I 've been watching Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List (1993), which was adapted from Thomas Keneally's 1982 biographic novel (Schindler's Ark) by Steven Zaillian. I've only got through disc 1. I'm finding the shots masterfully set up and executed and I'm not reacting to the Hollywood style of the manipulation of emotions.There are no contrived Hollywood scenes so far. I did find the 'no resistance' interpretation of the Warsaw ghetto disturbing. This film isn't the impersonal eye of history looking on unblinking and dispassionate.

I'm finding the film a profoundly shocking epic of the Holocaust. Spielberg's a very skilful filmmaker in the way that he links his Holocaust interpretation to a complicated-yet-simple redemption tale and primordial experiences. It is Janusz Kaminski's startling, rich, evocative black and white cinematography that gives the film its depth. It places the l trauma of the Holocaust into a narrative structure.

This is a way of grappling with the legacy of the Holocaust--but it is more than the Hollywood Version of the Holocaust and it is not entertainment. The film is shot almost entirely in black and white (with a color prologue and epilogue, a red coat in two scenes, and color candle flames in another). It's a Hollywood-style art movie that is understated and enables -us to remember the Holocaust, why we supported the formation of Israel after the war, and indicates the core of Jewish identity.