their trades to the SS, Schindler's timely rescue of the Jewish children at Auschwitz by claiming that their tiny hands are used to polish the insides of 45mm shell casings,... The one splash of color in the entire film is the muted red jacket of a young girl, 4 or 5 years old. Schindler sees her wandering through Cracow during the SS pogrom...and later again as her little red-jacketed corpse is exhumed for cremation from an unmarked mass grave. Essentially an Ebenezer Scrooge morality play, we have the pleasure of watching Schindler as he gradually resolves to act upon his ever-widening better impulses. Liam Neeson does a beautiful job here. The rapport with Ben Kingsley is magic. The pair move from chilly professional respect to devoted friendship. Especially striking, and perhaps even touching, is Schindler's relationship with Amon Goeth, the SS officer in charge of the labor camp where part of Schindler's firm is relocated. Goeth is played beautifully by Ralph Fiennes. Even THIS figure is tragic; Goeth has become a cold-hearted brutalizer of the defenseless due to his SS indoctrination, Schindler points out to Stern. While Schindler's influence on Goeth ameliorates his sadism, he remains hopelessly enslaved to his Nazi worldview of the Jews as "not strictly human in the fullest sense of that term". Goeth's heart and mind, his very Soul, are enslaved. The SS uniforms are immaculately correct, as is Spielberg's portrayal of the moral tide of anti-Semitism throughout the war: initially rabid, later cold-blooded, finally disinterestedly matter-of-fact. I watched it three times, to my surprise. The third time, Schindler's farewell address was very moving. This is an excellent film. It is a film from the German point of view. And I'm glad this story was told, and grateful to the real Mr. Oskar Schindler who made it historical fact. His life was a beautiful testament to the beauty of the human spirit, framed by all the horrors of man's inhumanity to man.
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Summary: Schindler's List: Art and Intellect
Review: After only a few minutes of watching Schindler's list, one will immediately recognize that it is a beautiful film describing a story so horrible that it will deeply singe all but the most callous of hearts. Spielberg successfully finds the ideal balance between photography and content, visual beauty and emotional conflagration, that forever brand a vision of the Holocaust into the minds of its audience. A film of such far-reaching dimensions, capable of penetrating a large part of the American and global markets often replaces history. This places a large responsibility on the filmmaker to research and present the story as a historical piece and not simply as a fictional story using the Holocaust as a dramatic backdrop, because to many people, it will serve as the only contact they have with this event. In Schindler's List, Spielberg has shown his partial intent of educating the masses about the Holocaust, and consequently should have made a greater effort to break away from the trite, hackneyed ideas associated with the event. A meticulous investigation to establish historical accuracy is not necessary but basic historical truth is needed or the viewer will gain an incorrect general idea of the characters and places involved if continually exposed to their flaws. These may include the notion that all SS men were inherently sadistic for the movie fails to show that many officers underwent a radical transformation once they found that they could not escape the bureaucratic system that dominated their lives and forced them never to question orders, or that Jews never physically resisted against their captives, for on screen they deftly form straight lines after hearing an order. Lines that often took them directly to their deaths. In the movie, the Jews never attempted to organize a cataclysmic revolt, as happened in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943, but instead succumbed to the burning fires of the crematorium and escaped the terror of the camps only as ashes. One commendable accomplishment was Spielberg's strong effort to portray the Jews as individuals. Franz Stangl, a former SS officer, remembers that while he served Hitler, he thought of the Jews as one large mass, cattle, in an attempt to dehumanize the victims and ease the inevitable pain and shame that would follow had he taken a step back, opened his eyes, and acknowledged the fact that he was killing people. In the film, many moments are set aside for the sole purpose of taking a close up of the victims' faces, one at a time, to force the viewers to see them as people, with families and friends, and thus add to the film's emotional impact. The importance of the individual reaches a climax when the Jews are recognized as such not only by the audience, but by the protagonist, Schindler, who gradually undergoes a moral transformation from a money savvy businessman to a saint-like figure in the eyes of the Jews he saved. In the last scene Schindler expressively breaks free from the Nazi illusion of purifying his living space for the German population and dismisses all capitalist, material obsessions while embracing the greater value of a human being. The black and white photography, does not serve to dull the violence or portray the dullness of the violence in the eyes of the NAZI, for the fine texture, exquisite shadows and memorable reflections and gleams are only highlighted by the two contrasting tones which Wieseltier calls "riper than most color." The director's choice of using black and white as a way of differentiating the movie from the incessant fabrications of the movie industry and set it apart as an epic, classic film, also show his high expectation for the film. The picturesque photography is not an ominous element threatening to subvert the truth from the events it portrays. The grim and depressing scenes remain grim and depressing regardless of how gorgeous the filming is. The two essential elements, cinematography and subject matter can easily coexist even if they seemingly contradict one another because on screen, the former reinforces the latter. Just as the white highlights the black in our visual perception, the beauty highlights the pain in our mental perception, and instead of canceling each other out to form a blasé work; they complement each other and generate a memorable mix of admiration and tears. This review was written for my 10th grade Holocaust Studies Class. I hope it helps.
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Summary: sensual depiction of a holocaust story
Review: Brilliant film, harrowing tale, shocking to the senses and invigorating to ones sense of the value of life, this is the story of one mans experience of working during the holocaust. Sudetenlander,Oskar Schindler goes to Poland hot on the heels of the German Army with the ambition to make more money than his father. He cultivates the powers that be, the army, SS, nazis bureaucrats, charming them with gifts and parties. He sets up a factory making enamel ware for the German army. Meanwhile the jews of Krakow are put into the ghetto there and stripped of their human rights. Forced to work for the nazis regime, life goes on for people as normally as it can. People do business, fall in love, struggle on, hoping for better. Along comes Amon Goeth, SS major and cold hearted murderer, in a show stealing performance by Ralph Fiennes, with the plan to liquidate the jews of Krakow. In one night Goeth sets out to make six centuries of the history of jews in Krakow just a rumour. Schindler feels protective towards his workers and seeks to aid them wherever he can and survive the evil nazis system. He eventually decides to save as many as he can in a remarkable application of market forces. Schindlers vitality in life and love swells through this film as he consorts with the nazis regieme. Liam Neeson is delivers a career best performance as Schindler. The film, evoking the deep and long history of the jewish people and sensuality of life, is a startling and disturbing narration which ends with liberation. A remarkable film of great strength, of horror set beside the fecundity of life. The striking imagery of Schindler and his beautiful female companion lying naked in bed while some of the worst evil in the history of mankind goes on around them in the city of Krakow will resonate long after the film ends.
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Summary: Incredibly beautiful, despite some scenes
Review: I loved this movie. The black and white was genius because, how did they mostly make movies back in the 1940s? Black and white! The only things that I didn't like about this movie were the cursing and the sex scenes. The holocaust parts I don't mind, but the sex I do. And I was particularly shocked at how well Mrs. Schindler took it when she caught her husband adultering. Shameful! Other than that, I think that this movie deserves every oscar that it won and more (Liam Neeson should have won Best Actor). I always get a little teary in the last scene. It's a wonderful movie.
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Summary: Wow!
Review: How can anyone decribe the feelings they felt when seeing this film for the first time! The prospect is impossible! I saw the movie a couple of years after it's release and now watch it twice a year at the least. If you have never seen it, I urge you to! Schindler's List is vital in our education in order to prevent further holocausts.
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