Schindler's List

Schindler's List Review

SPOILER ALERT - Don't read this if you don't want any spoilers!

This movie starts with a member of the SS party named Oskar Shindler. He has one purpose in life and that is to live richly. He takes advantage of the Jews lot in life under German rule to open a manufacturing facility.

This movie leaves nothing to the imagination and I suspect that is the way director Steven Spielberg wanted it. You see the coldness of it all. A man, and worker for Shindler, is shot in the head for having one arm. Shindler thinks of this more as a business man one worker lost and therefore one more to hire and train. It isn't until his workers are all driven to concentration camps that the reality of what is happening to the Jews really strikes Oskar.

The SS in this movie appear to have no heart. They don't view Jews as humans but rather as rodents. They think nothing of killing them, even the children. In the camps the Jews are humiliated by beatings and forced public nudity. They are shot "arbitrarily" as Oskar puts it. Such awful scenes led "some Jews to complain to God in anguish" (Fisher 275). Many Jews continued to hope for better times just as occured for the biblical Job. God allowed Satan to take everything from him, but he was rewarded for his suffering when God replaced everything. Their enduring hope was shown in the Jewish prayer recited in the beginning and end of the movie.

Throughout the movie Shindler moves to protect "his" Jews by listing them as "necessary workers". He tries through reasoning and cunning to save as many lives as possible even putting himself in harms way to do so. In the end Shindler saves 1000 Jews by enlisting them as workers. He allows and encourages them to engage in thier religious celebrations including allowing them to leave their jobs early on Friday to prepare for Passover. Passover is the Jewish Sabbath taking place "from sunset Friday night to sunset Saturday night, because the Jewish "day" begins with nightfall" (Fisher 277). Oskar's actions toward the end of this film show that some SS members did have a heart and that not all hopeful Jews would be let down.

Works Cited:
Fisher, Mary Pat. Living Religions (7th Edition). Alexandria, VA: Prentice Hall, 2007.

Schindler's List Overview

Steven Spielberg had a banner year in 1993. He scored one of his biggest commercial hits that summer with the mega-hit Jurassic Park, but it was the artistic and critical triumph of Schindler's List that Spielberg called "the most satisfying experience of my career." Adapted from the best-selling book by Thomas Keneally and filmed in Poland with an emphasis on absolute authenticity, Spielberg's masterpiece ranks among the greatest films ever made about the Holocaust during World War II. It's a film about heroism with an unlikely hero at its center--Catholic war profiteer Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), who risked his life and went bankrupt to save more than 1,000 Jews from certain death in concentration camps.

By employing Jews in his crockery factory manufacturing goods for the German army, Schindler ensures their survival against terrifying odds. At the same time, he must remain solvent with the help of a Jewish accountant (Ben Kingsley) and negotiate business with a vicious, obstinate Nazi commandant (Ralph Fiennes) who enjoys shooting Jews as target practice from the balcony of his villa overlooking a prison camp. Schindler's List gains much of its power not by trying to explain Schindler's motivations, but by dramatizing the delicate diplomacy and determination with which he carried out his generous deeds.

As a drinker and womanizer who thought nothing of associating with Nazis, Schindler was hardly a model of decency; the film is largely about his transformation in response to the horror around him. Spielberg doesn't flinch from that horror, and the result is a film that combines remarkable humanity with abhorrent inhumanity--a film that functions as a powerful history lesson and a testament to the resilience of the human spirit in the context of a living nightmare. --Jeff Shannon

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