Schindler's List (1993) - War/Drama [DVD]

Steven Spielberg's epic Holocaust drama won seven Oscars, including statuettes for Best Picture and Director. Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) is a Nazi Party member out to profit from the war. The local Jewish population provide a ready source of cheap labour for his factory, but Oskar's mercenary instincts become coupled with more altruistic ones when he discovers that the Jews he does not employ are likely to be sent to concentration camps. From then on, he attempts to save as many Jews from imprisonment as possible, whilst keeping on the right side of the Nazi authorities. Steven Spielberg had a banner year in 1993. He scored one of his biggest commercial hits that summer with the mega-hit Jurassic Park, but it was the artistic and critical triumph of Schindler's List that Spielberg called "the most satisfying experience of my career." Adapted from the best-selling book by Thomas Keneally and filmed in Poland with an emphasis on absolute authenticity, Spielberg's masterpiece ranks among the greatest films ever made about the Holocaust during World War II. It's a film about heroism with an unlikely hero at its center--Catholic war profiteer Oskar Schindler (), who risked his life and went bankrupt to save more than 1,000 Jews from certain death in concentration camps. By employing Jews in his crockery factory manufacturing goods for the German army, Schindler ensures their survival against terrifying odds. At the same time, he must remain solvent with the help of a Jewish accountant () and negotiate business with a vicious, obstinate Nazi commandant () who enjoys shooting Jews as target practice from the balcony of his villa overlooking a prison camp. Schindler's List gains much of its power not by trying to explain Schindler's motivations, but by dramatising the delicate diplomacy and determination with which he carried out his generous deeds. As a drinker and womaniser who thought nothing of associating with Nazis, Schindler was hardly a model of decency; the film is largely about his transformation in response to the horror around him. Spielberg doesn't flinch from that horror, and the result is a film that combines remarkable humanity with abhorrent inhumanity--a film that functions as a powerful history lesson and a testament to the resilience of the human spirit in the context of a living nightmare. --Jeff Shannon Synopsis Based on a true story, Schindler's List is Steven Spielberg's epic drama of World War II Holocaust survivors and the man who unexpectedly came to be their saviour. Unrepentant womaniser and war profiteer Oskar Schindler uses Polish Jews as cheap labour to produce cookware for the Third Reich. But after witnessing the violent liquidation of the walled ghetto where the Krakow Jews have been forced to live, Schindler slowly begins to realise the immense evil of Nazism. When his employees are sent to a work camp, they come under the terrorising reign of sadistic Nazi Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes). With the help of his accountant, Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley), Schindler creates a list of 'essential' Jews. Bribing Goeth, Schindler manages to get 1,100 people released from the camp and brought to the safety of his munitions factory in Czechoslovakia. Spielberg's glorious film is wondrously evocative, visually stunning, and emotionally stirring.