Schindler's list
When we think of the name Steven Spielberg we instantly think "action packed film", after all he is the creator of such films as Jaws and Raiders of the Lost Arc. However most movie critics will agree that Spielberg's most action packed film is one that retells the story of Oskar Schindler. In the movie Schindler's List Spielberg takes us inside the soul of a man who made a choice, a man who valued humanity more then greed. It is remarkable how man is fascinated with the idea of free will and just what exactly drives us to make the choices we do. The counterpoint between Oskar Schindler's greed and Oskar Schindler's kindness -- the kindness that saved over one thousand Jews from being swallowed up by the Holocaust -- cannot be overemphasized, for greed and kindness are two of the basic, natural factors that motivate human action, and they are fundamentally opposed to each other. The idea that a single human being, compelled by those two forces, would choose to save others while risking his own life, is as uplifting as any other. The fact that we cannot tell when Schindler decided why he should save those lives matters only a little. The fact that he decided at all tells us what we need to know: first he did it because he rea
It is said that no act of earthly justice not even the vision of Hitler and his minions burning in Hell forever -- can ever make amends for the tragedy. Soon he was spending so much on maintaining his haven that his business began to lose money -- he became like the gambler or the alcoholic who exhausts all his funds in order to keep gambling and drinking, and he was able to carry about eleven hundred names to safety through the end of the war. We can now see the human beings involved in these brutal acts. The inconceivable magnitude of the atrocity is horrifying enough, but at the same time enhanced when seen on screen. At the center of it all is Oskar Schindler (played by Liam Neeson), a tower of a man with an innate sense of showmanship and an incredible talent for networking and friend-making, two skills that allowed him not only to prosper in Germany during the war but also to become a savior to many without being apprehended (although he came very close on more than one occasion). Quite the opposite; his documentary-like epic, its running time surpassing one hundred ninety minutes, mercilessly lays bare for us all the ugliness and cruelty of mankind by reenacting -- with peerless accuracy -- what is arguably the most shameful chapter in mankind's recent history, when six million men, women and children were slain because one man wanted it that way, and had the charisma and the power to facilitate the massacre. It would be comforting to think that the Nazis were possessed by demons and devils, but they were not. But, frankly, anyone who says "it's just a movie" is sorely missing the point. lized he was losing money (greed), and then he did it because it had to be done (kindness). He had a multitude of personality traits focused toward this end: he was not just a drinker, but a skilled social drinker; he was not just a womanizer, but a lover of women and ,he was not just a party animal, but an expert at mingling and finessing and making himself known. It is also, like a monument or a statue, a tribute to those who lost their lives in the Holocaust, and also to their loved ones. Of course, a film cannot reverse the damage done by the Nazis. The film celebrates those who are, as Holocaust survivors and descendents of survivors (saved by Schindler or not), living acts of defiance, their very existence a cry of rage against the Nazi's attempt to stamp out the Jewish race. it makes you feel hopeful about what a director can do with the cinema. He hires only workers who would otherwise end up in a concentration camps.
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Acceptance Essays
