Schindler's List

 No quips on this one.

 Reviewing the National Film Registry, I've seen a lot of films pitched towards the Male Gaze. I've seen a handful pitched towards the Female Gaze. Schindler's List is probably the only movie I've ever seen that I could classify as being pitched towards the Gentile Gaze.

  What I mean by that isn't any sort of betrayal of the fact that this is a film about the unspeakable tragedy that fell most heavily on the Jews of Europe, under the direction of a Jewish man. What I mean is that this movie didn't strike me as being about how people of Jewish heritage should reflect on the Holocaust period, but instead it feels like a film directly challenging the Gentile audience to really look. We spend most of our time with the imposing, booming-voiced opportunist and the fiercely handsome, winsomely childlike sadistic murderer. Other film critics have pointed out that the Jews in this film tend to be physically tiny. Liam Neeson towers over his workforce with more than a hint of paternal protection. But watching as a Gentile, I feel that is the challenge of the film. To see such large scale dehumanization and to see the desires of our worse natures dangled in front of us (the Nazis are almost always seen partying, enjoying expensive things, having sex with beautiful women, raking in piles of cash), and to make the right choice anyway. The breakdown at the end of the film has been criticized as maudlin, but it seems more realistic. This is a man who spent the first half of the war living large, and he saw his money transform into human faces. The pardon is in the fact that his "wasted" money got the Nazis to trust him, which enabled lives to be saved.

  It's not a film with easy answers about what makes people wake up and decide that some people are far less deserving of life... or even truly a film that answers what makes some people realize the "untermensch" are actually human beings and become willing to risk everything to save them. At three harrowing hours, what we get is a documentary-like focus. This is Spielberg's tightest film from a narrative point of view, and is his quietest film, as he rarely spells anything out for the audience.

 This is a movie that should be required viewing, but it's an experience above being a film.