SCHINDLER'S LIST
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1993 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, Ralph Fiennes, Embeth Davidtz. Screenplay: Steven Zaillian. Director: Steven Spielberg.
Back in August, I wrote the following: "If SCHINDLER'S LIST is even halfway decent, Steven Spielberg will be nominated for Best Director, and probably win." That statement was based on the assumption that such an award would basically be a lifetime achievement recognition, like Al Pacino's Best Actor win last year, as well as an industry-wide "thank you" for the coattails business provided by JURASSIC PARK. I didn't expect that if he did win, he would actually deserve it. But with SCHINDLER'S LIST, Spielberg has crafted a nearly perfect film, a gripping and brilliantly acted epic which is not only the best film of 1993, but probably the best film of the decade thus far.
SCHINDLER'S LIST is the true story of Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), a German businessman and Nazi sympathizer who decides to turn the 1939 invasion of Poland into a personal windfall. Cashing in on carefully established Party contacts, Schindler sets up an enamelware factory in Krakow to make pots and pans for the German army. His startup capital is provided by wealthy Jews with few other options, among them accountant Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley). Schindler makes a fortune utilizing Jewish slave labor, until his business and the lives of hundreds of thousands of Jews collide with the March 1943 liquidation of the Krakow ghetto, and the subsequent relocation of Jews to Plaszow labor camp. There Schindler establishes a friendship with Commandant Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), and attempts to use his money and influence to save the lives of his workers.
Longtime viewers of Spielberg films will scarcely recognize his hand in SCHINDLER'S LIST. Gone are the swooping crane shots; gone are the zoom-ins on awestruck faces. With the exception of a risky epilogue, gone too is the cloying manipulation of emotion. This is a mature, restrained Spielberg, and his narrative decisions are right on the money. He casts a glossy sheen on early scenes showing Schindler wining and dining highly placed SS officers, playing up the "panache" which Schindler later describes as his strong suit. Another sequence juxtaposes a wealthy Jewish family leaving their home for the ghetto with a smug Schindler moving into the very same house. One scene after another is expertly staged, too many individual moments to mention but each and every one liable to leave an indelible mark on your memory.
What allows SCHINDLER'S LIST to work both as fine drama and vivid historical document is screenwriter Steven Zaillian's (SEARCHING FOR BOBBY FISCHER) decision to make the characters as memorable as the images. Oskar Schindler is a marvelously intricate study, a slimy and self-serving profiteer who finds himself becoming an unlikely savior before he even realizes what he's doing. Liam Neeson manages both sides of Schindler skillfully, making the transition seamlessly. Ben Kingsley turns in a typically understated performance as Stern, the "good angel" who must walk a delicate line while encouraging Schindler's magnanimity. The finest performance is also the most disturbing, Ralph Fiennes' perfectly amoral Amon Goeth. As a creature of pure random destruction, it would have been easy for Goeth to become another stereotypical Nazi, but Fiennes gives him surprising depth and complexity, particularly in a tense scene with his Jewish housekeeper (Embeth Davidtz). All three performances are among the finest of the year, and they give SCHINDLER'S LIST a personal quality that transcends the subject matter.
There will be some discussion about Spielberg's use of color in the depiction of a young girl in a red coat who catches Schindler's eye. My feeling is that this is part of a larger attempt to make the Holocaust a tragedy of individuals rather than of a faceless mass. Spielberg includes several scenes of SS troops and the Jews themselves announcing their names as they are registered, given work assignments, or separated into "essential" and "non-essential." In this way, he assaults the viewer both with staggering numbers and with individual lives. There are many disturbing images of arbitrary murder, of death without pattern or meaning, and in the midst of such arbitrariness one act of mercy could mean everything. "The list is life," Stern tells Schindler when their work is complete, and SCHINDLER'S LIST is a testimony to the individuals whose lives were changed forever by the Holocaust.
Lest we forget.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 survivors: 10.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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