Schindler's List

"This list is an absolute good. The list is life."

Without a doubt, Schindler's List remains Steven Spielberg's masterpiece of a film. It's absolutely unflinching in it's depictions of the horrors of the Holocaust. Amongst the horror though is the true story of Oskar Schindler, an absolutely fascinating man who started off as a war profiteer only to slowly become a man who literally sacrificed everything to save the lives of 1,100 Jewish people. The film would also prove to be an important turning point in Steven Spielberg's career as well.

In Krakow, Poland, the occupying Nazi forces have forced all the area Jews to move into the overcrowded Krakow Ghetto. Oskar Schindler (played by Liam Neeson), a German businessman and member of the Nazi Party looking to set up a new business during World War II. The factory is to be located in Krakow, Poland. He meets Itzhak Stern (played by Ben Kingsley), who has contacts with both the black Market and the Jewish community, which he uses to help secure fundraising for his factory. Schindler hires Jewish workers because they cost less while Stern makes sure as many people as possible are deemed essential to the German war movement to prevent them from being shipped off to Concentration Camps or killed. Second Lieutenant Amon Goth (played by Ralph Fiennes) arrives to oversee the construction of the Krakow-Plaszow Concentration Camp and during this strikes up a friendship with Schindler. Once the camp is completed, Goth orders the Ghetto liquidated, which Schindler winds up witnessing, to his horror. During this though, Schindler continues to maintain his friendship with Goth and uses bribery and lavish gifts to keep his operation going and as time passes his focus shifts from making a profit to saving as many lives as possible, with the continued help of Itzhak Stern. 

Steven Spielberg was initially offered the chance to make the film back when the book it's based on was published in 1982, but he did not feel ready to tackle the heavy subject matter at that time. He finally decided to tackle the project in 1993 immediately following the production of Jurassic Park (in fact, the two films released within six months of one another). Spielberg and Director of Photography Janusz Kaminski decided to shoot in Black and White to match the documented footage of the day and also to, as Spielberg put it, not accidentally beautify events. It also takes on a thematic meaning as the Holocaust was the absence of life, with the absence of color expressing that. There are small elements of color within the film, such as the famous little girl in the red coat during the Krakow liquidation. Understandably, Spielberg found making the film to be incredibly emotionally taxing, relying on his family to cheer him up, as well as occasional phone calls from friend Robin Williams. Still, Spielberg is absolutely unflinching in his depictions of what happened. The film is stripped away of all of his usual trademarks and at times almost has a documentary feel to it at times which only the film's visceral feel. The film really avoids Spielberg's tendency towards sentimentality as well, keeping everything feeling real and immediate. 

Liam Neeson is fantastic as Oskar Schindler and does a great job of portraying a man who set out just to profit as much as possible from World War II and was profoundly changed by the events he witnessed around him and his workers he came to know. Neeson does a great job not only portraying that shift in character but also showing how good Schindler was at manipulating people to get what he wanted. Ben Kingsley is equally great as Itzhak Stern and becomes an invaluable asset for Schindler in their time together. I loved Kingsley's simple, matter of fact way he portrayed Stern, who looked out for the people around him and helped them navigate the system to keep them from being shipped off to Concentration Camps and keep everyone he could working so they could survive. Ralph Fiennes is nothing short of terrifying as Amon Goth, a sadistic monster of a Nazi who delights in tormenting his prisoners and on a couple occasions shooting them with a sniper rifle from the balcony of his house to the camp below. 

After the release of the film, the proceeds from the film were used to create the Survivors of the Shoah Foundation which recorded 53,000 testimonies documenting the Holocaust and it's survivors. Spielberg himself had encounters with survivors of the Holocaust from a young age as his grandmother taught English to Hungarian Jews who immigrated to America after World War II and as a young lad of three or four initially learned his numbers from the tattooed serial numbers on the inner forearm of some of the survivors. After he made Schindler's List, he felt it would be wrong to profit from it in any way and had all proceeds go towards the creation of that foundation to try and preserve the first hand accounts of the people who experienced the Holocaust. 

The film itself is a distinct point in the career of Steven Spielberg in the sense of there are pre-Schindler's List and post-Schindler's List films and they are very different in the way they feel. This film had a profound impact on him as both a filmmaker and as a person and it can be seen in the films he has made after this one. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, rather that this is the point where things changed in how he made films and the type of films he did make.