Steven Spielberg’s Holocaust drama is harrowing, humane and worth the ordeal. Its acting and restless images carry an enormous force, despite occasional stretches that press too hard for our tears.
Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List is a film we would urge anyone able to face its violence to see. It makes the Holocaust immediate while allowing Liam Neeson’s Oskar Schindler to remain a difficult man to read. Spielberg sometimes presses for an emotion that the images have already earned, and those passages are less persuasive than the quieter ones. But the film gives us ample reason to care before it asks us to be moved, much of that through its three central performances.
Steven Zaillian’s screenplay, adapted from a novel by Thomas Keneally, benefits from the uncertainty about Schindler. Neeson gives the character enough weight to hold our attention without making him seem fully explained, and something important would be lost if his motives became tidier. We keep watching him because we have not finished deciding what we think of him. Historical dramas can be anxious to make their central figures comprehensible, but Neeson is allowed to keep some of his thinking to himself.
Janusz Kamiński’s black-and-white cinematography and handheld camerawork are crucial to the film’s force. The lack of colour does not soften what we see; the restless framing makes the violence feel close and difficult to anticipate. We were horrified by how near the camera keeps us to people being persecuted, with so little distance in which to recover. Even when we understand what we are being shown, the handheld images remain difficult to watch.
Michael Kahn’s editing sustains that pressure across 195 minutes without making the film feel hurried. There is time to register a performance, and time for the horror of an image to sink in before the next one arrives. Allan Starski’s production design gives the Krakow setting a persuasive solidity, so that we accept the places before we start examining their details. His work supports the harsh realism of the photography without inviting us to stop and admire the reconstruction.
Ben Kingsley’s Itzhak Stern and Ralph Fiennes’s Amon Goeth give the film much of its force. Kingsley makes watchfulness absorbing, while Fiennes makes us uneasy even when his performance is contained. Neeson remains a compelling centre, but these two prevent our interest in Schindler from becoming the only reason to watch. The acting is controlled enough that a change of expression can hold our attention without an accompanying speech to explain its meaning.
The reservation is Spielberg’s occasional unwillingness to leave an emotion alone. John Williams’s music can be deeply affecting, but its insistence sometimes feels unnecessary beside performances and images that have already done the work. We felt more when the film seemed less anxious to make certain we were feeling it. The sentimentality is intermittent, though it is noticeable in a film capable of such restraint elsewhere.
As historical drama, this earns its length by giving us time to look closely at people without making all of them easy to understand. Schindler’s ambiguity matters, and the film is stronger for preserving it through Neeson’s performance. The violence demands something of us, too, and there is no use pretending that the recommendation comes lightly. Give it an uninterrupted evening, and do not plan on easy conversation afterwards.
