Schindlers List (1993)

I have heard stories about this movie - that it is freaking long, that it is the best movie to watch on the theater if you want to make it out with someone in an isolated public place, if you watch to the end of it you get a badge of patience honor etc.

But when i saw the movie last week (6/27), it changed it all. This movie is simply one of the deepest moving movies i have seen in my life time. The story of Oskar Schindler is pretty amazing - here is this guy, a womanizer, a guy who bribes officials, a guy involved in scams - but he has a good heart, which is what differentiates him from the Nazis. This guy is not like Gandhi, who is seen as an epitome of all goodness (ofcourse he reveals the darkness in his past, but those actions are nowhere closer to Schindler's womanizing, and scandals, and money laundering). Schindler is also not a Robin Hood, though he is, in some terms. As he is seen saying, he is a 'profiteer of slave labor'.

That was, but, the story. The movie does a very good job with portraying the incidents in the camp, German officials like Goeth's completely disregard for Jewish lives (he is seen shooting Jews for target practice). The music is powerful (conducted by John Williams - Superman, ET fame; he also won a Oscar for this movie). Very subtle touches - a little girl that comes in colour (the movie is shot in B/W), the fear of Schindler's factory workers when they are sent to a huge chamber and in what looks like a human furnace but turns out to be a shower treatment, the making of the list etc. Funny Ben Kingsley reminded me of his role in Gandhi as the martyr, and he plays a Jewish accountant running Schindler's factory.