SChinDLeR's LiSt

I always thought that I could watch through any movie without empathizing with the characters...without an iota of sympathy for the victims portrayed.....I always thought I wasn’t dumb enough to cry watching a movie......I always thought crying is for the weak hearted.......but these notions were shattered when I watched Schindler’s List......

Very few movies have perturbed my conscience...my existence....But this one really got into my head.....I got the DVD through a friend of mine. And started watching it alone at home........The movie is shot in black and white...Initally it dampened my spirits to watch the movie in B&W...But towards the end I realized why the directly shot it in B&W...The movie is too gory to be portrayed in color and the shades of B&W gave justice to the era in which the movie is shot.......Previous Steven Spielberg movies which I had watched were primarily big budget flicks with freakish themes....And I expected this one to be just another movie with lot of guns...bullets...canisters......

The sheer disregard for ethics and morals is depicted explicitly in this magnum opus. I couldn’t help wonder how people could become such sadist and savage as portrayed about the SS who ran the Nazi concentration camps....Ralph Fiennes depicts the role of Amon Göth quite realistically...Infact he was able to generate so much hatred in my mind against the Nazis that I inadvertently began to admire his histrionic skills.....The detailing of the camps are graphic and it doesn’t try to mince the images.

Jews in the camp were killed to fulfill a propaganda that they were a lesser race...They were made to work like dogs in the camps and the older ones were periodically exterminated...Amon Goth is depicted killing people like he was just practicing shooting...People are killed in Gas chambers due to shortage of bullets.........The ghettos are crowded with people with hardly a crumble of bread to it......I found it hard to digest the human race can deteriorate to any extent in pursuit of power and greed.....

Oskar Schindler (played spectacularly by Liam Neeson) helps few Jews from the Gestapo’s brutal homicides......He invests his fortunes in buying out Jews from the concentration camps to employ in his factory... The penultimate scene in which Schindler breaks down when he realises that he could have saved a few more Jews by selling his car is heart rendering...

I just could help myself cry watching this movie which made me feel guilty for something which I hadn’t done.....Is it because I felt sorry for the Jews in the concentration camp...Is it because of Schindler’s helplessness...Is it because I have never done good enough as a Human being....Is it because.....

I ve never found the answer........




Trivia on the movie from Wiki

Ralph Fiennes' performance earned him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. While he didn't win the Oscar, he did win the Best Supporting Actor BAFTA Award, which is the British equivalent to the Oscar.

Originally, Roman Polanski was asked to direct the film. However, he passed on it, having survived the Polish Ghettos himself. He felt it would be too personal, and would bring up too many hard memories that he was not prepared to deal with at the time. He went on to direct another Holocaust-themed movie, The Pianist in 2002. This earned him an Oscar.
Director Steven Spielberg refused payment for making this movie, saying that it would be like "taking blood money."