Directed by Steven Spielberg, ‘Schindler’s List’ is a
heart-rending account of The Holocaust and how Oskar Schindler, a German
businessman and war-profiteer, saves the lives of more than one thousand
Jewish-Polish refugees from imminent death and entire extinction of the
community.
The film
documents and recreates vividly the carnage during World War II, when Nazis
occupied Krakow and dispossessed the Jews of their businesses, their homes, and
placed them in inhuman conditions in ghettos and from there, moved them to
concentration camps for execution. The change of heart of Oskar Schindler from
an uncaring, womanising, pleasure-loving businessman to an unlikely hero that
he eventually turns into by saving over a thousand Jews by making a list and
employing them in his factory marks the magnanimity of his act as against the
stomach-turning barbarian of the Nazis.
For an
adaptation (based on the novel ‘Schindler’s Ark); the film has been excellently
directed with some supremely realistic performances- be it Liam Neeson as the
protagonist or Ben Kingsley as his close Jewish collaborator and Ralph Fiennes
as Amon Goeth. It has been brilliantly shot in black and white to give the
effect of certain graveness and starkness that the story conveys. The
cinematography that plays with different grains further adds to the atmosphere,
as does the thoughtfully selected music score. Through all these and many more
combined factors, the effect on the audience is riveting, to say the least.
The stunned
silence that follows the running time of the movie effectively surmises the
horror that makes one cringe at the atrocities meted out during The Holocaust. The
violent, graphic scenes are incorporated to show the ruthless brutality and in
that, it succeeds in having the desired effect. This line conveys it all - “Whoever saves one life,
saves the world entire.”
