8
Thursday, February 17, 1994
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
SPIELBERG: Director comes of age with 'List'
Continued from Page 7.
"I hate it when I get that caught up in a movie, it wears you out."
It wore everyone out. The Jews and Oskar Schindler, especially. Schindler, played by Liam Neeson, was a reluctant hero, a German businessman who gathered Jewish investments and employed cheap Jewish labor to sustain a factory. Indulgent of alcohol and women to a Dionysian degree, he backs into her heroism when he realizes that, when the Jews are to be relocated to Auschwitz, he has the opportunity to save hundreds of lives. Through bribes and trickery and the help of his Jewish bookkeep-
er, played by Ben Kingsley, Schindler brings 1,100 Jews out of certain death at Auschwitz to work for him. The audience is never allowed to see whether Schindler's actions are a result of true human compassion or if they just make him feel better, but that point proves inconsequential to the results.
"He was a jerk at first. All he wanted was money.
But he wised up."
by Ralph Flenes, whose sociopathic and grotesque executions defined the mindless torture the Jews endured.
Fiennes' ruttless, paranoid performance is a breakthrough. With Neeson and Spielberg's nominations, as well as a nod in the best picture category, the film received a total of 12 nominations from the Academy. But they fell one short, in the supporting actor category. Kingsley's introverted, sardonic and somber portrayal of bookkeeper Itak Stern, who helped Schindler create the "List of Life," simmered with tranquil intensity. He is as deserving of an Oscar nod as anyone on the ballots.
"Schindler's List," for all the darkness and grusome pain, is a refreshing reminder of what Hollywood is still, however infrequently, capable of producing. Hollywood is for escapist adventures though, right? The kind Spielberg is famous for, like the Indiana Jones series or "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." Don't get me wrong, I've loved his films just like the rest of the world. But there is something more to Spielberg. Preceding his semi-auto-biographical film "Hook," the ad campaign posed the question, "What if Peter Pan grew up?" With "Schindler's List," that question is answered.
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