Lincoln and Schindler's List

I find it striking how similar Steven Spielberg's portrayals of Abraham Lincoln and Oskar Schindler are. Lincoln is very heroic in this movie, even though he sometimes resorts to less than honorable means to achieve his goals. I also thought it was interesting how we see him on the ground, bending over and stoking the fire like a servant, even though he was the president.  I was glad that I had enough prior knowledge to understand almost everything that happened in Lincoln. I enjoyed the band of misfits that the secretary of state unofficially hired to basically buy votes from the democrats.
I'll tell you what! In the film, Thaddeus Stevens (brilliantly and humorously played by Tommy Lee Jones) is portrayed as a hero of epic proportions. After seeing this movie, I had to look Stevens up on Wikipedia. I really hadn't heard much about him before, and I really enjoyed the first part of the Wikipedia article that explained how historians' perceptions of Stevens have changed over time. And I had no idea that Tommy Lee Jones was even going to be in this movie.
In a lot of ways, Schindler's List is much more intense than Lincoln. It also seems to have a more powerful effect on me. What if those had been my parents that he had saved from certain death? It just makes me want to do only good things. It's so funny and so terrible that the only thing that
Amon Göth cared about was money. Good grief. He never got the chance to enjoy any of that money since he was imprisoned immediately after the war and then hanged in 1946. Why did he even bother charging Schindler so much money to let those people go? He should have let them go free. Yeah, he probably still would have been hanged, but there was really no point in trying to amass wealth. Just let it go. This is a lesson for all of us. No matter what happens, we won't be able to take any of our wealth with us when we die, so we should follow the counsel of the Savior and lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven. These are two different movies, but both Lincoln and Schindler used the influence and resources that they had to do the most good that they knew how to do.