Schindler's List (2003)

Few people who have seen the movie can forget the experiences and depth to which humanity can sink (and rise). For people who are not so aware of what the Holocaust was about, or about the horrors perpetrated by the Nazis on the Jews (and on Russians, Homosexuals, Gypsies, and others), the movie brought details in great detail. Using Black & White almost throughout the movie somehow seemed to convey scenes of horror and despair more brutally and clearly.
The film was first offered to Martin Scorcese, and then Roman Polanksi, but then it came to Steven Spielberg, for whom this sort of movie was very different. Steve Spielberg was already known as a gifted and accomplished director, but his movies were more thrillers or science oriented movies (such as Jaws, ET, Indian Jones, Close Encounters of the Third Kind); and here was this subject (based on the book Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally) about the Holocaust and the genocide directed by the Nazis, primarily at the Jewish population of Europe.



It is calculated that the 'Final Solution' propounded by the Nazis (Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich, Eichmann, etc) in the early stages of the War killed 6 million Jews in Europe during the course of the war. The Nazis were very systematic and documented everything that they did, and their solution of identifying Jews, separating from the rest of the population, and the concentration camps (that used industrial efficiency mass gas chambers) were a solution for mass murder that humankind was not able to visualize. Even though Western Europe and America knew that Jews were being victimized, the level of killings became known only when the concentration camps were over-run by Russian and American soldiers after the fall of the Nazis, and the true story came to light.
In the midst of this state-directed terror where the civilian population mostly stood by and let mass-murder happen (and Europe had gone through repeated bursts of anti-semitism including mass pogroms in Russia), there are stories of people who shed their normal beliefs and played heroic parts in saving people. One of them was Oskar Schindler. His role in saving around 1,100 Jews from being murdered was recognized and he was in fact feted in Israel in 1958, but the story was never very famous. And then came this movie. The movie did not shy away from presenting his negative points; he was a womanizer and unfaithful to his wife, he did not shirk away from setting up his factory using funds almost forced from the rich Jews who had been forced to live in the ghettos, he exploited Jewish workers, he bribed his way through the Nazi machinery; but all those are human weaknesses when compared with the super-human role he played in bribing the Nazi machinery in order to save 1,100 Jews by getting them employed in his factory. He fought for each worker, sometimes going to great distances to save them when they were mistakenly taken away. At some point during the killings, the impact of the genocide made him a person who was determined to use his cleverness and guile to save people.
And it is this portrayal of a complex person, but one who eventually spent everything he had in order to save people that makes this a great movie. Schindler's List was both critically acclaimed and a commercial success. The movie earned over $320 million compared to the $25 million that was spent, and also earned the movie 7 Oscars including the most important ones - Best Picture and Best Director. The 2 great performances of the movie - Liam Neeson playing Oskar Schindler and Ralph Fiennes playing the brutal SS officer Amon Goth (later caught after the war and hanged for crimes against humanity) were both nominated for Academy Awards, but did not win.
The movie is essentially about Oskar Schindler, out to make an opportunity from the war effort. He sees that war will need supplies, and he proposes to supply crockery to the army; with funding and labour from the oppressed Jews. Through a measure of drinking and fraternizing with the Nazis, he succeeds in getting started; he is not great at running his business but has some excellent support from Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley in a fine role) who is a gifted accountant. Running parallel is the horror story of the German Army marching through Poland, defeating the Polish Army within 2 weeks, and starting the first steps of the repression and murder (ordering the Jewish community to assemble in major cities such as Krakow and live in ghettos from where they will soon be marched off to concentration camps) that will become to be known as the 'Holocaust'. Getting papers stamped with a certificate of being an 'essential' worker will save a person, and that is what Schindler promises.
You see Schindler weaving in between the Nazi machinery, using a mixture of bravado and bribes to get what he wants; and woven in between are the brutalities; a group of SS men shoot a one-armed worker declaring him as useless, the Camp Commandment orders people killed when he feels like it or takes a rifle and randomly shoots a prisoner (with blood staining the snow dead), there is the sorting of items picked from Jews sent to the concentration camps (including jewellery, valuables, teeth with gold fillings, you get the idea), the horror of women being separated from their children. Schindler soon gets obsessed with the idea of saving his workers, and by the end of the war, he has managed to navigate the Nazi bureaucracy enough to save more than a 1,000 people.
This is a cold brutal movie that does not hesitate to show the darkest nature of what humans can turn into, but it also shows the essential humanity of a person from whom such actions were not expected. Schindler's List is a must-watch movie, even though it has been a long time since it was released.

Memento (2000) - A great movie

You might find this movie confusing in the beginning. After all, the movie, about a person with a medical condition in which his brain can store no new memories, runs in 2 alternating sequences. One of these sequences is in color, and the other in black and white. The color sequences, in reverse chronological order, depict his investigation into how he came to be into this condition that he is in as well as who killed his wife during a burglary; while the black and white sequence records his speaking with an anonymous phone caller in a hotel room. These 2 alternating sequences converge near the end of the movie into a color sequence.
Now, such a movie might sound confusing; but it is actually a great movie. It requires a great amount of thought and courage to make such a movie, and if done well, it can seem like a breath of fresh air from all the normal thrillers and romances that one sees. However, this same aspect of trying to tell the tale of the movie in the form of these 2 separate narratives can seem strange as well, and there are questions about whether the intention of the director was to actually propound the sequence method and be praised for this new effort, or did he actually feel that this method of telling the tale would actually be the best way ?



Making such a movie means that the background of the story creation is also a bit different, and so it was in this case. The movie was directed by Christopher Nolan, and the story arose during a cross-country trip in July 1996 by the brothers Christopher and Jonathan Nolan. Jonathan narrated the story idea, and Christopher liked the idea; pretty soon (in a few months) they were discussing a draft and although the actual movie was different from the story by Jonathan in some aspects, key elements were maintained.
The movie was shot at a very fast clip, from the period of September 7 to October 8, 1999 (a 25 day shooting schedule). After hunting for actors from Brad Pitt onwards, they settled for a non-celebrity Guy Pierce for the main role. The other 2 actors were taken from the just-hit Matrix, Carrie-Anne Moss and Joe Pantoliano, and they were set to go.
There were some complications in filming since the script called for some of the scenes to flow in a reverse direction, and doing so for scenes where bullets and shell casings (that move at high speeds) were involved was tricky, doable, but more tricky.
The word "memento" means "remember" in Latin, and that is the crux of the movie. Here is this guy Leonard, who was injured on the head during a burglary, and now suffers from a condition known as 'anterograde amnesia', a condition that prevents his brain from forming new memories after the burglary. His wife was raped and killed during the burglary, and he wants his revenge on the killers (he killed one of them during the burglary, but was attacked by the second one and he now wants to hunt for the second one). But how do you do that if you can't remember anything for more than a few minutes, if you can't remember whether the person you met was a person you met earlier in the day or yesterday ?
How Leonard attempts to solve this problem is through a system of notes, a Polaroid 690 camera and the most important information to be tattooed on his body. In scenes, you will see his slight frame covered with tattoos (information), and that is a chilling reminder of the condition he is in.
How does the chronology of the movie work ? Well, there are alternating black and white, and color scenes showing different parts, and so:
When numbering the scenes chronologically, then sorting them how they appear in the film, the pattern becomes more clear. The letters A-V will represent the color scenes (with A happening chronologically first, and V chronologically last), and the numbers 1-22 represent the black and white scenes chronologically. The scenes appear in the film like this:
1, V, 2, U, 3, T, 4, S, 5, R, 6, Q...20, C, 21, B, 22/A
So the two types of scenes alternate. The black and white scenes (numbers) start from the very beginning soon after the injury, and work forward to the climax at 22/A, while the color scenes (letters) work backward from the climax at 22/A. The climax scene (22/A) changes to color halfway through, showing the convergence of the two interlain storylines. The order of the scenes creates confusion in the viewer, just as Leonard is confused, and the climax being in the middle of the chronological story causes a sense of intersection, one forward from the beginning, and one from the end backward.
Overall, this is a movie that grips you, forces you to remain hooked, and if you feel the need to watch a movie different from the others, then this is the movie for you.

Payback: A dark anti-hero character

Payback (both the original (released in 1995) and the new released version (released in 2005)) are dark movies. The new released version portrays a character whose characterization is even colder and darker than in the 1999 movie. The tagline for the movie says it all: "Get ready to root for the bad guy". This is quite literally true as you see a guy, who deceived his wife, and in turn was deceived by her and his partner during a robbery and for good measure, gets shot by them and left for dead, coming back to get his share of money.
The interesting part of this movie was how the original movie by director 'Brian Helgeland' was rejected as too dark, brutal and anti-hero by the distributors and the studio, Paramount and Warner Brothers, and 30% of the movie was re-shot by John Myhre who re-shot 30% of the movie with the aim to make Mel Gibson more palatable to the audience in a funnier and more likable role. The original portrayal was deemed such that it would turn off audiences from the character. Eventually, the director was allowed to re-make the movie the way he wanted and it was re-released in 2007 in the way that the director intended.



The movie was never that popular, but it is a great movie. The story-telling is incredible, and even though you know the lead character of Mel Gibson is essentially a bad guy in addition to being tough and brutal, you follow the character and his adventures, and you may end up rooting for him to be successful. The new release improves the movie to some extent by removing Mel Gibson's voice-over, forcing more emphasis on the screen play and the evolution of the character and the story.
The movie is all about revenge, and the determination of a guy who has been wronged. He will withstand torture, use his base cleverness and ruthlessness to get out of tricky situations and continue moving on, with hardly a redeeming feature. The only time when you get to see much of humanity is when he is with his former lover where he shows some emotions and feelings (but not that many). The only other time he shows emotion is when he is being tortured to reveal information, and even in that, he takes a huge risk.
Now, about the original movie storyline (since I saw that first). (If you feel that your suspense about the movie will get affected, stop reading whenever you feel). The movie is about this character called Porter (played by Mel Gibson). You never get any other name, just Porter. Porter at one time was a driver to a call girl called Rosie (Maria Bello) and developed an intimate relationship with her; something that his wife Lynn (played by Deborah Kara Unger) discovered later and which led to his downfall.
In order to earn some money, Porter plans a holdup of a Chinese mafia related operation (an extraordinary dangerous thing to hold up another mafia operation since they would not take kindly to it) with his friend Val Resnick (played by Gregg Henry). The operation is simple, ram their car, beat the shit out of them and take the money. Unfortunately for Porter, both his friend and his wife betray him and shoot him twice (and leave him for dead).
However, they should have confirmed his death. He survived, but does not remember too much except for his identity and the fact that money was stolen from him. And from this point on, the story is incredible as he battles his former partner who has already accepted him as dead and used the payoff money to join an organization called The Outfit. Porter teams up with Rosie again (since she is close to The Outfit), and starts an onward movement to get his money back (it seems almost comical as he is trying to explain how he just wants his $70,000 back and not particularly looking for revenge). He also battles 2 crooked detectives and gets them caught in an internal investigation. The movie carries on with him working his way up the chain (typically by killing people whom he meets), including an encounter with the Chinese mafia whom he manages to defeat and run away from on. The first movie has a bloody scene where he is being tortured by a sociopath with a hammer so as to get him to reveal the location of the son of the chief of the outfit.
Overall, this is a great movie, very engrossing and very enjoyable. It has a fair amount of violence though.

Braveheart: A great movie about a rebellion

Before we start, a couple of warnings. First, the story will start emerging as you read on, so if you feel that an element of surprise is being lost, then stop reading at any point of time. Next, if you are going to treat this movie as a guide to the history of the Scottish rebellion against the British under William Wallace, don't ! There are many inaccuracies in the movie, but they don't detract from the overall movie effect.
This is a great movie, and can also be called an example of life imitating art. The release of this movie in 1995 highlighting the Scottish rebellion against the English rule in the middle ages galvanized Scottish feelings of their own identity. The historic locations portrayed in the film became tourist destinations (and interestingly, so did the battle scene locations in Ireland where most of the fight scenes were shot; the other scenes were shot in Scotland). Some cast members from the movie were also present when the 1997 Scottish Parliament took their seat, having obtained powers under a new deal with London.



The movie had Mel Gibson in a triple role, having produced, directed, and starred as the main lead. The movie was pretty successful, having cost around $53 million to make, and earning more than $200 million.
The movie has been praised for the reality of the battle scenes (not the accuracy, but the great detail put into making the battle scenes), for the great musical score for the movie (composed by James Horner, who also composed soundtracks for Titanic, Aliens, and Apollo 13). This was complemented by some great actings efforts; by Mel Gibson who put his heart into the lead role of the reluctant warrior William Wallace; by Patrick McGoohan as 'Longshanks' (aka known as Edward I, the cruel and brilliantly cunning kind of England); Sophie Marceau as Princess Isabelle, the arranged bride for the effeminate son of Edwards I and who also develops a soft corner for Wallace; Ian Bannen as Robert the Bruce, Sr, unable to try for the Scottish throne because of his leprosy, but who is as cunning and will do any amount of treachery for his son Robert The Bruce (Angus Macfadyen).
It seems to have won the critics acclaim as well, being nominated for 10 Academy Awards, and in a mark of the sweep, it won the 2 most treasured Oscars for Best Movie and Best Direction. Overall, the movie won 5 Oscars:
* Best Picture
* Best Director (Mel Gibson)
* Best Cinematography
* Best Makeup
* Best Sound Editing
The story is about a country under the control of a powerful and cunning king, Edwards I. He has also conquered much of Scotland and done so rather brutally, killing William Wallace's father and brother. Much later, when William becomes an adult, he is not a warrior. But when an attack on his wife, the beautiful Murron (Catherine McCormack), by British soldiers happens, William defeats them. However, he is unable to control the consequences; the sheriff brutally cuts her throat, an incident that sets the remainder of Wallace's life.
He is now a man on a quest, and starts attacking the English camp and fort, and becomes a hero and inspiration to Scots. He starts successfully, defeating the English on a couple of occasions, including the great Battle of Stirling. However, he now starts coming up against politics, with the Scottish nobility betraying him at another battle (Falkirk) where he loses. He moves into a guerrilla campaign against the English. During this time period, he meets Princess Isabelle as an emissary of the English king, and they have a brief but passionate relationship. In the last section of the movie, Wallace walks into a trap where he is betrayed by Bruce the elder, and other nobles and handed over to the English.
He is tried for treason, and you have to remember, this was a time when torture was permissible as a penalty. He refuses to acknowledge the authority of the court, and is sentenced to death after being 'purified by pain'. What follows is a sequence of blood and gore as he is tortured to almost death, and scream 'Freedom' with his last breath, and he is then beheaded and body parts sent to different areas to display as a sign of the fate of people committing treason.
William is dead, but he inspires Robert the Bruce and other Scottish to finally defeat the English, and win their freedom.