Schindler's List (1993)
Spielberg's depiction of the holocaust is surprisingly uneven and too manipulative. It's like he didn't trust his viewers to have correct feelings and went overboard with melodrama. A film can rarely move from greatness to awkwardness with such fluidity as Schindler's List.
This unevenness affects everything. At times the black and white cinematography is stunning (mostly during the outdoor shots), but many scenes look overexposed and grainy and poorly lit. Horrifying moments of infernal beauty (like the arrival of the women's train to Auschwitz) mixed with too much underlining (like the endless litanies of names to emphasize that the jews were actual people) is another pair. And that girl in a red dress just didn't fit.
Perhaps the biggest issue for me was the language. It was a total mess of proper English and weirdly accented English with German nouns mixed in (this reminds me of something like the old Commando comics, not a highly esteemed movie like this). In addition to that, most of the extras spoke German or Polish or Hebrew in the background. I can't understand why the whole film wasn't done in correct languages (with other actors, if necessary) or at least in proper English throughout. The annoyance was further amplified by the inconsistency due to no subs for the non-English parts.
Regardless of the issues, Schindler's List is a good movie (albeit barely). The melodrama doesn't hamper its effectiveness too much, and in general, the positives outweigh the negatives. The language issue is the only one without any redeeming factors. I still think it's overvalued film, but perhaps the topic makes it hard for people to be critical.
Spielberg's depiction of the holocaust is surprisingly uneven and too manipulative. It's like he didn't trust his viewers to have correct feelings and went overboard with melodrama. A film can rarely move from greatness to awkwardness with such fluidity as Schindler's List.
This unevenness affects everything. At times the black and white cinematography is stunning (mostly during the outdoor shots), but many scenes look overexposed and grainy and poorly lit. Horrifying moments of infernal beauty (like the arrival of the women's train to Auschwitz) mixed with too much underlining (like the endless litanies of names to emphasize that the jews were actual people) is another pair. And that girl in a red dress just didn't fit.
Perhaps the biggest issue for me was the language. It was a total mess of proper English and weirdly accented English with German nouns mixed in (this reminds me of something like the old Commando comics, not a highly esteemed movie like this). In addition to that, most of the extras spoke German or Polish or Hebrew in the background. I can't understand why the whole film wasn't done in correct languages (with other actors, if necessary) or at least in proper English throughout. The annoyance was further amplified by the inconsistency due to no subs for the non-English parts.
Regardless of the issues, Schindler's List is a good movie (albeit barely). The melodrama doesn't hamper its effectiveness too much, and in general, the positives outweigh the negatives. The language issue is the only one without any redeeming factors. I still think it's overvalued film, but perhaps the topic makes it hard for people to be critical.