Thursday, November 18, 2021
Schindler's List
- Commentary: This movie came to me (as several in this new list did) when I was scanning the Hastings going-out-of-business shelves for movies I don't own but would like to. What can I say. It's masterful. I've watched it twice since I bought it. Every performance is spot on and, despite its length, there is no fat in this movie.
Although this movie was released long before my mother died, since it was not in my collection until after she died and I can't recall that we ever ran across it on television, she never saw it. My guess is that she probably would not have enjoyed it and would have snoozed through it. My mother was in the U.S. Navy in WWII. She was a gunnery instructor. She taught soldiers how to shoot. That's how she met my father. He was one of her students. In addition, she outranked him. Her view of WWII does not include detailed musings of what happened to Jewish people and many others during the war. She was certainly aware of this, and, obviously, was on the side of defeating Hitler's forces. But she was single-minded in preparing "our boys" for the front, not in what was going on in the nether regions of the war.
In sum, we, those of us who were likely not even a gleam in our parents' eyes, during WWII, see this war differently than the participants. Our perspective is valuable. This movie proves that. But, fighting a war is very different than contemplating the war after the fact. This is probably the most valuable lesson this movie has to offer.
Update 11/17/2021: This post was originally published August 14, 2016. It was one of the accidental deletions that occurred, which is covered in this post.
Actor Role Actor Role Actor Role Actor Role Liam Neeson Oskar Schindler Ben Kingsley Itzhak Stern Ralph Fiennes Amon Göth Caroline Goodall Emilie Schindler Jonathan Sagall Poldek Pfefferberg Embeth Davidtz Helen Hirsch Andrzej Seweryn Julian Scherner Piotr Polk Leo Rosner
One of Roger Ebert's Great Movies.
Here's a link to the Wikipedia write-up of the film.
Release Date: 1993
Directed by Steven Spielberg.
Labels: anti-fascist, ben-kingsley, docu-drama, historical2, period2, steven-spielberg, war1
