the red coat was most certainly for the audience's benefit and not only a schindler p.o.v. it must be remembered that spielberg consistently portrays issues by reducing them to a child's eyes. nothing becomes real in a spielberg film until a child sees it, feels it, hears it, or wants it. this works sometimes, and not others. think how spielberg would have filmed one of the most effective scenes of last year, the axing of the finger in the piano. we would have seen the axe rise, then we would see anna paquin's face as her mother's finger was cut off... the camera would have likely stayed on paquin as her mother stumbled by and then followed her as she ran into the woods to find baines. campion on the other hand has the guts to take the chance of showing us nothing but holly hunter's face, a brilliant choice... campion 's camera holds on hunter's face then passively watches her walk into the mud isolated and alone... the daughter is no where to be seen until she reappears searching out baines. this is ada's moment. spielberg approached this purity of filmic expression with the execution scenes in schindlers. i'm not necessarily trying to badmouth speilberg here, but what i am doing is trying to point out that the red coat CHOICE (because even if it is in the book, spielberg made the choice to include it in the film... i'm also assuming that this isn't the only mention of color in the book, and once again i am assuming, but i doubt if the book portrays itself in black and white, yet another questionable choice spielberg made) is about the filmmaker, not really about schindler. spielberg uses children, this is his territory. is it appropriate in this sort of film? is it puppetish (as has been suggested by someone on this forum)? an even more important question perhaps is whether a film like this is even appropriate... should a film be made about the holocaust? there are two sides. in one sense we must not forget, the typical argument raised in favor. but on the other hand, any effort at portraying such a large evil is going to be degrading to the enormous scope of the actual event. which brings up a second point. is this film a biopic of schindler, or is it a historical drama? the problems of leaving out facts and figures in biopics has been raised... how does this relate in leaving out and dramatizing facts regarding a historical event of this magnitude? denis [log in to unmask]