Spent more than 2 and half hours this evening watching Schindler's List (based on a book by Thomas Keneally). To say the least, it was an extremely well crafted movie that deserved each and every one of the awards it won.
The movie itself serves an important purpose: it reminds us of the depths of human misery and the cruelty that mankind can inflict on its own species. It also reminds us of the positive side of the human condition; for every evil that we commit, there will good to balance it out. The human civilization is about balance, and this movie demonstrates through historical fact how that balance often comes at an incredibly high price.
The best movie of 1993. One of the best of all time?
By my standards, a movie is good if it is able to make me think, the better the movie, the longer i will think about the issues presented in the movie. What i'm thinking about now is, "Why the Jews?"
All sorts of bad stuff has happened to the Jewish people: they got kicked out of Egypt thousands of years ago. More recently, 6 million of them were exterminated in the Holocaust. Today, Jews are locked in a mortal conflict with the Palestinians; thousands of both sideas have been killed. War, death, destruction seems to follow this unfortunate section of humanity wherever it goes. Is it through any fault of theirs that this is so? Why does all the bad stuff seem to disproportionately happen to them?
Maybe, this does explain (though it does not in any way excuse) their staunch defence of their position in the Middle East. Throughout their history, they've been persecuted and kicked about. From their perspective, their actions in the Middle East, including the killing of women and children, are all part of a self-defense mechanism. We may not care for their methods, but looking at their history, can we begrudge their reasons and intentions?
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