1:37-3:25 — The smoke from the extinguished candles cuts to the smoke billowing out of a locomotive’s smokestack as a train pulls into the station in Krakow. Obviously, smoke and trains will figure significantly in narrative to follow. The action of the scene is that Jews, forced by the Germans after the fall of Poland to re-locate to cities, are arriving in Krakow by the thousands to register with the German officials. The dramatization of the moment is a series of shots of Jews, liningup at folding tables, to recite their names for the German clerks, who type them up into lists. Smoke, trains, lines of Jews at folding tables in open spaces, Germans keeping careful track of the Jews’ names (“Name?” is actually the first line of dialog in the movie), and the list of names itself — all these motifs will be repeated in evolving contexts throughout the movie and they’re all here in the first scene.

The narrative of Schindler’s List is told mostly from Schindler’s point of view. It’s his gradual change from businessman to samaritan that the movie is concerned with. Therefore, the “plight of the Jews” in these early scenes is given relatively little importance. It is, dramatically speaking, “the weather,” the situation the protagonist is entering into. That is, Spielberg pares the information back to all we absolutely need to know to understand the protagonist’s pursuit. We don’t need to see Claudius plotting to kill Hamlet’s father, we only need to know that Hamlet is pissed off that his father is dead.

3:25-4:28 — A man gets ready for a night on the town. We see him select his tie, loot his wardrobe for spare cash, and pin his Nazi Party pin to his lapel.

4:28-5:17 — The man enters a nightclub. He heavily tips the maitre-d for a good table. The man, like Spielberg, is a manipulator of image — he wants to frame himself a certain way, present a certain impression.

5:17- 10:15 — The man scans the nightclub, looking resplendent and predatory. What is his prey? Well, here comes a comely blond lass. The man takes a drag on his cigarette (smoke again) and stares lustfully at the woman as she passes. And while we will soon find out that the man is a notorious womanizer, Spielberg here pulls a typically Spielbergian stunt — he “stands the idea on its head” and makes it that the man is not staring at the woman at all, he’s staring at the Nazi she walked in with. He didn’t come to this nightclub to seduce women but to seduce Nazis.

(Spielberg’s friend Brian DePalma put it thus in Scarface: “First you get the money, then you get the power, then you get the women.”)

And so the man, who is eventually identified as Oskar Schindler, pursues his agenda of “buying the friendship of local Nazis.” He watches each influential officer, notes his predilections, and caters to them, providing women, wine and song and receiving their patronage in return.

But of course we don’t know that yet.

Now think about this sequence for a moment. Here’s what is not shown: Oskar Schindler at home in Germany, bursts in the door and says to his wife “Honey, I’ve got a great idea! You know that old enamelware factory in Krakow? Well, now that the Nazis have conquered Poland, I have a unique opportunity to buy that factory and make mess kits for the German army. We’ll be rich! Rich, I tell you!” And Mrs. Schindler says “But Oskar, however will you do it? We don’t have that kind of money.” And Schindler says “It’s wartime, babe, all the rules go out the window in wartime.” And Mrs. Schindler says “I don’t know, Oskar, it sounds mighty risky.” And Schindler says “Aw babe, don’t you get it, this is my big chance, I can finally make something of myself and impress your father.” And Mrs. Schindler says “Oh Oskar, you know I can’t resist you when you have some crazy, pie-in-the-sky moneymaking scheme. Just promise me that when you’re in Krakow, no running around with the local ladies, okay?” And Schindler saying “I love you, Mrs. Schindler. Kiss me.”

That scene would be in any other bio-pic, mostly because for most movies, there’s always someone at the beginning of the movie-making process who says “But we don’t know what the protagonist wants, we need his big ‘I want’ scene so we can root for him.” But as we’ve seen with No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, the fact that the characters simply pursue their goals without explaining themselves is always much more dramatically interesting.

(That, and, of course, Spielberg doesn’t want us to “root” for Schindler exactly, not at this point of the narrative anyway.)

As Schindler discusses wine with the nightclub’s sommelier, we hear a couple of Nazis griping about the matter of governing Poland. This subtle, background exchange is the thin edge of a wedge that will become more prominent later: that for the Nazis of Schindler’s List, their activities are, essentially, “just business.” The Nazi officers in Schindler’s List talk about their occupation of Krakow and their treatment of the Jews primarily in terms of paperwork and bureaucracy, rarely in terms of hatred. (The hatred gets revealed in other ways, as we will see.)

10:15-14:45 — Spielberg cuts from Schindler leading the Nazis in a cabaret sing-along to German soldiers in the city singing a martial song. We get a little more “weather” as we see Germans harassing Jews as Schindler walks through the streets.

(There are those who complain that Schindler’s List does Jews a disservice by making them minor characters in the movie. And it’s true that the movie largely centers on Schindler’s story and tends to tell the story of “the Jews” as just that — a relatively undifferentiated mass of humanity, and helpless without a powerful, sympathetic friend to “save” them. What I see is Spielberg approaching the Holocaust the same way he approaches any other subject: by asking “how do we stand the idea on its head?” In this case, he’s decided to make a “Holocaust movie” about a German businessman who’s just trying to make a little money off the war. His impulse is the same for Schindler’s List as it is for Close Encounters or Hook: “how do I make people see this story in a way they’ve never seen it before?” And in that regard, the commercial returns of Schindler’s List speak for themselves.)

We still don’t yet know what Schindler’s game is. He enters the Judenrat, a kind of Jewish community center, where relocated Jews can air their grievances and sort out legal problems. Hundreds of Jews are lined up to get into the Judenrat, in a line that stretches down the block, but Schindler, a German and a badge-wearing member of the Nazi Party, strides to the front of the line and heads inside.

The small glimpses of life on the streets of Krakow and inside the Judenrat give real weight and perspective to the scene that follows. It’s hard for us to imagine an entire population uprooted at the whim of an invading army and forced to relocate, and Spielberg imagines the practical scenes of daily life of this situation with a detail and precision he hasn’t reached since the community scenes of Jaws and Close Encounters.

Schindler has come to the Judenrat to find an accountant named Itzak Stern. Why Stern we are not told, apparently Schindler got his name from someone as someone who can get things done in the Krakow Jewish community.

Stern is presented as a, well, stern, solemn, “pure” man. (His first line of dialog is “I am.”) He functions as a kind of Jiminy Cricket to Schindler’s Pinocchio. As Schindler outlines his business scheme to Stern, Stern can barely contain his disapproval of Schindler and everything he represents. The drama of Schindler’s List largely hinges on Stern’s gradual approval of, friendship with, and eventual lionization of Schindler. This drama is characterized chiefly by Sterns unwillingness to share a drink with Schindler, and this scene is the first to bring up this motif.

In what I consider a pretty incredible scene, Schindler presents his scheme, which comes down to: I have the contacts, you know how to run a business and you know investors, lets all get rich off this crazy war thing. If Schindler is aware of the implications of the Nazi occupation of Krakow, he doesn’t show it. His attitude seems to be, this is the situation, we can suffer from it or we can profit from it — I, being a German member of the Nazi party, stand to profit from it much more greatly than you, but that’s the way things are, you want in or not?

The capitalist imperative is presented as purely amoral in the least perjorative sense of the word — what does it matter what the situation is, as long as we can make some money off it? Schindler will get his money, the Germans will get field kits, the Jewish investors will be able to trade pots and pans on the black market, “everybody’s happy,” it’s a win-win situation. Schindler, at this point in the narrative, is not a “bad” man, not an anti-semite, merely an opportunist. It’s his opportunism that suggested he join the Nazi party, it’s his opportunism that allows him to pursue his scheme of opening an enamelware factory in Krakow when he has virtually no capital, later it will be the same opportunism that will allow him to hire Jews instead of Poles to work at the factory.

14:55-17:32 — Jewish black-marketeers gather in the local Catholic church to conduct their business. We meet Pfefferberg and Goldberg, who will enter into the narrative later on as a kind of “Good Jew/Bad Jew” team — Pfefferberg will prefer to retain his honor and live as a prisoner, whereas Goldberg will gladly turn policeman for its opportunities for graft and kickbacks.

For a moment, it looks like the narrative is branching off into a new direction, but we’re with Pfefferberg and Goldberg for only a couple of minutes before Schindler enters the scene. He’s been at the church the whole time, apparently, scoping out the joint, looking for Jews exactly like Pfefferberg to acquire luxury goods on the black market — he needs “good things” to present to his Nazi contacts, to grease the wheels of the bureaucracy and get him his enamelware factory.

17:32-21:53 — The Jews enter the Krakow ghetto. As the mass of humanity flows through the streets, Spielberg takes care to show us a few faces that will become important later. He casts a boy with a winsome face and a little girl with round, horn-rim spectacles, knowing that we’ll remember those details and follow along with their stories. There is another scene of Jews standing in line to talk to Germans with clipboards sitting at folding tables in an open-air space, and another recital of names. Goldberg is now a policeman, Pfefferberg and his fiancee sneer and make fun of him.

We pay close attention to a wealthy Jewish family being uprooted from their luxury digs and herded into the street by Nazi soldiers. Why this family? Spielberg keeps us waiting for the answer. The father of the family, a framed picture under one arm, pries the mezzuzza off his front door and heads out to join the parade of Jews headed for the ghetto. No sooner are the family led away and pelted with mud by Polish onlookers then Schindler pulls up in his car and is squired about the apartment by a Nazi officer. So Spielberg does take moments to tell us of what’s happening to “the Jews” but he doesn’t want the story to get away from him — he makes sure that everyone he shows has a direct relation to his protagonist. He cuts between the wealthy Jewish family entering the deplorable conditions of the ghetto and Schindler relaxing, pleased as punch with his swanky new digs. Again, if Schindler understands that he’s taking over an apartment which was, only moments earlier, the property of someone else, he doesn’t show it — it’s all just more good stuff for the opportunist.

21:53-23:37 — The Jews have all moved into the ghetto. Stern introduces Schindler to the investors he knows. Again, it’s a scene about business — the investors try to negotiate with Schindler, but Schindler knows he’s got the upper hand and refuses to cave. Again, he’s not an anti-semite, he’s just pursuing his goal of making a ton of money and the local situation puts his business partners at a disadvantage. This scene also features Schindler’s second attempt to get Stern to share a drink with him.

23:37-24:30 — The capital secured, the enamelware factory starts production. Schindler hires Jews from the ghetto not because he intends to “save” them, but because they cost him less money (and he pays them through the Nazi bureaucracy, which benefits his business). They are, literally, “worth less.” Money and life present themselves in stark terms when one can literally say that one kind of person is worth less than another kind, and Schindler, the opportunist, is happy to go along with the prevailing wisdom.

24:30-29:00 — Stern, now in place to run Schindler’s enamelware factory, canvases the ghetto looking for likely prospects. As the Jews are being sorted into categories by the Nazis (so many scenes of sorting people out in this movie) Stern sees that everyone who isn’t working at the factory is in danger of being put on the wrong list and pulls a number of ruses and schemes to get teachers and historians and musicians jobs at the factory. This is one of the few times we leave Schindler to see what Stern is doing behind his back, and we see that Stern is something of a canny opportunist himself — he’s hiring friends and aesthetes for jobs in a metalworking plant.

29:00-30:45 — We get a moment of character development and comic relief as Schindler auditions women to be his secretary. He plays close attention to the pretty young things who hunt and peck their way through the typing test and sits bored as a middle-aged batte-axe efficiently chugs along, easily besting them. So we also learn that Schindler has an eye for the ladies and is, in fact, a thoroughly shallow man, his knowledge of French wines and cognac notwithstanding. At the end of the brief sequence, Stern tells Schindler “you have to choose.” He’s talking about picking a secretary, but, as with many things Stern says to Schindler, the line carries a double meaning. You can’t, he implies, sit on the fence through this war, making your money and chuckling at your cleverness, you have to pick a side. Schindler, however, is still an opportunist and decides to hire all the auditioners — except, of course, the battle-axe.

30:45-33:00 — Schindler promotes his newly-opened enamelware factory. He’s almost to his goal — he’s made the contacts, raised the capital and staffed his factory, now he just needs to close the deal and get his lucrative army contracts. This he accomplishes by throwing banquets for his Nazi friends and sending baskets of luxury food items to all the officers we saw earlier in the nightclub sequence. The sequence ends with a series of shots of Nazi hands placing their official stamps on Schindler’s contracts — the bureaucracy again, the “business” of the Nazis showing its hand.

His goal achieved, there is a brief scene where Schindler calls Stern to his office and makes a third attempt to get him to drink with him. This time, Stern lifts the glass (on command) but still refuses to drink. Schindler’s moment of self-congratulation is soured and Schindler brusquely throws Stern out of his office. You can see that Stern is gettng to Schindler, you can see Schindler thinking “Christ, what is it with this guy? I give him a job, I give all his friends jobs, I make his rich friends’ lives easier, what does he want from me?” This question ends the act and points the way forward for the narrative.

The set piece is, of course, deeply thematic in its plot-points. The T-Rex escapes from its high-tech paddock because the power is off, the lawyer flees one piece of technology (the car) and scampers across the jungle to another piece of technology (the rest room), neither of which succeed in saving him. (Life, in this case a twenty-foot lizard, “finds a way” to devour him.) In the lawyer’s pursuit of survival, he abandons Hammond’s grandchildren, which forces Alan into the position of reluctant caregiver. The children are trapped inside their piece of technology, forcing Alan to abandon his, Ian uses yet another piece of technology (a flare) to lure the T-Rex away from Alan and the kids. The T-Rex, shoving the car around on the roadway, forces Alan and the kids over the retaining wall — the humans are now in the zoo, the beast is now free.

This set-piece is followed immediately by another, Dennis’s death at the hands of the dilophasaurus. Again, we’ve got a man (life), who’s got a bunch of embryos (life) smuggled in a high-tech can of shaving cream (technology) using technology (a jeep) to get through the jungle (life) during a storm (nature), his glasses (technology) fogging (due to the heat coming off his body in his excited state), causing him to crash, which leads to him using his winch (technology) wrapped around a tree (life) to try to get him out of his situation, all of which is interrupted by the dilophasaurus (life), who spits in Dennis’s eyes, which is his vulnerable spot due to him losing his glasses (technology failing again), which paralyzes him, allowing the dilophasaurus to eat Dennis inside his car. Dennis’s escape craft becomes his tomb, and his can of shaving cream tumbles into the mud, swallowed up, seemingly, by nature.

As if to make up for lost time, we then have a third wonderful action-suspense set-piece, involving a car (technology) in a tree (life), endangering the life of a boy who Alan promised to not abandon. These scenes are, obviously, where Spielberg lives, and they serve the plot (escape the dinosaurs!), the theme (life finds a way) and the character (Alan must protect the children) all at once.

Had enough? The movie isn’t ready to slow down yet. After the car in the tree, there is a fourth masterful action-suspense scene as Ellie and Muldoon show up at the T-Rex paddock looking for their friends and find only Ian and the remains of the lawyer, then are forced to high-tail it out of there with a T-Rex chasing them.

Finally, after 21 minutes of non-stop thrills, the movie is ready to slow down a little, as Alan gets the kids safely up into another tree. A sense of wonder returns as the A-team beholds a herd of brachiosaurs, and yet Alan is clearly through with his dinosaur obsession. When the kids cling to him for comfort, he feels, literally, a pain in his ass, which turns out to be the raptor claw he previously used to ruin a child’s day. Trading childcare for obsession, he tosses the claw out of the tree.

At 1:24:00, we have the end-of-Act-III-low-point, as Ellie sits down with Hammond in the designed-to-look-like-nature restaurant at HQ. Hammond has — horrors — a “death of my kitten” speech, wherein he tells a story about his early days as a young charlatan. Ellie picks up his story and, presto, turns it around to suggest that, for all Hammond’s new sophistication, he’s still a charlatan for thinking he could control nature. The act, and the narrative, is then honed to a point when it is announced that getting the children back safely is “the only thing that matters now.” Because “ideas” about science and technology and nature and morality are all well and good, but movies thrive on plot and motion. You can’t really make a movie about an idea — you can write a novel about an idea, and you can even have a play about an idea, but a movie needs a plot with a physically obtainable goal. And “get the children back home safe” is about as basic and compelling as that sort of thing gets.

Act IV begins with a quiet beat as the sun comes up and Alan and the kids are visited by a brachiosaur. Alan, still, cannot help but be in awe of these magnificent creatures, even though they are, literally, sick of this island.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the plot for the first half of the act is announced: “let’s shut down the system,” so that we might then re-start it and save the children. This applies to the immediate physical situation and, I suppose, to the larger metaphor at work, ie: “the system” the establishment has at present is flawed, and we must “shut it down” and re-start it, in an uncorrupted state, in order to preserve the future.

America’s greatest actor Samuel L. Jackson then steps forward for his time in the limelight of Jurassic Park, to deliver what has to be the most opaquely expository speech in a movie full of opaque expository speeches, as he explains: THE LYSINE CONTINGENCY (so sad that Robert Ludlam did not think to use that for a title). Jackson delivers the speech beautifully, but I, for the life of me, cannot figure out what THE LYSINE CONTINGENCY has to do with the plot of the movie, ie “getting the children back home safe.” Dramatically, it highlights Hammond’s affection for the dinosaurs, which he considers his “children” almost as much as his biological grandchildren, but Jackson, unless I am mistaken, is talking about a plan that would kill off the dinosaurs eventually, not right now, so I’m still mystified as to why it’s in the movie, much less why it’s shot and acted with such skill.

Out in the field, Alan and the kids encounter a T-Rex again, but this time the T-Rex has other things on its mind. This time, Alan and the kids are merely witnesses to the glory and terror of nature, as they realize that, if anyone, they are the ones who don’t belong here. All this works to emphasize that the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park are not monsters or even villains, they are animals with their own agendas, unpredictable but not unknowable.

There then follows a masterful suspense sequence as Hammond and Ian guide Ellie and Muldoon through the steps of re-booting the power as Alan and the kids negotiate atall electrified fence. Spielberg, again, keeps almost every aspect of this sequence soaking in theme as he wrings every conceivable drop of suspense from the situation, adding typically Spielbergian touches of grim humor to punctuate the tension.

The power comes back on, Muldoon gets eaten, and the second half of Act IV begins. Now everybody is back at home base and the only objective is “let’s get out of here.” Alan and Ellie go off to figure out how to do that while the kids get attacked by velociraptors in the kitchen, the sixth masterful sequence in the movie.

At 1:53:00 everyone meets up in the control room as the velociraptors attack. The movie’s only real eye-rolling moment comes as Hammond’s pre-teen granddaughter easily decodes Nedry’s so-fiendishly-complex-system-that-only-he-can-understand-it system while dinosaurs attack, not six feet away. This moment, thankfully, gives way to a pulse-pounding out-and-out chase scene, through the building’s ceiling space and out into the lobby. The chase leads to the climax, where Alan, Ellie and the kids are cornered by — oh no! Two velociraptors! How are we ever going to survive? We’re cornered by two velociraptors! Thankfully, unseen by anyone, the twenty-foot T-Rex sneaks into the lobby and saves the day, on tiptoe I’m guessing, although how he fit through the lobby door is another mystery.

The movie’s exclamation point, pictured above, where the “When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth!” banner comes fluttering down as the T-Rex gives a triumphal roar, still makes me laugh and cheer. The image perfectly sums up the movie’s argument and stance — the dinosaurs time has come and gone, yet here, at this moment, someone apparently forgot to tell the dinosaurs. The image acknowledges that, in spite of all the warnings in the narrative, the idea of dinosaurs returning is still an insanely powerful one, which can be proven by the fact that you’ve just watched this movie.

In the movie’s closing moments, Alan comes to the conclusion that his obsession isn’t so cool after all, that there is life beyond obsession. His “purpose” in life has shifted, he’s more interested in life and less interested in the study of long-dead creatures. As he flees Jurassic Park with Ellie, Ian, Hammond and the kids, he sees a flock of pelicans skimming the surface of the water, reminding him that dinosaurs, of course, are actually still here.  “Life found a way,” the way life generally does — it evolved, as Alan senses he must now evolve as well, and that, for all of science’s inquiry into the possible, “the way things are” is probably the best of all possible worlds.