Sometime back I was watching a movie along with my friends. The movie made me cringe on to my friend’s shoulder and cry. And at the same time, the movie made feel numb. Almost senseless.
I alternated between the two emotions when I was watching Schindler’s List. It is very tough for a director to make the user feel the reality. Spielberg does that with elan. We feel thirsty when the Jews feel so. We want to run away when a gun is raised. We want to hide when a bullet is what u get for taking a break while working.
The storyline is simple: Oskar Schindler is as ruthless as Hitler wants his men to be. He kills the Jews working under him as if they were nothing but sitting ducks.
All of a sudden, he realises that there is nothing that separates him and them. He realises what he has done and takes action. He empties his pockets to feed the jews and moves them to his hometown in czechaslovakia. He saves them from imminent torture and death.
The movie moves at a slow pace but always reminds us what living on the edge actually means. You see children hiding in a puddle of shit, women helplessly watching their children being taken to the camps, an employer effortlessly listing out the names of those working under him.But my favorite is the one where Oskar holds his employee’s hands and cries that he could have saved another jew if he had sold his car.
Each and every technical aspect of the movie is excellent...especially the camerawork. You cannot expect more from a director...its tough to show how painful the past has been... but no one seems to realise that... after all , its a movie...