Schindler's List is, in my opinion, Spielberg's greatest film. We've got some Liam Neeson in there, Ralph (pronounced RAIF thanks Laura) Fiennes who is awesome, and Ben Kingsley. Was released 1993, and at the 1994 Academy Awards it had 12 Oscar nominations. It won 7 of them. Wins for Best Picture, Best Original Score, Best Director. Both the leading men were nominated for acting Oscars in it, Neeson for best actor in a leading role, Fiennes for best actor in a supporting role. Neither won, but you can tell from the two nominations how strong pairing it was. Wins also for Best cinematography to Janusz Kaminski as Director of Photography and Best Editing to Michael Kahn.
During World War II, Schindler (Neeson) is a war profiteer who uses the Jews confined to the Krakow ghetto and later Plaszow labor camp for essentially slave labor in his enamelware factory and then a munitions plant. During the liquidation of the ghetto, when the Jews are being moved into the labor camps, concentration camps, and death camps, Schindler begins to have a change of heart. By the end of the film he is bankrupt. He used his money and his friendship with the commandant of Plaszow labor camp, Unterschaftfuhrer Amon Goeth (Fiennes) to buy back the lives of his workers, to buy them from death. He saved 1100 people that way. Oh, and this is a true story.
An interesting plot and stylistic element is the interaction of Schindler and Goeth. They are set up as foils to each other almost from the outset of Goeth's introduction further into the film. From Schindler's point of view Goeth could even be considered a doppelganger, a sinister reflection of Schindler himself, who he notices and fears he will become. Lots of interesting handheld camera work in this film. Possibly Kaminski's influence there. Spielberg doesn't use it much. It always seems to crop up, in this film, when something particularly dramatic is happening. Anyways let's get to it. Look at these four shots.
Clearly similar and opposite, symmetrical reflections of each other. Simple what they're doing, but telling in terms of story.
When I say sinister version, this is what I mean. The camera starts to shake and Goeth, on the balcony, leans down to grab something we can't see, and then...
This next scene really drives home the point about Schindler's and Goeth's parallelism. They are so totally symmetrical in almost every way. As soon as Goeth leans forward and breaks the symmetry, they go to another shot, so as not to show them asymmetrically.
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