We know that Stern understands this. But there is no moment when Schindler and Stern bluntly state what is happening, perhaps because to say certain things aloud could result in death. This subtlety is Spielberg's strength all through the film. His screenplay, by Steven Zaillian , based on the novel by Thomas Keneally , isn't based on contrived melodrama. Instead, Spielberg relies on a series of incidents, seen clearly and without artificial manipulation, and by witnessing those incidents we understand what little can be known about Schindler and his scheme.
We also see the Holocaust in a vivid and terrible way. Spielberg gives us a Nazi prison camp commandant named Goeth Ralph Fiennes who is a study in the stupidity of evil. From the veran da of his "villa," overlooking the prison yard, he shoots Jews for target practice. Schindler is able to talk him out of this custom with an appeal to his vanity so obvious it is almost an insult.
Goeth is one of those weak hypocrites who upholds an ideal but makes himself an exception to it; he preaches the death of the Jews, and then chooses a pretty one named Helen Hirsch Embeth Davidtz to be his maid and falls in love with her. He does not find it monstrous that her people are being exterminated, and she is spared on his affectionate whim. He sees his personal needs as more important than right or wrong, life or death.
Studying him, we realize that Nazism depended on people able to think like Jeffrey Dahmer. Shooting in black and white on many of the actual locations of the events in the story including Schindler's original factory and even the gates of Auschwitz , Spielberg shows Schindler dealing with the madness of the Nazi system.
He bribes, he wheedles, he bluffs, he escapes discovery by the skin of his teeth. In the movie's most audacious sequence, when a trainload of his employees is mistakenly routed to Auschwitz, he walks into the death camp himself and brazenly talks the authorities out of their victims, snatching them from death and putting them back on the train to his factory.
What is most amazing about this film is how completely Spielberg serves his story. The movie is brilliantly acted, written, directed and seen. Individual scenes are masterpieces of art direction, cinematography, special effects, crowd control. Yet Spielberg, the stylist whose films often have gloried in shots we are intended to notice and remember, disappears into his work. Neeson, Kingsley and the other actors are devoid of acting flourishes. There is a single-mindedness to the enterprise that is awesome.
At the end of the film, there is a sequence of overwhelming emotional impact, involving the actual people who were saved by Schindler. We learn that "Schindler's Jews" and their descendants today number about 6, and that the Jewish population of Poland is 4, Some might say so. This film racked up a slew of awards, including several Oscars, and this is well-deserved.
Despite its critics, this will no doubt go on to be considered one of the greatest films of all time, and easily the best to address the Holocaust.
I can't possibly describe with words how great "Schindler's List" is. You can't realize it unless you watch it. Spielberg not only makes you feel like you're in the middle of it, but you continue feeling that way for hours after watching the movie. Liam Neeson does a top-notch job as Oskar Schindler, a man caught between loyalty to his government and the desire to save over 1, people. Equally good is Ben Kingsley as Itzhak Stern, whom Schindler saves from getting exterminated, and then helps Schindler save more people.
Like I said, I can't possibly describe how great this movie is. As time goes by, more and more Jews are trying to escape capture, torture and death by the Nazis, Oskar sees how much pain and suffering these innocent souls are going through, and starts having changes in heart. So with the help of friend and almost colleague Itzhak Stern BAFTA nominated Sir Ben Kingsley they begin to type a list hence the title for all the Jews he can afford to buy and take away to another camp for a new manufacturing business.
He manages to "evacuate" approximately 1, victims, and he becomes the unlikely hero after not doing much earlier by releasing all of them.
There are horrific and memorable moments of realistic suffering, torture and death, a hideous real villain and a great unlikely real hero, moments of colour i. This isn't much I can add to what hasn't been said or written some dozen years after this was released. It's still one of the most powerful stories ever put on film, mainly because it's based on fact. Since it's Hollywood, you don't know how much of this is true but the Holocaust certainly is and that's enough.
The little details don't matter. Fiennes is particularly good as the Nazi villain. He's downright scary and one of the most rotten, despicable human beings ever put on film I don't know if his character or lack of it was exaggerated since this was made by a famous Jewish filmmaker Steven Spielberg who has made the Nazis look as bad as possible in a number of his movie not that they don't deserve it!
Nonetheless, Fiennes' portrayal of "Amon Goeth" is one you'll remember. You'll want to punch this idiot right in the nose. Neeson, in the title role as "Oskar Schlinder," is intriguing as the industrialist who slowly sees immoral things happening that the become too repulsive for him to support. For much of the film, he still isn't a "good guy" but he certainly comes around and becomes a hero in the end.
Neeson's scene near the conclusion when "Schindler" parts with "his" Jews at the end of the war is extremely moving. It brings tears to my eyes every time. When he agonizes that "I could have done more," it is something all of us could say and probably will some day. That sentence by him haunted me after each viewing.
In addition to the moving story, the black-and-white cinematography in here is magnificent. Not many movies today are made in black-and-white and that's too bad because with today's cameras and knowledge, it can look tremendous.
The camera-work helped draw me back to several viewings. A lot of people would not watch this movie a second time and I can't blame them. It's tough to watch. There are some brutal, harrowing, scenes in here with executions, naked people being led to the gas chambers It should be seen at least once, though, by everyone.
Steven Spielberg, until the appearance of this film, was rightly noted mainly for his child's view of movies, fast action, easy sentiment, and a generally accurate sense of appeal to fantasy and wish fulfillment. He pretty much discarded that sort of innocence here, without leaving behind his appreciation of the commercial value of a story. It's impossible not to be deeply moved. The extermination program of the Nazis was the most horrific offense to human morality of the 20th century, and one of the worst in history.
It wasn't the worst of the slaughters. The two world wars qualified for those honors. It wasn't even the worst example of ethnic cleansing, as it's come to be called. But more than six million Jews and more than seven million other undesirables -- homosexuals, the mentally ill, gypsies, political dissidents -- perished in the camps and not a single Jewish family in Europe went untouched.
And it wasn't a war in which the victims were fighting back. It was a deliberate and very thorough act of genocide on the part of a people that Madame de Stael once described as "a nation of poets and dreamers. A basically decent man comes to his senses. This is the formula, whether the despised and abused minority are Jews or African-Americans.
If it were otherwise, there would be a danger of this being seen somehow as a "Jewish" movie by the unenlightened masses and, as a consequence, might suffer at the box office. Better "In the Heat of the Night" than "Superfly. No voice overs telling us of the suffering. No stock footage of bull dozers plowing corpses into mass graves. For the most part, the story stays at the personal level. We hear hardly anything of the progress of the war. And it's at this level that the film excels, due to the mature script and the performances of Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley and Ralph Feinnes.
There are many other characters, including Embeth Davidtz. The film is good because Neason's character begins not as a racist or a humanitarian but as a moral nihilist. He cares about nothing but money and the sensory pleasures it affords.
He couldn't care less about the Jews, or about the Nazis either for that matter. The war to him is just a way of making a profit using cheap labor.
And the script rises above the formulaic in not giving him a moment of epiphany. At no point does his brow furrow, his eyes light up, and he thinks to himself, "My God, what am I doing? Instead, his development is informed by minor but important insights distributed here and there. After the surrender, he leaves the camp as a fugitive, dressed in prison clothes, mourning his carelessness in not saving more lives. Spielberg tells the story in a straightforward way but of course some incidents and dialog from events of fifty years ago must be fabricated.
And the fabrications are well done. Especially enjoyable is the touchy, sometimes abrasive, and often humorous relationship between Neason, the salesman and con man who simply has no head for business, and Ben Kingsley as the matter-of-fact accountant who does.
I'd give examples of some exchanges but there isn't space. Spielberg hasn't quite gotten over his taste for easy sentimentality. There are only two touches of color in this black-and-white movie. A little girl in a rose-colored coat appears two or three times, so that we can know who it is when her body is wheeled past in a barrow, just another victim.
And when the workers hold a ceremony on Shabat, the candle flames are touched with a warm orange that signifies life. Effective, yes, but unnecessary in an adult film like this. Most people watching the film may be trusted to know what's going on without being nudged.
But that's small stuff. Somewhat more embarrassing is a scene in which a German officer screams like a maniac and makes gargoyle faces at the camera after emptying his pistol into a mountain of burning bodies. Are we supposed to learn from this that the people running the camps were evil? The Nazi's extermination program prompted many studies in social science, none of which has contributed much to our understanding of why this, and similar programs, seem to be so common around the world.
Perhaps one of the reasons we've never really understood it is that we don't want to. Perhaps the answer lies not in "F" for "facism" scales or ideographic studies of power but in the darkest aspects of human nature itself.
Is there a group of people who have nothing in common but their ethnic identity that we ourselves would enjoy seeing wiped off the map? We all have massive cerebral cortices, much of the functions of which seem devoted to damping down impulses from structures lower down on the brain that generate desires to mate, to flee from danger, and to kill things and people that get in our way.
Some day science might give us an answer but until then we have to rely on poets like Robert Burns. More pointed still we make ourselves Regret, remorse, and shame! And Man, whose heav'n-erected face The smiles of love adorn, - Man's inhumanity to man Makes countless thousands mourn! Despite this formulaic style, Neeson is very good playing Oskar Schindler, a decadent member of the Nazi party who nevertheless was a reluctant savior to some 1, Jews during WWII when he employed them in his factory, saving them from certain death in Hitler's concentration camps.
Spielberg won a Best Director Oscar for the film, and he gets terrific supporting performances from Ben Kingsley, Embeth Davidtz, and most especially Ralph Fiennes as a despicable Nazi commandant. Some of the human terror depicted is frighteningly real, and even though the last act smacks of Hollywood grand-standing, the movie has unlimited power.
Winner of seven Oscars in all, including Best Picture. One of the great films of the 20th century. TxMike 12 December I'll start with an "aside. But I have a difficult time thinking of "Schindler's List" as a "movie. So for me, "Schindler's List" is certainly a "film", one about a real stain on our human history, a stain placed there solely from religious beliefs. The persecution and attempted extermination of the Jews by the German Nazis. But this "film", while its overall subject is the holocaust, is not really about the holocaust.
While it revolves around the mistreatment of Jews by the Nazis, it is about the man, Oskar Schindler, played by Liam Neeson. A German, a "connected" man in society, he went to Poland and bought a factory, employing cheap Jewish labor, hoping to get rich. He was no humanitarian. But perhaps his biggest weakness, his not being an astute businessman, was responsible for the conversion we see during the course of the three hours running time of the film.
And the rest, as they say, is history. He changes to the point that he risks his own life to save many, perhaps over , Jews from extermination, no longer for profit but for true humanitarian motives. Unique in this time of modern movie-making, this film is mostly in Black and white. For me this works very well, because first it is such a stark subject and second, there is not so much to distract the viewer from the story. Many consider this Spielberg's best directorial effort, probably because as a Jew it was very personal to him.
As a viewer, many times I found it difficult to watch, because the scenes are so realistic. I will never forget the scenes of nude prisoners being marched across the prison grounds to their deaths.
I give great credit for this film's place in history, but it is not one that I enjoy watching, it is such a reminder how some can be so cruel to those who should be treated as our brothers and sisters. Quinoa 13 February Steven Spielberg has his best masterpiece here with Schindler's list. It is also his most personal work to say the least. And what he brings to the screen is like nothing the world has ever seen before- a true to life depiction of the horror known as the holocaust.
The story brings us Oskar Schindler, a German munitions chief who brings thousands of Polish Jews from the death camps to his factory and saves them. The acting is spectacular with Liam Neeson as Schindler, the man who changes throughout the film, Ben Kigsley as Schindler's Jewish accountant and conscience , and Ralph Fiennes in his best performance yet as the frightening German commander.
Along with a frighteningly haunting score by John Williams and great Photography by Janusz Kaminski, Spielberg has created a film that will remain with us forever. Haunting, dramatic and true in the art form, this is one of the best masterpieces of cinema ever made. There are no words adequate enough in the English language to describe this fabulous film.
John Williams's musical score is just awesome and with Yitzchak Perlman on the fiddle, what could be better? You are just drawn to the theme of this highly emotionally unforgettable masterpiece. Liam Neeson has never been better as Oskar Schindler, whose "factory" saved a thousand Jewish lives during the Holocaust.
We see Neeson go through the film as a callous businessman to one of great feeling when he sees what is happening to the Jews of Poland. This was the first black and white film to capture the best picture Oscar since 's "The Apartment. Fiennes portrayal is absolutely frightening as he steals each scene he is in in this remarkable film.
The ending will tear at your heart as those saved place stones on Jewish graves. A positively memorable Holocaust film with memorable detail depicted. The liquidation of the ghetto scenes are a haunting memory to what happened in Nazi occupied Europe. Finder says that the movie release was when she stopped feeling like she was alone in her willingness to talk about her experience, which she had been doing since as part of a group called Facing History and Ourselves.
Twenty-five years later, the film is seen as a realistic depiction of life during the Holocaust, in terms of the brutality of the Nazis and the lifestyles of those they persecuted, though it does stray from the real story in a few big ways.
For example, the person who gave the real Schindler the idea of putting Jewish people to work as essentially slave laborers in his factory, thus saving them, was a Jewish Polish former factory co-owner named Abraham Bankier — a critical role that is not in the film. After the Nazis invaded Poland in the fall of , they stripped Jewish citizens of their property and forced them into ghettos.
As more and more German males were drafted into the military, these slave laborers were relied upon even more. Bankier sold Schindler on the idea that Jewish laborers would be cheaper than Polish workers who were not Jewish.
However, Schindler started to show that he cared about his Jewish laborers as human beings when he got a sub-camp constructed on the factory premises in Though Schindler told officials he wanted them closer so they could work more, their quality of life also improved, which benefited his bottom line while also helping the workers. Finder, who remembers making shells for ammunition, says she felt like Schindler took good care of them.
She also recalls a moment when she had trouble operating a machine, to the point that it stopped working properly. I was convinced he was sent from heaven. In addition, there was actually more than one list. While the men were quickly processed, some women got lost in the system. This phase of the story is another where the truth differs slightly from the movie — Schindler sent a secretary to retrieve them, rather than going himself — but the truth of the experience is so horrifying that perhaps no film could capture it accurately, no matter how careful it was with the detail.
We tried to catch the snowflakes. I remember, after they shaved my head, we were put in dark room and cold water came down. We are alive. Based on transport lists, Schindler ended up saving 1, people by having that factory open. The 1, came from the two lists Goldberg made, and Crowe believes the other 98 were people who came from other camps and perhaps got diverted there as Allied forces advanced on the Nazis.
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