Review of Schindler's List (1993) by Brendan C — 01 Feb 2013

"Whoever saves one life saves the world entire" - Torah.

"The list is an absolute good. The list is life." - Itzhak Stern.

This and Jaws are my two favorite movies of all time. This is a truly amazing film, that is just so meaningful, and hard not to love. It is a tough movie to watch because it very accurately depicts the holocaust, concentration camps, and how Jews were being massacred everyday. I have talked about Spielberg's genius for the range of emotions and how real he makes everything feel in my reviews for all of his films, but this is the one that is the most emotional and most real. My parents told me that when they saw it in theatres everybody was crying at the end and they were so emotional that they just sat through sobbing throughout the credits. That reaction shows you how much of a genius Spielberg truly is. The reactions he gives people like how people were scared to go in the water after Jaws, and this film, and how everybody felt sick after the opening scene in Saving Private Ryan. Absolutely amazing. Spielberg's bets historical movie is a hard one to review, but I tried my best.

Oscar Schindler (Liam Neeson) is a businessman who never succeeded in his business. He arrives in Kraków hoping to start a business as a war profiteer. Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley) is the first person he goes to. He agrees to start the business with them. At first Schindler is a really self-absorbed man, who only cares about making money off of them. Once he witnesses the liquidation of the ghetto, he starts to go through some character development. He starts to change and realize what is really happening in the world. He then decides to spend all of his money to bring over a thousand Jews into his new factory so eh can save them from being killed. The film is the greatest example of character development of all time if you ask me. To transform from this super selfish man into a total hero. Another thing he fixed about himself is that at first he was a total womanizer that was always cheating on his wife, and he stopped for her. He saved over a thousand Jews and now over 6,000 Jews are alive today because of him. He was one of the all time greatest heroes in my opinion. This was Liam Neeson's most fantastic acting for sure. Most of the stuff he does I love, and he is just awesome.

They relationship between Schindler and Stern develops a lot over time. At first it is strictly business, and Stern hates Schindler. Schindler was just using Stern to help him run his business. Stern wanted to get, as many Jews as he could in the factory, because he knew that the Nazi's wouldn't touch them if they worked for own of their own. Schindler just wants to make money off of them, and he gets mad at Stern for what he does, because that is dangerous and he knew what would happen if the Nazi's figured that out. The Jews all want to work for him because nobody gets killed who works for him. Eventually Stern realizes that Schindler is a good man, and they become friends. They write the list together. Their relationship is incredible and they have so many hard scenes to act out that they pull off beautifully. That was one of the best parts of the film.

Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes) was a really evil and insane man who ran the concentration camp in Kraków. He would shoot people from the balcony of the house that he lived in that overlooks the camp. He became good friends with Schindler, and he would give Schindler people from his camp to work in his factory always for a price. Goeth would kill Jews for fun. During the liquidation of the ghetto he was smiling and laughing at the Jews. He was hung in a mental institution years after the holocaust for the murder of so many Jews. Ralph Fiennes did a phenomenal job portraying him. His character had no personality, and was just insane and evil as it gets. He also gained weight for the role, however Goeth was even heavier in real life. He thought of himself as some god or ruler. They really develop his insanity a lot, and they make you hate him more and more. The fact that you hate him so much shows how great Ralph Fiennes played that role. He is a great actor, and this was his best performance.

This film is such a hard film to make. To make it historically accurate, and to make it as emotional as it was is truly something that only Spielberg can do. The film is so realistic and everything that happened was so awful that it had to have been so difficult to film. It had to have been an incredibly hard film to act in too, because the acting is so intense, and emotional. It's films like this that truly do draw a line between good and great actors. Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, and Ralph Fiennes are so amazing.

Something that Spielberg did with this film is only show one person in color. The whole film is in black and white except you see this one little girl in color wearing a red jacket, and you see her again when they are burning the corpses of the Jews. It is one of so many interesting things Spielberg has done with his films during his career.

The Nazi's had a four-part plan. First they stripped all of the Jews of their rights. Then they forced them all to go live in the ghetto, and let Nazi's take their homes. Then after a while they liquidized the ghetto. At one point you see a man who is obviously a really wealthy businessman being forced to move out of his home and into the ghetto. His house is give to Schindler.

The moved the Jews into the concentration camps after the finished building them. In the concentration camps they would humiliate the Jews by making them run around in circles naked with each other, men and women together. They would mock them and laugh at them while they were killing them. The most heinous treatment of people you could imagine was towards the Jews from the Nazi's. If one person were to stop working for a second they would get killed. Sometimes they would get killed for no reason at all. The film really put the holocaust in perspective for me. It showed how much evil, bravery, and heroism there was during the worst thing that ever happened in the world.

Once they started losing the war they started to just kill them all. In the end the whole thing lasted about six years, and over six million Jews were murdered. Oscar Schindler saved over a thousand lives, and due to generation there were over six thousand people alive because of him. That only adds up to the year the film came out in 1993. There have probably been at least a thousand more people that were born over the last twenty years. Thousands and thousands of people are alive because of him, and the number will continue to increase.

The Jew's had to do many things to help themselves survive. During the winter they Nazi's started killing anybody who got sick, so what they did was prick their fingers and squeeze out one drop of blood. They would take that drop of blood and rub it on their faces so they would have color on their faces and they would look healthy. When they would take the kids away to be gassed, many of the kids hid in many places, but the ones that survived hid in the porta-potties. They jumped down through the toilet hole, and hid in all of the waste. It was disgusting, but it was life or death. The Jews that survived were all very clever. Some of them sold things on the black market. Oscar Schindler got arrested a few times in real life for buying things from them. They weren't allowed to have money so that was the only way they could make some.

Not only are you a genius to make a film like this. You also have to have guts. Most directors probably wouldn't want to make a film like this because of how you run the risk of offending people, and making the Germans look bad. The Color Purple is another one that took guts to make because he really made the blacks look bad in that film. When you make certain people look bad in a movie it takes guts because people will get offended, and they may criticize you. This film's makes the Germans look so evil, and just awful. To also make it so realistic could offend people too. People were probably upset by what they saw in the film, but it really did give people perspective. When he did Saving private Ryan a few years later people had to leave the theatre during the opening scene, because it was so intense and realistic that they couldn't take it. Spielberg has the guts to do a film and do it right, and not worry about how people will take it. He isn't like Quentin Tarantino (My 2nd favorite director) who is just super over the top, and has the most foul and offensive language, who probably doesn't care who he offends. He does the most realistic stuff about some of the worst things that have ever happened. That is why he is my favorite director. Not just because of how many phenomenal movies he makes, but because of how he has the guts to make them as realistic and accurate as he can no matter how awful or gritty it can be. He is the greatest director of all time for those reasons.