Schindler's List (1993)

Directed by Steven Spielberg, the name is enough. He enjoys immense love and justified appreciation. It’s not just a rumour, but his name transcends to million footfalls to theatres and multiple OTT replays. But this movie is special because as a Jew Spielberg felt the pain of Holocaust and thus this was personal. Spielberg’s paternal grandparents were Jews from Ukraine. I really hope things cool down very soon in Ukraine and somebody someday make a film on the crisis in Ukraine. After watching “The Kashmir Files” I felt like watching the list because I wanted to see how we can make better…

CinemaSerf

7.0

Jan 28, 2024

There's a powerful little low-budget effort with Ralph Richardson called "The Silver Fleet" (1943) that illustrates just how difficult it was for those in the occupied territories to continue to do what was right without looking like a collaborator and/or ending up against a wall of Nazi bullets. Well here, Steven Spielberg takes that dangerous occupation and scales it up somewhat as the eponymous Czech industrialist and arms manufacturer (Liam Neeson) finds his increasing revulsion to the brutality of their new occupying power driving him, with the able assistance of his Jewish factory manage…

Emotionally powerful and historically very important. This film deals with possibly the hardest topic in human history, and it does it with class, purpose and excellent filmmaking. Liam Neeson is brilliant as Schindler; Fiennes is utterly horrifying as the terrible Goth and all the other character actors hit the mark brilliantly. The decision to make it black and white makes Schindler's List stand-out and feel distinct, it is a piece of genius. In the end this film is about the utter depravity that humanity is capable of, and the utterly brilliant heroism humanity is capable of, WW2 and the Ho…