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By
NICK ZEGARAC
"Schindler's List" is the engrossing masterwork about the holocaust from director, Steven Spielberg, a broad and far reaching example of all the human emotion and poignancy that motion pictures are capable of achieving under the right circumstances.
For this reviewer at least, there is a single moment worth noting in which Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes) pulls out his pistol and nonchalantly murders a Jewish engineer as she stands by the side of the road. In most cases, Hollywood has often had a way of glamorizing such acts so that they appear staged for the camera. But in this case, the sudden loss of life is handled with such meticulous craftsmanship that for a moment the viewer becomes overwrought in what appears to be a very genuine and sudden loss of human life. Of course, the film is not centered on Goeth but on Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) a German industrialist who, along with his Jewish book keeper, Itzak Stern (Ben Kingsley) sets out to rescue hundreds of Jews from their fate at the concentration camps by employing them in his factory right under the Nazis noses. Neeson's performance is perhaps a bit too subdued to be believed, excelling more as the faux Nazi sympathizer than the hero that he actually was. The visceral score by John Williams brings all the plot elements together with a tragic musical crescendo.
The DVD transfer is, for the most part, very nicely balanced. The black and white picture exhibits a solid gray scale with deep blacks. Film grain seems a bit excessive during the latter half of the movie with background information breaking apart because of sometimes excessive pixelization, edge enhancement and shimmering of fine details.
The audio is 5.1 surround and exhibits a very rich and nicely spread sound field with considerable bass. Universal has made "Schindler's List" available as both a 2-disc bare bones edition and a box set.
Extras on the 2-disc edition are a real disappointment, with only a modest documentary and some junket material. There's not even a collector's booklet included. Also, the hard cover packaging is awkward to store. The deluxe edition contains considerably more in the way of extra features and comes in a handsome box. It is also three times the money of the 2-disc edition. |
