Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by Harmonia (A) on November 25, 2002 at 21:26:51

In Reply to: I admire Steven Speilberg... posted by mvwine on November 25, 2002 at 08:46:59:

No doubt in my mind that Steven Spielberg is very talented. He's not a hack like Chris Columbus or other Hollywood schlockmeisters I could name. His mastery of technique and his visual imagination are remarkable. He has an instinctual feel for movies - design, editing, cinematography, effects. He can infuse the screen with crackling energy and eye popping imagery.

But he doesn't move me. Millions disagree. They weep over ET and Saving Private Ryan. Not me. Not yet.

Despite his visual audacity, he doesn't have a feel for great screenwriting. And it shows.

In addition, I've found there is just...*something* about his sensibilty as a filmmaker I can't embrace. In his serious films, he doesn't lay it on the line every time, he frequently seems to be holding something back, making it too easy for him to rely on technique and sentimentality for effect. It's beyond superficiality, a charge frequently leveled at Spielberg.

I just don't believe in his emotional "truth", I find the emotional pay off in films like AI, Saving Private Ryan and Minority Report rings false. He can't, or won't, go deep enough - there's a lot of sound and fury and intensity in his films, but peel back the layers, nothing much is really there, it's all on the surface. Schindler's List suffers less from this than his other films, aided by the subject matter, a superior script and some truly fine performances. (God, what Scorsese could have done with this!)

On the other hand, Spielberg seems lost in juvenalia with his genre films, a cartoon-like mentality with the monster/adventure flicks like Jaws, Jurassic Park, etc. I confess to mightily enjoying Raiders of the Lost Ark, a felicitous match of Spielberg's preoccupations and talents. But Temple of Doom was positively offensive. I don't mind when Hitchcock manipulates me in say, North By Northwest. But Spielberg's audience manipulation in films like Jaws, Jurassic Park and others makes me literally squirm in my seat.

I think I tend to prefer his failures, like AI, Empire of the Sun, even The Color Purple.

You're onto something with the notion that SS's films aren't truly personal. It isn't that he doesn't have a "personal" style of directing - indeed he does, and a strong, sweeping visual style it is too. But either he can't select the material, or he can't go deep enough into the personal, or there simply isn't enough "there" there.

Many times over the years I have wanted to like Spielberg's films better. He disengages me nearly every time. But who knows, maybe I'll love Catch Me If You Can.

(I hope LOTR/TTT buries it.)