Schindler's List

It says a lot about Steven Spielberg and the culture that produced him that his approach to the Holocaust is through a story of a “good German”, an industrialist, Oskar Schindler, redeemed through his efforts to save the Jews who worked for him from the camps. That even at mankind’s worst, there may be stories of hope.

The movie (and Thomas Keneally’s book on which Steve Zaillian based his screenplay) are nuanced, flecked with shadings of grey. Schindler (Liam Neeson) is not a saint, and to some degree he’s carefully manipulated by his accountant, Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley). The film makes no bones about the evil of their nemesis, SS commander Amon Goth (Ralph Fiennes). These three performances are superbly calibrated and counter-balanced. Spielberg and his team bring consummate craftsmanship to the task. The film is particularly impressive when observing the bureaucratic and logistical processes involved in shipping tens of thousands of men, women and children off to their death; the banality of evil, indeed.

This is one of the most acclaimed films of the 90s and it won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. Yet today we might set it beside Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest and find the latter a more salutary and rightly horrifying lesson. (Not that we can’t have both.)

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