You can watch on Netflix a masterpiece of cinema released more than thirty years ago. Particularly moving, it is a film that you must have seen at least once in your life.
Streaming platforms are full of moving works and great cinema classics that you have to see at least once in your life. This is the case of this feature film, released in 1993 and which looks back on a dark part of international history. Directed by Steven Spielberg, Schindler’s List traces the true story of a German industrialist who arrives in Poland in the 1940s. This dive into the heart of the horror of the Shoah, (almost) entirely filmed in black and white, traces the journey of this man filled with contradictions and ambiguity, who ends up becoming aware of the horror unfolding before his eyes before, finally, acting.
The real Oskar Schindler, played by Liam Neeson, became a righteous man. It is estimated that he managed to save around 1,200 Jews from death in the Plaszow concentration camp. This historical drama, which also stars a moving Ben Kingsley and a terrifying Ralph Fiennes, is also in the American Film Institute’s Top 100 and is ranked sixth on IMDB’s list of the best films of all time.
Schindler’s List is a moving film (how can we forget the sobs of the protagonist who collapses, considering that he could have “saved so many more”?) which was a real critical and popular success. It won seven Oscars (including Best Picture and Best Director), three Golden Globes and seven BAFTAs.
Nevertheless, Schindler’s List also arouses controversy through a complex issue : can we, and should we, represent a horror such as the Shoah in cinema? ? Claude Lanzmann, director of the edifying documentary Shoahlaunches the debate in Le Monde on the 3rd March 1994. And openly attacks the film : “how [Spielberg] Can he tell what the Holocaust was by telling the story of a German who saved 1,300 Iuifs, since the overwhelming majority of Jews were not saved “He accuses Hollywood of trivializing such a historical event, “thus abolishing the uniqueness of the Holocaust.”
Steven Spielberg reacted in the columns of Le Monde in 1998 by stating that “no film, and I include Schindler’s List in the lot, no documentary, even Shoah by Claude Lanzmann, cannot decently reflect what the Jewish world in Europe endured and survived. My feeling is that I had to talk about it, or at least try.” While the debate is not definitively settled, it cannot be denied that we must continue to view these works, 80 years later, at least so as not to forget and not to reproduce the horrors of the past. Schindler’s List is available on Netflix.