Schindler's List (1993)

Emotionally powerful and historically very important. This film deals with possibly the hardest topic in human history, and it does it with class, purpose and excellent filmmaking. Liam Neeson is brilliant as Schindler; Fiennes is utterly horrifying as the terrible Goth and all the other character actors hit the mark brilliantly. The decision to make it black and white makes Schindler's List stand-out and feel distinct, it is a piece of genius. In the end this film is about the utter depravity that humanity is capable of, and the utterly brilliant heroism humanity is capable of, WW2 and the Holocaust in real life brought out the worst in us as a species and it bought out the best of us, this film captures that, but it also captures the complexities of the people at the heart of the most dramatic events in world history, no other film does this as well. Top quality and a very good start point for people who are unfimilar with the nitty-gritty of the Nazi regime.

There's a powerful little low-budget effort with Ralph Richardson called "The Silver Fleet" (1943) that illustrates just how difficult it was for those in the occupied territories to continue to do what was right without looking like a collaborator and/or ending up against a wall of Nazi bullets. Well here, Steven Spielberg takes that dangerous occupation and scales it up somewhat as the eponymous Czech industrialist and arms manufacturer (Liam Neeson) finds his increasing revulsion to the brutality of their new occupying power driving him, with the able assistance of his Jewish factory manager "Stern" (Ben Kingsley), to find ways to keep them from being routinely slaughtered. Getting them out is not really an option, so he invents ways of convincing the authorities that they are more useful alive and decently fed/housed - even suggesting the usefulness of children's small fingers to polish shell casings - to avoid them being deported to the now fully functioning Auchwitz extermination camp. The story is history but the manner in which it is delivered here is poignant and potent. Schindler's gradual shift from a venally induced indifference to one of active concern is well handled by Neeson's considered performance and Kingsley works well as his low-level but crucial co-conspirator. Plaudits must also go to Ralph Fiennes with, I think, the best portrayal of his career as the odious Commandant Goeth who combines just about every element of the worst in human nature into one ghastly individual eliciting a palpable degree of loathing. Does it need to be 3¼ hours long? Well I'm not so sure about that, and there are times when the repetitive oppressiveness of their gruelling environment risks de-sensitising the message a little, but for the most part the abusive and terrifying lives led by the Jewish prisoners and the increasingly perilous path being taken by those trying to help is well held together with some stunning cinematography and an untypical John Williams score. It's definitely a big screen occasion - somehow television reduces it's impact, so if you can see it in a cinema. Either way, it does offer some salutary lessons in man's inhumanity, and humanity to our fellow man!