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Schindler's List (2pc)
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by Universal Studios
Sales Rank: 2519
Price: $19.98
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Steven Spielberg had a banner year in 1993. He scored one of his biggest commercial hits that summer with the mega-hit <I>Jurassic Park</I>, but it was the artistic and critical triumph of <I>Schindler's List</I> that Spielberg called "the most satisfying experience of my career." Adapted from the best-selling book by Thomas Keneally and filmed in Poland with an emphasis on absolute authenticity, Spielberg's masterpiece ranks among the greatest films ever made about the Holocaust during World War II. It's a film about heroism with an unlikely hero at its center--Catholic war profiteer Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), who risked his life and went bankrupt to save more than 1,000 Jews from certain death in concentration camps.<p> By employing Jews in his crockery factory manufacturing goods for the German army, Schindler ensures their survival against terrifying odds. At the same time, he must remain solvent with the help of a Jewish accountant (Ben Kingsley) and negotiate business with a vicious, obstinate Nazi commandant (Ralph Fiennes) who enjoys shooting Jews as target practice from the balcony of his villa overlooking a prison camp. <I>Schindler's List</I> gains much of its power not by trying to explain Schindler's motivations, but by dramatizing the delicate diplomacy and determination with which he carried out his generous deeds.<p> As a drinker and womanizer who thought nothing of associating with Nazis, Schindler was hardly a model of decency; the film is largely about his transformation in response to the horror around him. Spielberg doesn't flinch from that horror, and the result is a film that combines remarkable humanity with abhorrent inhumanity--a film that functions as a powerful history lesson and a testament to the resilience of the human spirit in the context of a living nightmare. <I>--Jeff Shannon</I>
Viewer Reviews
Let me just start saying that I'm usually apprehensive about watching Holocaust movies. I think while the Holocaust is something that every person in the world should be educated on, it is also a subject that is overly flooded in the Hollywood movie industry. Most Holocaust movies show lots of images of how people get tortured, killed, gassed etc, all of which make me sick. And I neither wish to watch more of these make-me-sick movies nor think flooding the audiences with brutal images every year would necessarily "benefit" them in terms of education on the subject of genocide, which (I can be no more sensitive about it) merely puts the Holocaust among only one of countless atrocities human beings have committed throughout history. Yet the movie-makers make more genocide movies on the Holocaust than any other. People sometimes don't realize that other crimes against humanity in history, though may not be as systematic, are just as terrible. So I do ask that future film-makers would dwell insights into other aspects of history instead of just doing one thing over and over and over and over.
That being said, I would have to say that Schindler's List is the first "Holocaust" movie (though I do not see it that way) that truly moved me to tears without losing appetite to eat at the same time. And it is not because it is a relatively "feel-good" movie or that there are relatively fewer brutal scenes on the sufferings of the Jews (I'm more okay with watching people getting shot than watching people getting tortured or gassed, pardon me if that sounded terrible), but that the movie conveys powerful and insightful messages that digs deeper than just "racism is bad," or "there are good people in the world." It tells the story of a powerful and wealthy man who understands the importance of human lives. The end scene in which Schindler weeps over not having saved more lives both trivializes and signifies money and property: money and property are worth nothing when compared to human lives, yet they are of utmost importance because "for this...one more person." This powerful message is simply a tear-jerker: a man who did more than anyone else looks around him and weeps shamefully over still having, in his pockets, some potential means to save more lives, little as they are left. From this, Schindler's list teaches something that can be applied to the daily life of anyone, that money and property should be used for those human lives in need to be saved.
The Holocaust aspect of the this movie also shed light on the account much more than other Holocaust movies I've seen. It not only shows madness in the face of evil, but just how inhuman the Jews look to the Nazis. The Nazis would just go about their business and socialize while shooting the Jews like squashing bugs as hobbies. The look on the Nazi's faces are not sadism so much as apathetic, which puts the horror and madness onto a different level, it truly defines the extremities of segregation, to be put on the bottom of the barrel.
the last thing I want say is that the score is simply brilliant. This is truly one of the best films in history in every way.
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Schindler's List (2pc)
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