One might doubt that Steven Spielberg would be able to create little more than an apathetic depiction of the Holocaust, but "Schindler's List" not only tears at the heartstrings, it makes an indescribable evil digestible - putting it among the ranks of films few will ever forget.
Critics are already predicting Oscar-night success for Spielberg's film, a story about a Nazi businessman who saves thousands of Jews by employing them in his factory.
"Schindler's List," is Spielberg's first attempt at making a dramatically significant film, a fact which heightens its importance. It is a clear break from his earlier dramatically empty box-office hits like "Jurassic Park."
Spielberg takes this movie seriously. It is filmed almost entirely in black and white, and the cinematography places the audience among the frightened concentration camp victims effectively, conveying their fear and helplessness.
Indeed, the first half of the film is unbearably honest and realistic.
The Jews are first confined to a tiny ghetto in Krakow, Poland and then, in a graphic montage, are moved into labor camps.
While the Jews suffer, the Nazi businessman Oskar Schindler, played by Liam Neeson, is portrayed as a calculated man who hires Jews because they are the cheapest source of labor.
Schindler's rapport with his Jewish accountant, Itzak Stern, played by Ben Kingsley, is particularly powerful because it serves to indicate Shindler's slowly changing attitude about the Nazis.
In the beginning Schindler is a suave and cold womanizer who realizes wartime means profit time for entrepreneurs seeking great financial rewards.
After the Nazis move the Jews into a labor camp, thereby depriving Oskar of his workers, he speaks to Nazi camp commander Amon Goeth, played by Ralph Feinnes, and ventures into the increasingly dangerous game of trying to rescue the "Schindler Jews" while not appearing outwardly sympathetic.
Up to this point, the film is unflinching. Amon Goeth's charm and handsome presence make his terrifying actions - shooting random prisoners and killing a boy who wasn't able to fully clean his bathtub - seem even more monstrous.
However, Spielberg turned the last part of the movie into more of an action hero adventure.
Schindler, whose unclear motivations make the story interesting and unpredictable, became more righteous and obviously "good" as the film progresses.
Even though he always wears the Swastika lapel pin, it was evident that his motivations were lofty and the there was a constant struggle between good and evil within him.
Spielberg's later dramatic tricks and grandstanding also interfered with the plot. When a trainload of Schindler's Jews, erroneously bound for Auschwitz, are forced to take an infamous Nazi "shower" where either water or poisonous gas comes out of the pipes, Spielberg made the suspense reminiscent of an Indiana Jones scene.
But the most powerful scene of the movie is also in the later half. As a line of Jews huddled together walk down a set of stairs into a nondescript building, the camera pans upward to reveal smokestacks belching black ash into the cold, winter night. The meaning is terrifyingly clear.
In the end, Spielberg took a cue from Oliver Stone's "J.F.K." and used his hero as his own mouthpiece. Schindler, in uncharacteristic tears, cries out "I could have done more. If I only saved one more Jew."
This point is understood, we all could have done, and can do, more. And for Spielberg, this was his effort to preserve the Holocaust and make sure it never disappears from the cultural consciousness.
"Schindler's List" is an important film, and while it may not live up to its "masterpiece" billing, it is still a powerful artistic experience.
The film recently opened at the Nugget Theater.
