Schindler's List
United States, 1993; 187 mins.
Directed by Steven Spielberg

Novelist Thomas Keneally recovered the little-known story of Oskar Schindler and turned it into a highly readable book (with the same title as the film), using novelistic techniques to fill in the gaps in our scanty knowledge of what Schindler did -- still more of why he did it. Schindler, a small-time businessman of no visible morals who made his way upward during the war by greasing the wheels of the German occupation authorities in Cracow, ended up by putting his gains and himself on the line to save the lives of over a thousand Jewish workers on his employment list. Very few people who were in a position to help did anything like this. Why Schindler acted in this way remains an enigma.

Director Steven Spielberg was drawn to the story -- he has generously supported Holocaust research -- and he made it into a film quite unlike the ones for which he is known (Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., Jurassic Park). The film, shot using a Polish cinematographer and Polish locations, has a strong cast, and it continually shows Spielberg's talent for getting the effects he wants. It was showered with awards, including an Oscar for Best Director and just about everybody's award as the best picture of 1993. Terrence Raffery of the New Yorker called it "by far the finest, fullest dramatic (i.e. non-documentary) film ever made about the Holocaust." On the other side there were skeptics who criticized the emphases and sensibility of the film. An extreme case is the German critic who wrote of "Indiana Jones in the Cracow Ghetto".

We now have some distance from both the hoopla and the objections, and you (unlike the average movie-goer) have the advantage of knowing a lot about the Holocaust. How does the film stand up? What are its strengths and weaknesses as a portrayal of the Holocaust?