Schindler’s List
Rs. 599/-
Directed By: Steven Spielberg.
Last week’s DVD Review ‘Auschwitz’ was a documentary on the holocaust that shocked the world. Continuing where we left, ‘Schindler's List’ regarded as one of Spielberg's masterpiece, brings these events to life, thus showcasing the harsh conditions and horrible treatment of the Jews., This 3 hour black and white film on its release in 1993, was nominated for 12 Academy Awards and won seven, including Best Picture and a long-coveted Best Director for Spielberg.
There was one man who had a soft corner for the persecuted Jews - Oskar Schindler and this is his true story. Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) is a member of the Nazi party, womanizer and German businessman in Poland who sees an opportunity to make money from the Nazis' rise to power. He starts a company to make cookware and utensils using Jews as cheap labor. He brings his long time Jewish friend and accountant Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley) to help run the factory. He uses underhand tactics to win the ruling party to keep the Jews working for him. But in 1942, all of Krakow's Jews are assigned to the Plaszow Forced Labor Camp, overseen by Commandant Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), who lives in a large mansion and takes immense pleasure in shooting Jews from his balcony. Schindler can’t bear to see the atrocities upon the Jews and begins to develop a conscience. He realizes that his factory is the only place preventing Jews from being shipped to the death camps. Schindler sells a part of his assets and bribes the Germans into allowing him to bring in 1,100 Jews to help in the factory.
Despite a lot of rejection from fellow Germans, one man made the difference for the Jews who even today regard him as the savior of the holocaust. The 80-minute bonus documentary on Disc 2 ‘Voices from the Past’ includes interviews and accounts of what happened to Schindler rescued Jews, while the featurette ‘The Shoah Foundation Story’ takes on Spielberg’s Foundation.
— Verus Ferreira