7th April 2017

Schindlers Review

Schindler’s List is a powerful movie that makes you realise how the horror of the past affects the present. Schindler’s List changed many of the aspects that the actors had about the history of Germany. Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes and Ben Kingsley represented, the three main characters of the non – fiction film shows powerful insight on how they reflect and felt about acting in this influential movie. The main and major concept of Schindler’s list is to portray the battle between good and evil. Liam Neeson plays the powerful Oskar Schindler, with Schindler being considered as a drinker, a womanizer, a gambler and had greed for high living, making his life a mystery to many. Oskar ingratiates himself with the nazi party, mainly with Amon Goeth, played by Ralph Fiennes.

Oskar Schindler, the hero of the story who saves over 1200 jews from Auschwitz, has been labeled many things, and in the end none of the labels were true. His first factory was an enamelware factory, making pots and pans, and his second factory made shell casing for bullets (which never fired or worked as bullets protecting all jews outside of the factory he is unable to employee). His second factory also saved the lives of many Jews whom found a safe haven to survive death of the holocaust. No profits were made from his second factory – His sole purpose had changed from making money to saving lives. Which he never admitted to doing. He was a con-man with a huge heart. Schindler’s actual List contains all the jewish workers that worked for him in the factory that he brought. At the start, his factory which manufactured  pots and pans, main objective was for the greed of money that Oskar had. In the end all this money went towards saving as many jewish people as he could. His scheme was to scam the jewish workers by making them work for practically nothing, and with all the profits going to Schindler he remained to be selfish and self-centred. However, in the end of the film, these workers were actually saved by working in the “factory”.

The turning point for Oskar Schindler was when he was out riding with his mistress and oversaw the liquidation in the ghetto of Krakow. I believe this was a crucial scene in the film because this is where we see that the liquid provoked something, that was already deep down in Oskar. This made him change his thoughts/views towards the jews. Schindler and Goeth had to be colleagues not rivals even though Oskar truly hated him with passion, The friendship and both being in the NAZI movement in common,  was the only reason why Amon Goeth let Oskar Schindler get his factory workers back from Auschwitz Camp

Amon, played by Ralph Fiennes, was portrayed as a pig-headed filth who had a void inside and he filled it by joining an organization which was a sanctioned outlet where he could inflicted his problems into the innocent jews. ‘I personified evil, the only thing I could do to impersonate such a repulsive character was to elbow the judgement of the true person filled with such horror.” It was emphasized when he couldn’t handle the reality of being in love with his jewish maid, when trying to exterminate their race so his compromise was that he would beat her and inflict his pain on the maid. In the interview including Ralph Fiennes he told us, as the viewers Ralph Fiennes acknowledged what he was pursuing throughout the film, so for him playing such an abominable character, he had to get as much information as he could on Amon Goeth and the background of the war. Finding information was the easy part because Amon was a big figure in the Nazi machine of the final solution.

I believe that violence was a fix for Amon Goeth, as if it were a drug that he was hooked on.  Approaching this role, Fiennes gained 52 pounds to accurately portray the big-drinking, gluttonous character. The clever Ralph Fiennes skillfully conduct/show us both the strength and the tentativeness of his character. This once in a generation film captures all the different emotions of the actors with an immense powerfulness and with a great sentimental value.

Spielberg, being a 3rd generation orthodox jew wanted this experience to be a personal one, and not to be viewed by the camera. Steven Spielberg style of Director for the Movie Schindler’s list, didn’t direct with scenes planned and didn’t know what ideas of what angles he was going to direct from.  All he did was, he would let the scenes roll and he would just wander into the scene as if he was an eavesdropper with a camera.  He didn’t want the camera to have its own character he just wanted it to be there. Also he used lighting to show dramatic scenes – Light to show good, dark to show evil. The costumes used in scenes also showed the difference between good and evil.  Jews wearing rags, torn clothes  freezing in the cold and German soldiers wearing warm, full uniforms with boots, jackets.

I believe Steven Spielberg tried to get the message across that Oskar treated the jews as if they were people, since they are, and he looked upon them as human not as an unwanted race.He also convinced and played the world the he loved money, woman and alcohol, but he was very clever to never be caught and never to be thought of as a person who loved jews. The one quote that I believe sums up the whole film is an old hebrew one which says  “He who saves one life, saves the world’s entire”.

Schindler’s list is one of the best historical films, that actually tells the truth of the horrific war. You go to movies to be entertained but for this movies you go see it to be informed and changed. My recommendation is that you should watch this film if you care about people, if you care about humanity and if you care about the holocaust never happening again. A quote said by Ben Kingsley really told the truth about this film. “Steven Spielberg has allowed the audience to witness the unthinkable, incomprehensible the extreme opposites of beauty and brutality, of forgiveness and of redemption and unbelievably loss and for him to offer it up the an audience with passion I feel immensely privileged to work beside him”. This movie isn’t your typical hollywood film, with a happily ever after ending it is one of raw truth, extreme courage and immense bravery.

 

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