Stern: “The list is an absolute good. The list is life. All around its margins lies the gulf.”
Stern: "Diese Liste ist etwas absolut Gutes. Diese Liste ist das Leben. Und rundherum, um ihre Ränder ist das Verderben."

First of all, I am not a fan of both, the genre and the length (3 1/4 fucking hours!).
However, this movie is a qualitative masterpiece. Spielberg made some serious thoughts on how he wants to construct this movie.
Many things are great. It is well-written. The scenery is great, nice that they could film in Kraków. It is formative. It is a serious topic and a good message.
The movie just feels like it is real. You do not notice that it is actually a film.
This is because many things are so realistic about this movie: The actors do not act staged, there are so many characters who talk and are somehow important which makes the movie very dynamic. It is also more realistic because it is uncut. People get shot, you see blood, they fall to the ground, it is okay - thank god it is not censored.

It is not just one storyline. Since the different time leaps in WW2 make the movie also more dynamic and particularly more diversified.

There are also some scenes which are quite funny which has not to be a bad thing in this case. Examples:
The crazy old man who thanks Schindler for the workplace.
The piano man who plays piano while everybody else gets shot in the house.

For a movie from 1993 it is a lot better than some movies released nowadays and many movies can learn from this movie.