Schindler's List

Spielberg's second stab at a Booker-prize-nominated novel set in World War II is a far more personal project for the Jewish director than Empire Of The Sun but it still fails for exactly the same reasons.

Herr Oskar Schindler was a German-Czech business man, a bad Catholic, heavy drinker, and generous lover While his fellow Aryans "purified" their conquered countries of the Jews, Schindler risked his life outwitting the SS and spent large fortunes saving those he could from the ghettos and the concentration camps.

Filming in monochrome and avoiding well-known stars (Costner and Gibson offered their services) help give the film it realism and Spielberg's direction is remarkably restrained - the long overdue Oscar was well deserved. Liam Neeson and Ben Kingsley give excellent performances and Ralph Fiennes as Amon Goeth alone makes the film worth seeing.

The problem is in the portrayal of the Holocaust. "Even to imagine the Holocaust is a sin," say the Jewish survivors, and Spielberg as a recreator; allows his imagination to desert him. He goes for a documentary texture so that even the SS executions feel as though they have been meticulously researched. But since the Holocaust is so well documented his images don't shock and we suffer from compassion fatigue. Sentimentalising it doesn't help - the scene with the schindlerfrauen in the Auschwitz showers lasts two sentences in Keneally's book, why then does Spielberg drag it out?

Schindler's List should have been the ultimate cinema experience. Maybe it is. But not for me.

Review by Stephen Cox
Taken from EUFS Programme 1994-95