Schindler's List returning to theaters for 25th anniversary

[TheUlyssesian 2,473]

I am in (greater) NYC so this will 100% get a release here. I am thinking if I want to go see it.

 

To be completely honest I was overwhelmed when I saw it is a teenager. But as time passes, I think less and less of it. It remains a film-making achievement in the technical sense, dazzlingly direction and editing and cinematography and mis-en-scene and staging and production (and score). But it is also schmaltzy and a lot of hokum and gives in to Spielberg's worst tendencies by the end.

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

5 minutes ago, Disco Stu said:

 

I knew you'd say something about that.  As soon as I read it yesterday.  Surprised it took you this long!

 

I didn't see the tagline until Nick1066 pointed it out.

 

Serious question, though!

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Its gonna happen again!

[Disco Stu 15,495]

Just now, Cherry Pie That'll Kill Ya said:

 

I didn't see the tagline until Nick1066 pointed it out.

 

Serious question, though!

 

See my post above 

[TheUlyssesian 2,473]

2 minutes ago, Stefancos said:

 

No it is not!

 

It is. Absolutely everything these days is about per person. I see an otherwise excellent movie the other day - BlackkKlansman, and there too I can't escape. 

[KK 3,307]

Awful tagline. Feels exploitative.

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

3 minutes ago, Stefancos said:

Its gonna happen again!

 

 

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

No!

[JoeinAR 1,949]

Have they colorized it or converted it to 3D?  If not why see it again.

[Disco Stu 15,495]

Classic Joe Take

[Luke Skywalker 1,793]

Not just antisemitism, but the rise of extreme right party polítics in some countries in recent years.

[Nick1Ø66 4,689]

There has indeed been a rise in anti-semitism. And the world in many ways is in a dangerous time (in other ways, however, things are better than ever). 

 

I just think using such language with regards to a film, no matter how good or the subject matter, is a little self-important and pretentious. The "more than ever" sentiment is a little suspect as well. 

 

I'd rather have seen something reflecting the importance of the film itself...or if we must engage in such over-seriousness, then something reflecting the event itself...e.g instead of "more than ever", simply "Never Again".

 

48 minutes ago, Cherry Pie That'll Kill Ya said:

 

I didn't see the tagline until Nick1066 pointed it out.

 

 

Did you miss the girl in red also?

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

6 minutes ago, Nick1066 said:

Did you miss the girl in red also?

 

 

[Disco Stu 15,495]

Anyway, it's just a poster tagline.

[crocodile 7,990]

36 minutes ago, JoeinAR said:

Have they colorized it or converted it to 3D?  If not why see it again.

Finally, the technology has caught up with Spielberg's original vision. 

 

Karol

 

 

[Nick1Ø66 4,689]

 

1 minute ago, Disco Stu said:

Anyway, it's just a poster tagline.

 

Well, yes. And it's just a film!

 

That's my point my dear fellow.

[Disco Stu 15,495]

Why didn't Spielberg get Chris De Burgh to write the theme song?

[SteveMc 2,674]

Just now, Disco Stu said:

Why didn't Spielberg get Chris De Burgh to write the theme song?

[Gruesome Son of a Bitch 6,488]

It's one of Spielberg's funniest movies despite the subject matter. He felt it necessary to load it with black humor. Schindler waving goodbye to his wife on the train may be the single funniest moment in any SS movie. And Ralph Fiennes whenever he's not picking off people from his deck is the hammiest character ever. Even his execution was played for laughs and it didn't even happen that way.

[Holko 9,499]

2 hours ago, TheUlyssesian said:

as time passes, I think less and less of it. It remains a film-making achievement in the technical sense, dazzlingly direction and editing and cinematography and mis-en-scene and staging and production (and score). But it is also schmaltzy and a lot of hokum and gives in to Spielberg's worst tendencies by the end.

 

Kind of the same here. I watched it two days ago and think the earlier scenes are much, much stronger, the ghetto especially. I think a major weakness is how apart from Itzhak naturally, and maybe Helen who has 2-3 scenes, all the jews are relegated to at best a few sentences in one scene, then maybe passing in a shot or two afterwards. They're kind of just objects to help Schindler grow into a saintly angel. If there were a bunch of 3-dimensional characters we follow closely and perhaps see some fall along the way (a family and a few friends or something) instead of a crowd of faceless and personalityless (please forgive this crude use of words) bullet- or furnace-fodder with a few featured extras like the police guy who was in the church in the beginning, or the girl with the glasses thrown in, we could have seen both sides and have had attachments to both. Of course it's still effective to see people suffer needlessly but what if the engineer, the boy who hides in the toilet or a person Göth shoots for fun was someone we knew since the first 10 minutes?

 

Yeah, the humour is weird, too. I like the wife cut, it doesn't detract and helps add just a little levity in. The gun jamming is where I can't decide whether to laugh or not, and it was probably intended to be that way. It would fit into Monty Python, but in a Holocaust context I'm not sure it was necessary.

[Jay 37,323]

The film originally had some of that, actually:

 

Quote

the score also contains a prominent role for solo violin, which is played on the soundtrack by Itzhak Perlman. Williams had already planned to write something for violin, and hoped to enlist Perlman, before he had seen the film. He was taking his cue from a line in the development of the script that Spielberg subsequently decided to drop. At one point a Jewish violinist briefly glimpsed entertaining in the German Officer’s Club was to become a more prominent character than he did in the end; he was to speak of his disgust at having to entertain the invaders.

 

https://www.jwfan.com/?page_id=4549

[TheUlyssesian 2,473]

1 hour ago, Holko said:

 

Kind of the same here. I watched it two days ago and think the earlier scenes are much, much stronger, the ghetto especially. I think a major weakness is how apart from Itzhak naturally, and maybe Helen who has 2-3 scenes, all the jews are relegated to at best a few sentences in one scene, then maybe passing in a shot or two afterwards. They're kind of just objects to help Schindler grow into a saintly angel. If there were a bunch of 3-dimensional characters we follow closely and perhaps see some fall along the way (a family and a few friends or something) instead of a crowd of faceless and personalityless (please forgive this crude use of words) bullet- or furnace-fodder with a few featured extras like the police guy who was in the church in the beginning, or the girl with the glasses thrown in, we could have seen both sides and have had attachments to both. Of course it's still effective to see people suffer needlessly but what if the engineer, the boy who hides in the toilet or a person Göth shoots for fun was someone we knew since the first 10 minutes?

  

 Yeah, the humour is weird, too. I like the wife cut, it doesn't detract and helps add just a little levity in. The gun jamming is where I can't decide whether to laugh or not, and it was probably intended to be that way. It would fit into Monty Python, but in a Holocaust context I'm not sure it was necessary.

 

That is a major shortcoming. It basically treats the Jews as victims and as a monolith. They are extras in a movie about their historical cultural sociological and life experience. It is a bracing film, but still a little bit Hollywood. It needed more sobriety. 

 

I don't want it to seem like I am dunking on it too much though. I do like it. I think it is a noble and courageous attempt. And it is definitely very well made. But it is not Spielberg's masterpiece or even close to his best film. Its reputation is definitely inflated due to its subject matter.

[Naïve Old Fart 9,508]

@TheUlyssesian, dunk on it, as much as you like, it's only a movie.

Although there are several pieces of work that, IMO, chronicle the historical treatment of Jews, far better than SL, I might just go and watch this, for shits and giggles, and for Ralph Feinnes.

[Holko 9,499]

2 hours ago, TheUlyssesian said:

I don't want it to seem like I am dunking on it too much though. I do like it. I think it is a noble and courageous attempt.

 

Exactly the reason I didn't write this out in the movies thread at first, there's a ton that's great about it, but overall to me it fails to live up to its supposed status of "THE piece of media about the Holocaust". I'd immediately place Maus above it in that regard.

[TheUlyssesian 2,473]

19 minutes ago, Holko said:

 

Exactly the reason I didn't write this out in the movies thread at first, there's a ton that's great about it, but overall to me it fails to live up to its supposed status of "THE piece of media about the Holocaust". I'd immediately place Maus above it in that regard.

 

Shoah is the defining documentation of the Holocaust for me.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Schindler's List is about the survivors. Shoah is about those who didn't.

[Gruesome Son of a Bitch 6,488]

It's not really about the survivors, it's about a chain-smoking womanizing war profiteer hanging out with a psychotic drunken frat boy and realizing that the murder of millions of innocent people is wrong.

[Disco Stu 15,495]

27 minutes ago, Horner's Dynamic Range said:

It's not really about the survivors, it's about a chain-smoking womanizing war profiteer hanging out with a psychotic drunken frat boy and realizing that the murder of millions of innocent people is wrong.

 

That... sounds like a great story for a movie

[Corellian2019 384]

What do people think about The Pianist?

[Disco Stu 15,495]

I remember liking it in ‘03 but I haven’t seen it since

[Naïve Old Fart 9,508]

4 hours ago, Corellian2019 said:

What do people think about The Pianist?

Holly Hunter is hot, in that movie.

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

6 minutes ago, Richard said:

Holly Hunter is hot, in that movie.

 

Oh fuck yeah. Nice tits in that one.

[Cerebral Cortex 3,357]

15 hours ago, KK said:

Awful tagline. Feels exploitative.

 

I see a lot of people talking about the tagline but surprisingly nobody has mentioned the tasteless Ready Player One credit. 

 

[Dixon Hill 4,233]

Will they replace the score with a superior selection for this screening?

[Incanus 5,713]

3 hours ago, TGP said:

Will they replace the score with a superior selection for this screening?

Yeah all score will be replaced by music tracked from Back to the Future.

[Gruesome Son of a Bitch 6,488]

A Steven Spielberg movie that isn't terrible, that the world needs now more than ever.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Yeah, because The Post and RP1 are truly awful movies!

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

They're nothing special.

[Disco Stu 15,495]

I like The Post a lot

[Nick1Ø66 4,689]

Spielberg doesn't make terrible movies. Never has.

 

It's just that these days he dwells in the land of the merely good rather than the truly great (and Schindler's List is unquestionably the latter).

[Gruesome Son of a Bitch 6,488]

Compared to himself in the past, yes. Yes, he does make terrible movies.

[Naïve Old Fart 9,508]

14 hours ago, TGP said:

Will they replace the score with a superior selection for this screening?

 

"Music From And Inspired By Schindler's List".

Featuring all-time classics as:

YOU CAN'T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT,

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST,

FIRE,

LEAVING ON A JET PLANE,

and BELSEN WAS A GAS.

[Nick1Ø66 4,689]

24 minutes ago, Richard said:

 

"Music From And Inspired By Schindler's List".

Featuring all-time classics as:

YOU CAN'T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT,

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST,

FIRE,

LEAVING ON A JET PLANE,

and BELSEN WAS A GAS.

 

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

So this movie is on tele right now and they're up to making the list, and I can't help thinking if these events were happening today, it'd be called Schindler's Excel Spreadsheet.

[Naïve Old Fart 9,508]

The spreadsheet is an absolute good. All around the laptop, lies the gulf.

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

Why were the firing mechanisms in Goeth's guns failing when he wanted to shoot that hinge maker bloke?

[Naïve Old Fart 9,508]

Artistic licence...or did it really happen?

[Unlucky Bastard 7,782]

I pardon you.

[Incanus 5,713]

3 hours ago, Richard said:

Artistic licence...or did it really happen?

That scene comes straight from Keneally's book. It actually happened. Levartov was saved by the incredible coincidence that Amon Goeth's both weapons were faulty.

[SteveMc 2,674]

Truth is stranger than fiction.