One of the greatest films of all time, Spielberg’s masterstroke was projecting narrative uncertainties against an acute sense of historical certainty that was the Holocaust, resulting in a work that is harrowingly tense but also imbued with moments of cathartic empathy. 

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In 2007, this film made me fall into the rabbit hole that I have yet to climb out of.  If I hadn’t serendipitously seen it during the period when I had to make a significant life decision of picking a university major, I wouldn’t have been teaching film studies, curating film programmes and writing reviews today. 

So, thank you Mr. Steven Spielberg for making one of the greatest films of all time that incidentally changed the course of my life. 

When I first saw it on DVD then, I remembered its emotional impact and how it floored me.  I was on the ground literally, ugly crying and struggling to get another piece of tissue to dab the tears.  No film since then has made me feel that way. 

Just as importantly, Schindler’s List also awakened me to the value of being conscious of world history.  My father often tells me that what sets one person apart from another is not wealth and status but how well-read he or she is in history. 

As one of many works about the Holocaust, Spielberg’s film was arguably the most successful in reopening a very ghastly chapter of 20th-century history and making it accessible to more mainstream moviegoers. 

“Power is when we have every justification to kill, and we don’t.”

From the mournful John Williams score (my favourite of his) to Janusz Kaminski’s stunning black-and-white photography to the absorbing adapted screenplay by Steven Zaillian (all winning Oscars for their work), the three hours fly by in hard-hitting and occasionally cathartic ways. 

While Schindler’s List is about the true story of Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), an opportunistic German industrialist with ties to the Nazis who would eventually save more than 1,200 of his Jewish workforce from the clutches of death, it is Ben Kingsley’s Itzhak Stern (Schindler’s reliable Jewish accountant) and Ralph Fiennes’ Amon Goeth (one of the most detestable Nazis to be depicted on screen) who steal the show as a shrewd pragmatist and an evil incarnate respectively, that elevates the traditional historical biopic into a tale about contesting and contestable human relationships. 

The bonds that connect become strategic in what feels like a game of fate and chance in a dark, dark world.  Spielberg has on many occasions ratcheted up the tension (for instance, that malfunctioning gun scene or the Auschwitz sequence) so much so that at no point in the film does anyone feel safe, even Schindler himself. 

And it is these sheer narrative uncertainties that are projected against an acute sense of historical certainty that is the film’s true masterstroke.

Grade: A+

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