I watched Schindler's List and it wasn't fun, obviously

It's hard to talk about this movie because I don't know what to say. I would just be a rambling mess. So here we go. This is longer than I thought so...

I don't know how to feel now. It felt so horribly long and very short at the same time. I watched this yesterday so I've been thinking about for a day now, and I just feel so empty.

Even with the ending of "oh they survived despite the impossible odd" it just felt like "well what now?" It felt like a dream. I remember I would look away from the screen to cry or just not look at what horrible thing was happening next and I suddenly feel the time rushing in. Like I would suddenly realize I was just watching a film. But then I'd remember it's based on a true story and I'd feel awful. I don't know, it was a very lucid experience.

On the technical side, I loved the cinematography. I read Spielberg wanted it to look like a documentary and it does. I liked the long wide shots, they felt very voyeuristic, the moving camera. I also like that it felt like a film made in 1930s and 40s. Like the party scenes and the way characters shot with the black and white looked very early Hollywood.

Everyone is acting for their lives in this. Neeson is amazing, of course. He portrays the greedy industrialist turned empathetic hero very believably. I mean he wasnt terrible but he's definitely exploitative and fickle and I kept thinking when is he going to switch. Obviously its the girl in red, who I love. I love her very small spark of beauty in this very bleak film that we see is inevitably snuffed out, literally. Love Ben Kingsley, I forgot he was in this movie and he blended so well with his character I forgot he was acting. He's so quiet and reserved while also being who I consider the most good chracter. We never see Stern do anything really bad and everything he does is to help someone else, which I liked. So we get to Ralph Fiennes as Amon Göth. Now I love Ralph Fiennes, I think he's so fine(pun intended) so seeing him play this absolutely deplorable person was interesting. He did so well every scene he was in made me immediately tense up, which is a lot. But also I remember thinking he was handsome in a few shots and it felt gross. I also also think this film is why Ralph Fiennes is kinda type cast as a villain. Also I thought the woman playing his servant, Helen Hirsch ( Embeth Davidtz) looked familiar and it's Miss Honey from Matilda. She's miss Honey and that was very shocking for me. Anyway everyone was great, even the kids. The kids were so great that every scene they were in made me sick because oh boy, what's gonna happen to these kids. Yes, I did sob when we see the kids loaded up and driven off as their parents scream and cry after them, thank you very much.

I love the opening scene of the Sabbath in color then it all fades to black and white. This is where the bad starts. There were so many small things that hurt me. The scene of Jewish families lining up and saying their names. I remember having the sinking realization that these are all probably real people. The mom saying "look at the snow" to her daughter when the one armed man is executed. Her later saying "id rather have you here than god knows where" when the ghetto is rounded out only for both to be caught. The family eating their jewelry. Seeing people writing their names on their luggage only for that luggage to be emptied and all their belongings being sold off. The road paved in grave markers. Woman smearing blood on their cheeks to look healthy. Children hiding in toilets and in floors. The scene of Oskar spraying the boxcar while Göth and the others nazi laugh. I couldn't even cry in the moment, it was all so absurdly disgusting.

The scene that did make me cry the most was the ending when Oskar breaks. The way he says he could have sold his Nazi pin and bought another person was so frightening and depressing. It reminded me of a quote from Irena Sendler, who also saved Jewish lives during the Holocaust, "I have qualms of conscience that I did so little."

This scene made me cry so hard my sister came and was like "I can hear you crying" so she sat with me as we watched the survivors and their actor counterparts lay stones on Oskar Schindler's grave. It was a very bittersweet ending.

Well, that was that. Thank you for reading my long processing(?) of this film. I don't think I processed anything really but I just needed to talk about this movie for a minute. Anyway, have a good day everyone.

Submitted November 28, 2023 at 07:36PM by homelessthought https://ift.tt/JFgHbDn