Day 25: Schindler’s List (1993)

Movie #7 – Schindler’s List (1993) - 195 min, cert 15.

Hooray, I’m back. I bought a brand new laptop yesterday and got straight back into the Top 250 last night with Spielberg’s harrowing tale of the Holocaust.

I last saw this movie, probably in the last 1990s, and I remember being captivated by it then. It has lost none of its power in the intervening time. It easily held my attention, despite the lateness of the hour, for its full three and a quarter hour running time. I had forgotten quite what a masterpiece it was.

The movie tells the true story of Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), a German wheeler-dealer, who takes advantage of the Second World War and the repression of the Jewish people to make himself a fortune. He hires a Jewish accountant, Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley) to manage the day-to-day running of his business, leaving him free to make the right friends, grease the right palms and generally move in the right circles to maintain a steady stream of lucrative contracts. He uses Stern to hire other Jews to work in his factory. He pays them a pittance, but offers them protection from the escalating chaos and horror of the Holocaust. At the start of the film, Schindler’s only goal is to get rich and the protection of his Jewish workforce is the price he has to pay for his cheap labour. As the film progresses however, you see Schindler’s priorities gradually shift until this protection becomes his only concern and his wealth is just the means that allows him to do it. The film also spends a lot of its time focused on the character of Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes) a sociopathic camp commander who executes prisoners with all the emotional attachment of someone swatting flies.

The acting throughout the film, by the entire cast, is probably the best I’ve ever seen. The extras and minor characters are so good that it’s easy to forget they are acting at all. They appear instead like the subjects of some horrific documentary. This is reinforced by Spielberg’s decision to make the movie in black and white, a decision which is thoroughly justified. Indeed, Spielberg forgoes all of his movie-making tricks, and films it straight, just like a documentary. He captures the atrocities that take place in a completely dispassionate way. It’s like he’s saying – I don’t need to put an artificial spin on this, the evil on display speaks for itself. Because of the way he’s allowed himself to step back, I think this is Spielberg’s greatest work (at least of the ones I’ve seen anyway).

Overall, it’s an incredibly powerful movie that I would recommend everybody to see at least once in their lives. I have to give it 10/10 which puts it ahead of Inception in my personal list. I won’t put it above Shawshank Redemption though as it doesn’t have that feelgood factor; the subject matter is just too harrowing.

1. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
2. Pulp Fiction (1994)
3. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
4. Schindler’s List (1993)
5. Inception (2010)
6. The Godfather (1972)
7. The Godfather: Part II (1974)

Next on the list is 12 Angry Men, another film I have seen once, many years ago. I remember enjoying it then, but not massively so.