Review: Schindler's List (Steven Spielberg, 1993)

Oskar Schindler was not a good person in the strictest sense of the word. A member of the Nazi Party, he drank like a fish, gambled, conducted dealings on the black market and cheated on his wife innumerable times. Yet he found salvation by doing something so great even he could not comprehend its greatness: he changed himself for the greater good, saving the lives of more than 1100 Jews employed in his munitions factory from the hatred of the Nazi regime.
1993 was arguably the greatest year of Steven Spielberg's life. First he made the rip-roaring Jurassic Park, a still technologically astounding movie that revolutionized special effects and paid for his kids' educations for the next thirty years. But later, he presented us with Schindler's List, a film as remarkable as Schindler's achievement that beat nearly all other '90s historical dramas into submission and finally bagged him the Best Director and Best Picture Oscars for which he had long been unfairly passed over. And if he still hadn't won it would have probably spawned conspiracy theories.
Spielberg has said that the filming of Schindler's List "was the most satisfying experience of my professional career," claiming it is the best film he has ever made. Even if I do say so myself, he's absolutely right. Working from Steven Zaillian's masterfully constructed adaptation of Thomas Keneally's novel Schindler's Ark, he elicits an outstanding performance from Liam Neeson as Schindler (who justifiably lost at the Oscars to Tom Hanks in Philadelphia), and Ralph Fiennes pulls off what is easily one of the scariest performances in cinema history as Amon Goeth, the SS commandant and director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau labor camp whose favourite pastime was using Jews for target practice.
However, this is unquestionably Spielberg's greatest directing job. Utilizing grainy black-and-white cinematography, Spielberg cleverly uses lots of wide panning shots and hand-held cameras to evoke just the right amount of shock and sympathy for Holocaust victims in each scene. Also, he seems to have realized that in order to completely nail a film of such depth and importance as this, you shouldn't even attempt to glamourize the Holocaust or answer the questions it has left in modern society. All you have to do is assess what happened and get the facts right.
In the production notes in the Schindler's List DVD, Spielberg writes: "No one can do anything to fix the past - that's already happened. But a picture like this can impact us, delivering a mandate about what must never happen again." Now I know the chances of you reading this are devastatingly low, but if you are, Mr. Spielberg, you need not worry because as a result of this powerhouse masterpiece you have single-handedly re-awakened awareness of the Holocaust, ensuring that it (hopefully) will never be repeated or forgotten. You are a god among giants, sir.