But manipulation and lack of depth points are a pretty unfair analysis

Not when you compare it to other films with the usual standards of quality. What is maudlin and sentimental in others gets overlooked because it's difficult to criticize Schindler without constantly having to make apologies because of the subject matter. To do so seriously without seems to leave the critic open to almost immediate loud and public accusations of either anti-semitism, or neo-nazism, whether undeserved or not.

There is no subtlety in watching someone get shot or starve to death

There are all sorts of they can be portrayed, some subtler than others. That just gives very little credit to film-makers and their imagination.

Schindlers list was some of the worst Oscar bait ever, because

They focus[ed[ on a war profiteering womanizer who grows a conscience and the only other guy who [was] characterised to any extent comparable to him is Amon a nazi

It's hardly a laudable film for having one (maybe two) almost multidimentional dimensional character in it, that's quite a low standard. It's also remarkable how seriously it's taken as a biographic adaptation when it's really historical fiction (Schindlers Ark). For a film primarily about the holocaust but indirectly, via fictionalized Oscar and how he grows as the central plot device, it's hardly remarkable at all. Character development is central to virtually every good film.

The claimed subtlety can be reduced to making the audience feel 'We are so enlightened and humanist (long after and far removed) by not indulging ourselves in the tradition of demonizing all Germans for the holocaust (even if even the 'good' ones weren't that great), just the really nasty evil ones.' To crudely paraphrase it was a holocaust pity party with a slight slackening of the requisite collective blame, hate and shame.