In late 1939, with Poland firmly under German occupation, Oskar Schindler, a former German intelligence officer turned opportunistic war profiteer, aquired an enamelware factory in Krakow. Staffed by cost-effective, cheap labour drawn from the local Jewish community, the factory's subsequent prosperity quickly placed Schindler in good standing with the local German command. But, unbeknowst to his newly aquired friends in high places, anti-semitism was not a part of Schindler's psychological makeup; as far as he was concerned (as least during the first few years) he saw his Jewish workers as simply the largely anonymous low maintenance cogs that kept his machines humming. The fact that he strived to ensure their safety by bribing the local Nazi officials with expensive and extravagant gifts had everything to do with his desire to maintain optimum production output rather than any nascent stirrings of an altruistic nature. Things changed dramatically in 1943 with the arrival of the infamous Amon Goeth, a brutal SS commander assigned by Berlin to overseer the construction of the Krakow-Plaszow concentration camp and the immediate liquidation of the local Jewish ghetto. The bloody, barbaric pogrom unleashed by Goeth profoundly piqued Schindler's moral compass making it impossible for him to keep turning a blind eye. With the help of Itzhak Stern, the loyal, unassuming Jewish official whose deft managerial ministrations played a significant part in maintaining the factory's premises as an ostensible haven for a thousand Jewish men and women, Schindler set about compiling the eponymous list of people that he hoped to save from Goeth's gas chambers.
Twelve years after he first optioned Australian author Thomas Keneally's award-winning novel Schindler's Ark, Steven Spielberg has fashioned the definitive Holocaust epic. Clocking in at a surprisingly brisk 195 minutes, this black and white historical and biographical paen to the uncommon courage of one remarkable man evinces the brutally poetic and haunting power of a wartime newsreel. In masterfull strokes, Steve Zaillian's screenplay deftly maps the dimensions of the horror and personal danger that confronted Schindler when his conscience began to override his monetary instincts. A well-cast Liam Neeson gives the performance of his career as the enigmatic Schindler, while little know British Shakespearian actor Ralph Fiennes is a rivetting study in evil personified as Amon Goeth, the camp's sadistic commandant. Ben Kingsley rounds out the acting trifecta as the taciturn accountant/administrator who becomes a key player in Schindler's rescue mission. Simply superb.