[rmh47]

I wonder what he thought of Schindler's List?

[BkBinder]

I had the same immediate thought, so I looked it up here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/movies/review97/cohen.htm

To quote him, "But his recreation of the roundup of the Jews in the Cracow ghetto is a frank accounting of what happened there. It's not some sanitary, neat dragnet of people, a chalkboard exercise that ends with the gassing of the naive and the incineration of their bodies -- "processed," in Nazi-talk or, in the boast of the Treblinka death camp, "from door to door in 45 minutes." It is, instead, an unmitigated horror -- an indictment not just of Germans or of Nazis but of human beings. I have read of these events, walked their sites and tried to imagine them, but it was not until Spielberg showed them that I felt their immeasurable horror. Even then the reality was so much worse."

Apparently he didn't think the Speilberg was over the top. Gibson obviously is because he's Christian. Or as they call us over on DU, a fundie.

Now for a pet rant....maybe I'm dense, but behind ever single hateful, sinful act in the movie, wasn't there the same character? I have yet to hear anybody bring out the fact that Satan tempted Christ and corrupter the Jews. Gibson made that perfectly clear, even going to the point of showing that Christ's sacrificial death on the cross was Satan's defeat. Why is this so ignored?

[Ben Chad]

Excerpt from Washington Post, 1993

Schindler's Lesson
By Richard Cohen
The Washington Post
December 14, 1993

....

Spielberg, too, had to control his anger. For all the horror he puts on the screen, he nevertheless had to omit much. But his recreation of the roundup of the Jews in the Cracow ghetto is a frank accounting of what happened there. It's not some sanitary, neat dragnet of people, a chalkboard exercise that ends with the gassing of the naive and the incineration of their bodies -- "processed," in Nazi-talk or, in the boast of the Treblinka death camp, "from door to door in 45 minutes." It is, instead, an unmitigated horror -- an indictment not just of Germans or of Nazis but of human beings. I have read of these events, walked their sites and tried to imagine them, but it was not until Spielberg showed them that I felt their immeasurable horror. Even then the reality was so much worse.

Schindler's Jews survived the war. He spent his fortune bribing the authorities in their behalf. His exploitation turned to benevolence and then to an audacity that only the heroic could attempt and only the corrupt could bring off. He brazenly entered Auschwitz itself, coolly treating a Nazi official there like a head waiter with his palm out. He became passionate in the protection of his Jews, the Schindlerjuden, moving them -- and his factory -- out of harm's way, ultimately relocating to Czechoslovakia, where they were liberated at the end of the war.

Schindler's wife once said that he had done nothing before the war, little afterward but the period in between was exceptional. So is the movie that tells his story.