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Loading …Rent Movie.com movie reviews presents Schindlers List movie review a 1993 film starring Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley and directed by Steven Spielberg Oskar Schindler uses Jews to start a factory in Poland during the war. He witnesses the horrors endured by the Jews, and starts to save them. Oskar Schindler is a vain, glorious and greedy German businessman who becomes unlikely humanitarian amid the barbaric Nazi reign when he feels compelled to turn his factory into a refuge for Jews. Based on the true story of Oskar Schindler who managed to save about 1100 Jews from being gassed at the Auschwitz concentration camp. A testament for the good in all of us. Steven Spielberg had a banner year in 1993. He scored one of his biggest commercial hits that summer with the mega-hit Jurassic Park, but it was the artistic and critical triumph of Schindler’s List 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. 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. Schindler’s List 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. 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. –Jeff Shannon
Comment by Kenji Fujishima
# January 1, 2007,
As someone who is not European or Jewish, I will leave comments and criticisms about certain facts or depictions in this movie for someone who “knows the territory” better. As an involved movie-watcher, though, there can be no doubt about the picture itself: Steven Spielberg’s SCHINDLER’S LIST is, and perhaps always will be, a remarkable testament to a brave man, one who found it in his heart to take all the money he had made during WWII and use it to try to save hundreds of Jews from mass extinction at the hands of the evil Nazis.
You wouldn’t know that Oskar Schindler would become such a revered man in history the way he is in the early stages of the war. He is rich, he is a womanizer, and he is only concerned with making money. That’s why he sets up his munitions factory in the first place: to make money for himself, to profit from the war. It is only later, when the Jews who work for him are to be sent to Auschwitz, does he do something truly selfless and heroic: he uses his charm and knack for bribery to try to save the Jews who had worked for him from inevitable extermination. One of Spielberg’s great achievements in SCHINDLER’S LIST is not necessarily that he sticks with Schindler and shows him going through his change of heart—in fact, his change of heart is comparably sudden, as depicted in this film—but that he does it so subtly. Schindler sees and hears terrible things, but Spielberg and screenwriter Steve Zaillian (adapting from a book by Thomas Keneally) never try to beat it into our heads or over-sentimentalize things (as Spielberg is wont to do in some of his movies) with extraneous voiceovers or any such cheap devices. Spielberg trusts the material, as well as his lead actor, Liam Neeson, to basically tell itself, to make its properly sobering effect on the viewer without the need for slobbering hysterics.
In fact, I am tempted to say that SCHINDLER’S LIST is not necessarily just about Schindler himself. Schindler’s story is typical “triumph-of-the-human-spirit” stuff; what makes this movie special is that Spielberg is attempting to honestly portray the experience of being a Jew in the hell that was the Holocaust—how friends can turn on other friends all in the name of survival, how neighbors can suddenly become enemies, how people can lose their sanity and become heartless murderers…and even how one man can rise above the madness and do a heroic deed, as Schindler did. In trying to encompass as much as possible of the Jewish experience during this terrible time in history, Spielberg has created a film that is probably one of the most complete, all-embracing portraits of the effect on personal lives of the Holocaust that I’ve seen or read (although I don’t claim to be an expert on the subject, by any means).
That, and it is as invigoratingly dramatic a movie as you could want from one that runs for a little over 3 hrs. Spielberg retains some of his instincts as an entertainer, and he also has the brilliant editor Michael Kahn on hand to make sure that this movie is always paced judiciously—this movie never drags. And he coaxes a great, charismatic, authoritative performance out of Neeson, one that helps you realize how he was able to get his way during the war (and why many women probably found him attractive, hehe). Ben Kingsley is no less impressive as his loyal accountant Itzhak Stern. And Ralph Fiennes, as the evil Nazi Amon Goeth, gives a surprisingly fascinating performance; Fiennes never downplays his character’s baseness, but neither does he overdo it either—there’s always something convincingly human (if nothing necessarily redeemable) to this monster.
SCHINDLER’S LIST is not a perfect movie, but perhaps perfection is too much to ask for for such an ambitious work. I must admit, though, that I occasionally winced at some of the film’s more heavy-handed gestures. The worst offender is a scene towards the end, when Schindler starts to sob about how he felt he didn’t do enough while Stern blatantly extols the virtue of his act. Spielberg cannot resist trying to milk tears from his audience at that point, and the result strikes me as false and perhaps a bit out of character for the normally stoic (at least on the outside) Schindler. And, to be hypercritical, I suppose I would have preferred John Williams’ score to be a little less obviously solemn all the time, as beautifully as Itzhak Perlman performs the impassioned violin solos. (Spielberg rationed the use of an underscore in his 1998 SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, an approach that might have worked here, too.)
There is so much to honestly praise about this movie, though, that those faults hardly matter. SCHINDLER’S LIST is a motion picture that does full justice to such a harrowing subject and a remarkable act of bravery. This is a must-see if I’ve ever seen one (and believe me, I rarely say that about a lot movies).