'Schindler's List'

Schindler's List drives my friend Rajesh batty. It basically comes down to the scene when the Crakow ghetto is being liquidated as Liam Neeson's Oskar Schindler looks on on horseback on an adjacent hillside.

In it, Schindler sees a small girl roaming away from the screaming Nazi soldiers and panicking Jewish settlers. The entire film is black and white except for the flame on a candle in one scene and the dull red jacket of this little girl.

Later, as the Nazis are burning a mountain of unearthed bodies, Schindler sees the red jacket of the little girl on a cart.

In reality, the girl in the red coat was probably based on one of two real people: Roma Ligocka, who was known for wearing her red jacket in the Crakow ghetto; or a girl shot by a Nazi during the liquidation remembered by survivor Zelig Burkhut. The difference being Ligocka survived he Holocaust and the other girls didn't.

My friend Rajesh contends that it's low hanging fruit. I counter that that's what Steven Spielberg does. He makes really great films, but muddies them up with slap-you-in-your-face symbolism. He makes great, poignant films for idiots.

I agree, to a point. It doesn't ruin the film. The girl in the red coat and the little boy that hides in the latrines amid the shit and piss and looks up into the light from outside are the lasting images of this film, and yet they compose an extremely small part of the film. It's like hating Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom because you hate large rolling boulders.

If you wanted someone or something to represent this film, it'd be the fantastic Ralph Fiennes, who is utterly breathtaking as Amon Göth, the psychotic SS officer, commandant of Schindler's concentration camp and general foil for Schindler's hero.

Göth's portrayal took criticism because it was wrong to represent Nazis as simple sociopaths as explaining away the Holocaust to that of some evil men and just not guys that hated and killed was wrong. Also, Schindler was nowhere near the saint that he's even represented in the film, although he is still regarded as kind of a womaniser, profiteer and drunk. He was all those things times 100 in real life and probably didn't deserve near the respect that he received had true intentions been known.

There are better films and books about the Holocaust and Schindler. However, Spielberg's film brought this horrific period right into the living rooms of almost every American and made them realized that this happened, that it was real. It did more for educating people about the Holocaust than every book or film about the Holocaust ever did.