#8 - Schindler's List

Liam Neeson as Oskar Schindler: making the business proposition that would change hundreds of lives.

REVIEW:

An epic film scaled down to incredibly intimate details, so much so that I can picture every last one of the extras' faces in my mind. One gets the sense that this film exists outside a director and indeed outside any particular style of filmmaking: at turns it evokes the verite style of The Battle of Algiers, while at other points the style is reminiscent of early German expressionism. But above all, this film demonstrates Spielberg's own unique voice. It was clearly a personal project for him, and it has in the nearly two decades since its release become a lightning rod in the way almost any Spielberg film does, decried by those who expect it to be the definitive "Holocaust" film (Kubrick, a Spielberg friend, is alleged to have said "Schindler's List is about 1,000 people who were saved. The Holocaust is about six million people who died." To which my answer would be...who said that Schindler's List has to be about the same thing that the Holocaust was about?). What this film is, above all, is a study of individual choices and morality amidst a society gone mad, a society in which the smallest of actions (the curt dismissal of an old man's gratitude, a kiss that lasts a little too long, or how much lipstick to put on) can have tremendous consequences.

MY RATING:

100/100

WOULD IT BE IN MY TOP 250?

It would be in my top 1.

WHY IS IT IN THE IMDB'S TOP 250?

Clearly I'm not exactly objective when it comes to this film (not that one can be objective about any film), but I'll just say that it seems as if audiences throughout the years have responded to the mastery of Spielberg's filmmaking, the power of the film's imagery and the moving nature of the film's subject matter. On that last point, I feel that thinking of Schindler's List as "that Holocaust film" actually does it a disservice. It deserves to be watched and grappled with every several years...there are few works of art in film that match its moral complexity, its portrayal of blind capitalism being utilized for a transcendent good, and its almost Godlike detachment from the inhumanity it portrays. The film is generally regarded as Spielberg's best, and the IMDB voters have consistently placed it among the ten greatest ever made. The majority of scholars, film critics and academics may disagree, but I'm going to have to go with the masses on this one.