The Movie Spielberg Calls His Best Work is Also the Most Accurate War Film Ever

Summary

• In a career spanning 60 years, Spielberg has produced a vast number of historical films.
• Many of them boast their fidelity to sources and facts, but one is still considered the most historically accurate.
• It is also the movie that Spielberg himself considers the best of his career to date.
• From the very beginning of his career, the legendary Hollywood filmmaker has turned his eye not only to epic stories, but also to historical settings that would take half an article to list!

Many of these projects are considered iconic in many ways, not only because of the epic scale that characterizes Spielberg's directorial style, but also because of his respect for the historical data on which the plots of these films and series are based. Empire of the Sun, for example, was adapted from a semi-autobiographical book by J.G. Ballard; Band of Brothers and The Pacific were based on the accounts of then-living World War II veterans.

However, of all the many historical projects that Steven Spielberg has been involved with, there is one that is very special to both the filmmaker himself and the world. It is also one of the most accurate historical dramas.

A Movie Spielberg Called the Best of His Career (So Far)

Thirty years after one of the most high-profile releases that earned Spielberg another Best Director Oscar and grossed $322.2 million worldwide, the filmmaker has called that particular film the best work of his 60-plus year career. As many have already guessed, that movie is Schindler's List.

'It's the best movie I've ever made,' Spielberg admitted in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. But that does not mean that Schindler's List was the limit that the 77-year-old Hollywood legend will not transcend.

'I am not going to say it's the best movie I ever will make. But currently, it's the work I'm proudest of.'

Schindler's List chronicles the life of Oskar Schindler, brilliantly embodied by Liam Neeson, a German businessman and National Socialist Party member who, along with his wife Emilie Schindler (played by Caroline Goodall), rescued some 1,200 Jews, mostly from Poland, during the Holocaust and housed them in his enamel and munition factories, thus providing them with protection from the concentration camps and the terror of the Nazi regime.

Spielberg and the whole crew behind Schindler's List received incredible praise for how powerful and poignant the story was, and how it was so effectively delivered through outstanding performances and the exceptional work of cinematographer Janusz Kamiński and composer John Williams. In addition, the Schindlerjuden (Schindler's Jews, those saved by Oscar) spoke highly of the film's historical accuracy and the way the story resonated with their lives.

Hollywood's Most Historically Accurate Drama

Schindler's List is widely regarded as one of the most historically accurate films ever made, largely due to the fact that the Schindler Jews served as consultants, and the story, based on Thomas Keneally's novel Schindler's Ark, might not have existed at all had it not been for Leopold Page (Leopold Pfefferberg), a former Polish Army member and then one of the Schindlerjuden, as well as a close friend of Schindler himself, who pitched the story first to Keneally and then to Spielberg.

Humankind never learns from its past transgressions, and in the 21st century the world is taking an increasingly far right turn: Nazi sympathizers spread from every corner of the Internet, Holocaust deniers are on the rise, and in general, hatred of virtually any social group, be it ethnic or sexual minorities, is growing by leaps and bounds. All of which is to say that Schindler's List, even 30 years after its release, is as relevant as ever, reminding us of the creation of unjustified but easily directed mass hatred of one group or another by authoritarian powers, and the incredible pain that follows.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter.