Austin American-Statesman from Austin, Texas • 69

This section is-recyclable 14; 1994 i Austih Amfef ieantStatesmaiy" -'5 SpDDo)(S Visually daring film tells riveting story about Holocaust 1 1 a i i. German businessman Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson, on the platform) will be safe, at least temporarily, from the certain death of the concen-greets the Jewish workers who arrive at his new factory, where they tration camps established by the German government. Film review Schindler's List By Michael MacCambridge American-Statesman Staff fter the bombastic summer 1 1 blockbuster Jurassic Park, the best thing you could say about Steven Spielberg's skills in directing actors was that he certainly had a way with anima-tronic characters. From Jaws to E.T. to Jurassic, Spielberg has made a career out of gaining lifelike performances from latex creations.

But with the exception of the terrifically scripted Raiders of the Lost Ark, he has fallen short with humans. Here's a director who managed to make even Robin Williams (in Hook) seem bland on screen. With that in mind, Spielberg's daz-zlingly modulated epic Schindler's List is nothing less than astonishing. The eternal child, whose recent work has consistently descended to the maudlin, has made a riveting film the greatest of this still young decade about an event so colossal in its evil, that it seemed ready-made to bring out the worst in Spielberg. Instead, it brought out the best.

Based on Thomas Keneally's biographical novel of the same name, the film tells the true story of Oskar Schindler, an oft-failed German businessman and Nazi party member who came to Krakow to make his fortune during the Nazis' occupation of Poland. He succeeded by using unpaid Jewish workers in an enamelware factory to contribute to the Nazi war effort. Eventually, he developed an empathy for his employees and wound up helping to deliver more than 1,000 of them to safety, sparing them certain death in the ovens of Auschwitz. As played by Liam Neeson, Schindler is something of a rakish lout. A shade too polished, he's first seen preparing for a night out on the occupied town.

By slyly insinuating himself to the most powerful Nazi party members in the city, he earns their trust, friendship and more importantly to him their cooperation in his business pursuits. With the Nazi hierarchy's approval, Schindler employs the imprisoned Jews of Krakow to run his factory. They relish the opportunity for the most pragmatic of reasons: being part of the war effort makes them "essential" and, for the time being, increases their chances of avoiding being sent to the oven. The power of Keneally's novel is the way it uses real-life experiences to humanize an event so vast in scope as to be intellectually paralyzing. Working from the deftly understated screenplay of Steven Zaillian, Spielberg presents the saga alternately in broad contour and intimate focus.

In so doing, the chilling nature of the larger story (summary executions in the Plaszow forced- "A lk 7 some critics have wondered if we really need another film about the Holocaust. But the only logical answer to this is yes if it's this inspired and powerful. (For that matter, with the collective memory of American society being what it is, we could probably stand another film about the Khmer Rouge.) Visually, this is Spielberg's most original and daring effort. Working frequently hand-held cameras, he lends a documentary immediacy to the haunting black-and-white cinematography of Janusz Kaminski (the hand-held shots possess the ragged energy of early Spike Lee, a sure sign that Spielberg's been keeping up with the cutting edge). One shot, of a young boy looking up in horror from the bottom of a latrine where he's hiding from Nazi soldiers, is one of the most memorable and haunting images I've ever seen on film.

The film isn't perfect. Even Fiennes' nuanced take on Goeth lapses occasionally into cliche. And a crucial late scene in which Schindler breaks down into tears when bidding farewell to the Jews he's saved smacks of all the most sentimental elements of Spielberg's recent oeuvres. But Spielberg doesn't end the film there, instead employing a moving coda that crystallizes Schindler's remarkable legacy. In the end, the film works its magic in the most elemental ways: it gives the audience a sense of the horror of a specific moment in history (and the ensuing human courage in the face of it).

I've sat through 4' hours of Marcel Ophuls' The Sorrow and the Pity and 814 hours of Claude Lanzmann's Shoah. Both documentaries were powerful and involving, but neither struck with the searing immediacy of Spielberg's picture. Stars: Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley Director: Steven Spielberg MPAA rating: Theaters: Arbor 7 and Highland 1 0 Critic's rating: labor camp, an extended and monumentally staged segment showing the evacuation of the Krakow ghetto) is underscored by the vivid, unforgettable recreations of the starkly personal (Schindler winds up playing a single game of blackjack to determine the fate of one woman's life). When starting the enterprise, Schindler needs a liaison to the Jewish community and finds one in the mild-mannered accountant Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley). The unassuming Stern keeps the books and advises his new boss about the circuitous politics of the Plaszow camp, always cognizant of the absurd nature of his own condition.

In Plaszow, a young SS commandant, Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), is engaged in a systematic attempt to crush the will and spirit of the Jewish prisoners. The handsome Goeth is filled with all the blind contradictions of the Nazi quest. Fiennes plays the character as casually cruel rather than droolingly sadistic, and in so doing overturns several decades of stock Nazi villain characterizations. For Schindler to succeed, he must keep Goeth on his good side. And as the industrialist slowly starts to care about the people who work for him, that becomes increasingly difficult to do.

Director Steven Spielberg did not let the gravity of the subject prevent him from making Schindler's List a compelling film. This probably would have been a great film with any number of actors in the lead role, but Neeson is a compelling choice. As in 1992's Husbands and Wives, he presents a character who is convincingly earnest, blind to the larger irony of social situations. The moment of Schindler's realization on a hill overlooking the Krakow ghetto as Nazi troops engage in a brutal roundup of all Jews to the Plaszow camp is made all the more vivid by his blithe ignorance of his employees' hardships earlier in the film. While the film is undeniably powerful,.