
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, January 22, 1994                   TAG: 9401220164
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: B-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By KENNETH TURAN LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: HOLLYWOOD                                LENGTH: Medium

`LIST' IS DEVASTATINGLY DIFFERENT

To approach the Holocaust from a dramatic point of view, detachment and self-control almost to the point of coldness are essential. Only through the lens of restraint can those days be effectively seen, as Steven Spielberg, of all people, persuasively demonstrates with the quietly devastating "Schindler's List."

Of all people, because rather than detachment and restraint it is the broad strokes of obvious heroes and hissable villains that have characterized much of Spielberg's output. But the director, with emotional ties to the world of Eastern European Jewry, clearly hungered to do something different here.

Not only is the subject matter different for Spielberg, the way it is treated is a departure both for him and for the business as usual standards of major studio releases. While its length is becoming familiar for prestige items, the decision to shoot it almost entirely in black-and-white is very much not, and neither is its absence of major stars.

And "Schindler's List," based on Thomas Keneally's remarkable retelling of a true story, is itself a different kind of Holocaust narrative. For if the pressure of overwhelming death and even the release of miraculous rescue have become standard fare, the dramatic, contradictory personality of Oskar Schindler has never ceased to baffle observers from his time to ours.

A gambler, war profiteer, lover of alcohol and womanizer, Schindler, the quintessential good German, was not the ordinary stuff of heroes. Yet, with a combination of nerve, money, attitude and obstinacy, he personally saved 1,100 Jews from death.

Things begin in September 1939, with Germany's defeat of Poland in two brief weeks. The country's Jews are ordered to relocate in Krakow, and the chaos that decree caused is shown through arrival scenes at the train station, with Germans brandishing the first of the all-important lists that reappear throughout the film, lists that can literally separate life from death.

One of those men who instinctively knows how to profit from the chaos of war, Schindler (Irish actor Liam Neeson) has come to Krakow to make his fortune. Simply indifferent to who is a Jew and who is not, he decides to take over a formerly Jewish-owned enamelware factory and hires Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley) to run it with cheap Jewish labor while he himself does the important work of schmoozing and bribing the military men in charge of procurement for the German army.

At first everything about Schindler's relationship to the Jews is situational. But after witnessing the Germans' brutal liquidation of the ghetto, and the relocation of those that survived in a savage labor camp run by Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), a cold, unblinking sadist, Schindler's attitude is shown to change, and keeping what he territorially considers "his Jews" alive at all costs becomes the focus of his activities.

The touchstone of "Schindler's List" is inevitably the way it depicts the incomprehensible brutality that took place under the Nazi heel. The danger here is to overemphasize, to yield to emotion and underline the horrors, a temptation Spielberg, who gave way to it in "The Color Purple," has managed to resist this time around. Schindler's List:

A Universal Pictures release showing at Tanglewood Mall. Rated R for violence, language, some sexuality. 196 minutes

Note: Because the film arrived late to the theater, we were unable to have a staff-written review of "Schindler's List" in time for publication.

by CNB