Schindler's List/Heartwarming

• Oskar Schindler, throughout the entire movie and in Real Life.
• It's a quietly powerful moment when Schindler and Stern share their first drink together as friends.
• The tear-jerking end scene where the real people Oskar saved place stones on his grave (a great sign of respect for the dead) accompanied by the actors who portrayed them, concluded with Liam Neeson laying a rose in the center.
• Schindler hosing the train cars during an especially hot day to help the Jewish inside if only a little. Goeth at first mocks him and laughs with his fellow Nazis but soon just sits in bewilderment as if he honestly can't understand the act of selfless compassion.
• To quote Stern: "The list is an absolute good. The list... is life. All around its margins lies the gulf."
• If any moment of the last half-hour of this movie were in another movie, it'd be a clear CMOH, from when Schindler informs the rabbi that the Sabbath will be recognized to when said rabbi gives a letter to Schindler as he's about to flee the camp that explains Oskar's heroism and tells him, "Every worker has signed it."
• Not in the movie itself, but Spielberg's refusal to accept a salary for this movie, stating that it would be "blood money", definitely qualifies.
• Just after Schindler yells at Regina Perlman to get out of his office and goes downstairs to rage at Stern that his factory isn't a safe-haven and it's all about making money... and then gives Stern the names of Regina's elderly parents so they can be saved.
• Early in the film, Itzhak Stern is placed on a transport to almost certain death and Schindler shows up at the Krakow train station to fetch him, coolly explaining the potential danger to "production". Despite his seemingly tranquil bluster, he clearly starts to panic when he spots Itzhak in a moving train, banging frantically on the doors of the cart. The facade is cracking . . .
• A very small one in the scope of the film, but Oskar promising his wife that he will never cheat on her again, always gets me, just her smile is so beautiful.
• The acceptance speech for this movie's Best Picture Oscar Award began with these words:

"My number was 83317. I am a Holocaust survivor. It's a long way from Auschwitz to this stage."

• Gene Siskel's first words on the film in his and Ebert's review: "There's something I have to say to Steven Spielberg, both as a film critic and as a Jew: thank you."

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