Schindler's List (Widescreen Edition)
by Steven Spielberg
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Ben Kingsley, Caroline Goodall, Jonathan Sagall, Liam Neeson, Ralph FiennesDirector: Steven Spielberg
Brand: UNI DIST CORP. (MCA)
Producer: Branko Lustig
Producer: Gerald R. Molen
Producer: Irving Glovin
Producer: Kathleen Kennedy
Producer: Lew Rywin
Writer: Steven Zaillian
Writer: Thomas Keneally
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish (Published), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: AC-3, Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 195 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-03-09
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Universal Studios
Movie Reviews of Schindler's List (Widescreen Edition)
Movie Review: One of the Most Important Films Ever Made
Summary: 5 Stars
Despite being an avid viewer of quality movies, I have one habit that sometimes prevents me from seeing a movie when everyone else is.
I don't like blood.
Blood kept me from seeing most horror films, which doesn't bother me so much. It kept me from seeing Pulp Fiction for six years, Reservoir Dogs for longer than that. I still haven't seen Saving Private Ryan, and before yesterday, I still hadn't seen this film.
In the afterglow of such a viewing experience I find it very difficult to give a review like I would a "normal" movie.
Schindler's List is not a normal movie. It goes without saying that it is a very important movie.
To take that thought a step further, there are two types of important movies. The first is a movie that is seminal in style and content, that defines a genre or phase in moviemaking; The Maltese Falcon for American Film Noir, Star Wars for the Epic Blockbuster, Nosferatu or perhaps Dracula for Horror, Metropolis or 2001: A Space Odyssey for Science Fiction, King Kong for Monster Movies, Singin' in the Rain for the Movie Musical, Birth of a Nation for silent films, The Godfather for Gangster dramas, and Citizen Kane for, well, for movies in general. These are important films for people to see who wish to understand film, entertainment, etc.
Schindler's List is the other sort of "important." It's not just important for people who appreciate film to see (although it is masterfully crafted, which I'll get into in a moment.) It is important for people who are human.
Everyone who isn't a psycho-hatebag (i.e.: President Ahmadinejad) knows that the "Shoah" (lit. calamity) or "Holocaust" was possibly the most horrific event in human history, matched only rarely by the likes of Stalin and Pol Pot. Yet many people can only discuss this topic in the most basic terms. Six Million Jews, Adolf Hitler, Final Solution, Auschwitz, etc. How can any of us put a personal face on such an unimaginable tragedy? How can we ever get into the heart of the suffering and pain?
Truth is we never can. But Director Steven Spielberg gets us as close as we can possibly hope to get.
Spielberg shot the movie in black and white, a masterful choice that accomplishes two things. First, it sets the movie into the period. When we see black and white, we automatically are in the 40's. This is the color of our World War II footage, even of most of the still pictures we see. It places us in the moment.
The second thing it does is make it watchable. If it had been in color, I wonder how many of us could have watched to the end. Spielberg doesn't go with the cutaways when innocent Jews are executed by a shot to the head at close range. He shows it to you. I have seen one video of a man shot in the head in my lifetime. I wish I'd never seen it, but there was no difference, other than the color, to this.
In any other movie, it would have been gratuitous. But this is what the Jews saw as they went about their daily life. Spielberg lets you see a life of horror through their eyes.
In one scene an old one-armed man who had been protected by Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley), Oskar Schindler's (Liam Neeson) Jewish plant manager, is caught on the way to the factory when the group of workers is forced to shovel snow to clear the road for German vehicles. He is taken aside and executed summarily. Graphically.
Yet the true horror of the scene was the mother and child nearby. As the man is dragged aside, the mother urges her child, "Look at the snow, look at the snow, the snow!" The child looks down (though we don't.) There is a crack of a handgun and the man goes down, his blood soaking the snow, but the rest keep shoveling, hoping to just survive the moment. Looking at the snow.
Spielberg demonstrated in this movie not only that he can make a movie look good, but that he can make a movie of power and truth.
Ralph Fiennes plays the sadistic Amon Goeth, the German officer in command of the labor camp supplying Schindler's factory with labor. To say this man was murderous would be an understatement. Yet even here Spielberg manages to show the conflicted humanity of the man. His inner conflict concerning his Jewish Maid Helen Hirsch (Embeth Davidtz) is subtle and heartbreaking, as you tug on him with your own mind to find his humanity somewhere within.
Ben Kingsley as Itzhak Stern is, well, Kingsley. He is quite possibly the most skilled and adaptable actor in the world, despite not being the first name to come to mind when you think of great modern actors. Disclaimer: I'm a big fan. He plays Stern with stark honesty. Stern is very realistic, and does not expect to live out the war. He is fatalistic and insecure, and Schindler spends as much time saving Stern from himself as from the Nazis.
But the star is the star, right? Liam Neeson as Oskar Schindler is a masterwork, a lifetime achievement. His collaboration on this part with Spielberg (and writer Steven Zaillan) brings out Oskar Schindler as a tangible, three-dimensional person. Schindler is the stuff real heroes are made of, though he eschewed the moniker all his life. Movie heroes are idealistic, other-motivated, sacrificial from birth caricatures. Schindler is a selfish, womanizing, profiteering opportunist who finds he cares about these people he first employs as slaves. In the beginning this practice of protecting seemed to be instigated by Stern, with Schindler purposely turning a blind eye, but there was in him a sense of humanity that could not buy into the Nazi propaganda regarding the so-called inhumanity of Jews. Neeson portrays the gradual, stilted journey from self-service to self-sacrifice with marvelous aplomb.
This film is full of moments, moments that make you cry with horror and make you cry with quiet, joyful hope.
But nothing can prepare you for what happens at the end. If you have never seen this movie, you will find yourself moved to the depths of your being if you have any soul at all. I will not give it away for the few that may not have seen it yet.
It is almost moot to give this movie a rating. Five Stars, Five anythings makes no sense. This is one of the most important films ever made, and should be required viewing for those who are committed to facing the evil in our world that still perpetrates killing, in Darfur, in Rwanda, wherever it may happen.
I only regret having waited so long and for so silly a reason.
Summary of Schindler's List (Widescreen Edition)
Schindler's List, a Steven Spielberg film, is a cinematic masterpiece that has become one of the most honored films of all time. Winner of seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, it also won every major Best Picture award and an exceptional number of additional honors. Among them were seven British Academy Awards; the Best Picture Awards from the New York Film Critics Circle, the National Society of Film Critics, the National Board of Review, the Producers Guild, the Los Angeles Film Critics, the Chicago, Boston and Dallas Film Critics; a Christopher Award; and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association Golden Globe Awards. Steven Spielberg was further honored with the Directors Guild of America Award. The film presents the indelible true story of the enigmatic Oskar Schindler, a member of the Nazi party, womanizer, and war profiteer who saved the lives of more than 1,100 Jews during the Holocaust. It is the triumph of one man who made a difference, and the drama of those who survived one of the darkest chapters in human history because of what he did. Directed by Steven Spielberg, the film, which also won Academy Awards for Screenplay, Cinematography, Music, Editing and Art Direction, stars an acclaimed cast headed by Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, Ralph Fiennes, Caroline Goodall, Jonathan Sagalle and Embeth Davidtz.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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