Schindler’s List

“timeless masterpiece”

A story that immediately plunges into abject horror as we remember the tragedies of this particular period and the people targeted, yet it is done with utmost grace and delicacy that it surmounts all perceived expectation to become Steven Spielberg’s dramatic masterpiece. A black and white historical epic recounting the horrors of the Holocaust in German-occupied Poland, we follow the story of famed businessman Oskar Schindler who saves the lives of more than a thousand Jews, employing them in his factory in order to disband their prosecutions from the Nazis.

Reinforcing the bleak tones of this film is the black and white lens to which we view it, reflecting a past tragedy that will forever be engraved in our history whilst simultaneously portraying a feeling of timelessness. The delicate strokes that help brush this film’s horrific narrative serve to remind us that, despite the tragedy of human sufferance, there is a tenderness, a sensitivity that guides us through this venture so we don’t succumb to the surrounding devastation. Oskar Schindler’s Jewish workforce, or the secondary cast as it were, are responsible for coloring this forbidding picture with life, humanity, and, most of all, hope. Hope can be dire and in short amount, yet the affectionate humanism Spielberg injects in this film lets us gauge the director’s growing maturity since Jaws.

A mastering performance from the ensemble core, including a mesmeric Ben Kingsley, a hypnotizing Liam Neeson, and heinous Ralph Fiennes, and a John Williams score that will have you bereft of all emotion, propels Schindler’s List into the stratosphere of all-time greats.