Schindler's List

Although at first I was a bit bored with the pacing, I soon became fully engaged in Schindler's List, Steven Spielberg's 1990s film about the Holocaust.

Filmed beautifully in black and white, Schindler's List is about a German industrialist who starts off exploiting Jewish labor during the Nazi regime, and ends up so deeply affected by the brutal, brutal treatment and eventually extermination of the Jews that he uses his entire fortune to save them.

It is a moving and memorable and important story. In many ways Spielberg did a brilliant job rendering it. But in spite of the subject matter I couldn't help but feel there was something schmaltzy about it, overly sentimental. The artistic cinematography worked against gritty realism, and sentimentalized or stylized the content. Other than the three leads (Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, and Ben Kingsley) who were outstanding, the characters and the acting was rather two-dimensional and even corny.

I know it's kind of sacrilegious to criticize Schindler's List... I admit I'm dehydrated from crying throughout the entire last hour.