SCHINDLER'S LIST
Directed by: Steven Spielberg.
Produced by: Branko Lustig, Gerald R. Molen & Steven Spielberg.
Written by: Steven Zaillian, based on the book by Thomas Kenneally.
Director of Photography: Janusz Kaminski.
Edited by: Michael Kahn.
Music by: John Williams.
Released by: Universal.
Country of Origin: USA. 196 min. Rated: R.
With: Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Kingsley & Caroline Goodall.
DVD Features: Voices From the List feature-length documentary. "The Shoah Foundation Story With Steven Spielberg" featurette. Cast & Filmmaker Bios. "About Oskar Schindler" Bio. English/Spanish/French Audio. Spanish/French Subtitles.

In hindsight, it is remarkable to think that people concerned with the impossibility of representing onscreen the magnitude of the Holocaust were worried about director Spielberg's depiction of it when Schindler's List was initially released in 1993. Hailed as one of his more sobering, realistic, and distinctly unsentimental efforts, the film quickly went on to gather critical acclaim, drowning out any potential protests, and has come to be recognized as the definitive cinematically epic rendering of one of humanity's darkest periods.

The film chronicles the real life of Nazi war profiteer Oskar Schindler (ably portrayed by Neeson) as he gains a conscience and manages to save 1,100 Jews by conning the Nazis into believing the Jews are working at his factories - all at the expense of his own personal fortune.

Despite Spielberg's statements that he consciously made the film without the use of his cinematic "toolbox," or previous manipulative techniques, Schindler's List ultimately does employ skillful technical craftsmanship in the service of imbuing its story with the power it deserves. Its black-and-white photography and use of white typeface give it the feel of a documentary newsreel. Detached and restrained, it nevertheless graphically shows the brutality of the murderers, letting the violence speak for itself. Screenwriter Zaillian deftly conveys the ambiguous manner in which Schindler decides to carry out his rescue plan. And the performances are uniformly strong.

However, the highly polished film still relies on a neat narrative structure. Kaminski's black-and-white cinematography provides a classically sleek look that is far from the scratchy war footage it is allegedly meant to recall. The film's dispassion, while evolving a deeper feeling of empathy and melancholy, is nevertheless initially striking as, perhaps, inappropriately and unnecessarily ironic. (Though Schindler's hysterical monologue at the end reeks of melodrama.) Some of the black-market-dealing Jewish characters seem to fall into anti-Semitic stereotypes. And Williams's score, while a beautiful and subtle hymn to the Jews’ strength, might nevertheless be too beautiful, considering the film's subject matter.

Furthermore, there is a sequence in which women are sent to showers in Auschwitz and are relieved when actual water, not gas, pours down on them. When taken with the Jewish prisoners' dismissal of gas chamber stories as urban legends earlier in the film, this shower sequence has been criticized as inadvertently and clumsily making the reality of the gas chambers seem dubious, and therefore as a large misstep of the film.

Spielberg should get credit, though, for explicitly grappling with issues of historicity and remembrance. Perhaps the sequence that Schindler's List will best be remembered for is one that has been critically discussed as providing Spielberg's clearest rationale for making the film. Over the masterful montage of the Nazi liquidation of the Krakow ghetto, German Commandant Amon Goeth (Fiennes) delivers a speech proclaiming the historic nature of their undertaking. He states: "For six centuries, there has been a Jewish Krakow... By this evening, those six centuries are a rumor. They never happened. Today is history." In this way, the film understands that history is often merely a certain, revised version of events. The significance of Schindler's List, then, lies in its status as Spielberg's vividly stunning contribution to ensuring that this moment in history is never forgotten, and to aid in preventing something like it from occurring again.

DVD Extras: The Voices from the List documentary is the most worthwhile of the extras with its interviews with real-life Schindler Jews - some of whom, such as Leopold Pfefferberg, were characters in Spielberg's film. Most moving are not the moments in which the various survivors inevitably - and quite understandably - cry, but the different anecdotes and recollections that provoke the breakdowns. For one survivor, it is remembering how children were led by songs onto trains heading to concentration camps. Another woman points to the kindness of a German-Catholic nun as something that never fails to bring her to tears.

According to the Shoah Visual History Foundation featurette, Spielberg has used all of his profits to create the Shoah Foundation - an interactive video archive of interviews with 52,000 survivors, liberators, and war crimes trial participants. It is designed to educate children on the hatred and bigotry that led to the Holocaust. In doing so, Spielberg is using his film to actively promote compassion and tolerance. Reymond Levy
April 17, 2004