So, yeah, the story of a bad businessman saving some people's lives is nice and all but the movie about it was just not good. ... Without the built-in emotional weight of WWII and the Holocaust the movie was a nothing trifle. Think about this; imagine there was no holocaust or true story or that this was a science fiction story instead. How much of the movie is lost if the extra-element, true-storiness is taken away?
Most, all?


I'm not sure that's an entirely fair question, since I think a great deal of Holocaust fiction takes as read a certain basic background of the broad facts surrounding the event. Since most people know about it, movies don't usually spend much time in setting up the detailed backstory from Hitler’s Nuremberg Laws to the Endlösung.

It was a pretty amazing experience in the theater. I dunno, I was younger then, not even 30, maybe I would react differently now; but at the time it was a pretty profoundly affecting experience.

Sometimes I think there's a bit of a rush to prove how intellectually superior one is, by disdaining a Spielberg film. The current Raiders pretty much sucks, and Private Ryan is pretentious and ultimately a little weak. But it's not like Spielberg has only made bad movies.