Looking for Artistry in the Commercial World: The Spielberg Canon

[Pop Trash]

Some days I love Temple of Doom more than life itself.

[Dukefrukem]

Some days I love Temple of Doom more than life itself.

Does that mean Raiders and Last Crusade are above life?

[StanleyK]

The Road Warrior climax is brilliantly executed.

David Bordwell would agree with you, which makes me want to revisit it, but both times I saw it I thought it was just pretty good. I think I preferred Beyond Thunderdome.

Seriously? You think so? Check it:

Okay, that is one creepily obsessed stare. Don't know how I missed it.

On top of that, in my mind this is the movie that helped ruin modern cinema. It helped create the awfulness that is "PG-13" and an environment that keeps American movies in a state of persistent pubescence, where we substitute set piece action for real drama and sell a peculiar, bloodless hyper-violence to kids.

I don't think it's fair to fault a movie for whatever imitations or trends it spawns. Besides, Temple of Doom is gory and disturbing as hell; I doubt the bloodlessness of modern PG-13 films is inspired by it.

[Irish]

I don't think it's fair to fault a movie for whatever imitations or trends it spawns.

I agree; mostly that was an excuse to voice my hatred of PG-13 and give voice to the #4 on my Why George Lucas is My Mortal Enemy list.

[Rowland]

The Shanghai prologue is my favorite bit from ToD. Otherwise, I find it a bit of a slog, exacerbated by its tone-deaf approximations of "darkness" that clash with its juvenile sense of humor and how irritatingly written and performed are the Short Round and Capshaw characters.

[transmogrifier]

Does that mean Raiders and Last Crusade are above life?

Temple of Doom is leagues better than Last Crusade. Last Crusade is as conventional, cookie-cutter and inspiration-free as Spielberg has ever been. Crystal Skull is the worst film, but it tries new things.

[Dukefrukem]

conventional, cookie-cutter?? Oh man I gotta here more.

[transmogrifier]

conventional, cookie-cutter?? Oh man I gotta here more.

Better yet, just watch the movie. Or rather, don't.

[Qrazy]

Temple of Doom is leagues better than Last Crusade. Last Crusade is as conventional, cookie-cutter and inspiration-free as Spielberg has ever been. Crystal Skull is the worst film, but it tries new things.

[Dead & Messed Up]

I find Last Crusade charming. Its action is rote and relatively uninspired, especially compared to the pioneering first film and the house-of-horrors sequel, but the Connery/Ford relationship is delightful, and its most inspired moments (Indy meets Hitler, Indy lancing a Nazi, "He chose poorly") are just as iconic and vivid as the best moments of the earlier films.

I'd reserve the charges of conventional and cookie-cutter and inspiration-free for The Lost World, whose dino-chasery cannot begin to compensate for the boring father/daughter dynamic, the derivative imagery, and the awful hunters/scientists dichotomy. Even with the trailer chase and compy attack on Stormare, the film's a total wash.

[D_Davis]

The Shanghai prologue is my favorite bit from ToD. Otherwise, I find it a bit of a slog, exacerbated by its tone-deaf approximations of "darkness" that clash with its juvenile sense of humor and how irritatingly written and performed are the Short Round and Capshaw characters.

The prologue is some of the best footage Spielberg gas ever shot.

[Rowland]

The Last Crusade is easily the most square film of the series, and Spielberg's direction reflects that, but at least I don't find it actively abrasive like much of ToD. The prologue sets a sort of boy's-adventure-tale tone that the film actively maintains throughout, and it's certainly charming enough, if featherweight and probably earnest to a fault. It's also a bit of a slog to sit through, but I recall it more fondly than ToD for the most part.

[transmogrifier]

I'm going to assume that this red X is someone showing a big thumbs up.

[Irish]

I find Last Crusade charming. Its action is rote and relatively uninspired, especially compared to the pioneering first film and the house-of-horrors sequel, but the Connery/Ford relationship is delightful, and its most inspired moments (Indy meets Hitler, Indy lancing a Nazi, "He chose poorly") are just as iconic and vivid as the best moments of the earlier films.

I agree that the Connery/Ford chemistry makes the film. But in a way, that's a shame. The only reason to view it is for the two of them.

That's far afield from where the series started, in a great adventure movie with spectacular set pieces and action on action in every scene.

[Qrazy]

The final trials at the end of Crusade are just as iconic for me as the opening sequence of the first film. Also it's a great final shot to end the series on... shame about that wedding bullshit in the fourth crapfest.

[StanleyK]

The Color Purple is so inert that I get the impression Spielberg was just going through the motions to get his first dramatic narrative done without any investment with the material or any consideration for what might actually suit it. Todd Alcott articulates my problems with the movie's presentation perfectly:

Spielberg's typically fluid, seamless direction doesn't feel like it matches the material and leads to hyperbole and cartoonishness. Everything is overdone -- Harpo isn't just a poor carpenter, he's a bumbling oaf who repeatedly falls through rooftops. His juke-joint doesn't merely leak in the rain, it becomes a veritable indoor shower. Miss Millie isn't merely a poor driver, she's a caricature of a hysterical, swerving madwoman. Mister's farm doesn't just fall into ruin, he ends up with goats in the kitchen and shutters falling off the windows on cue. Shug doesn't merely refuse a poorly-cooked breakfast, she hurls it across the hallway so that it leaves primary-colored splatters on the wall.

The film's tone-deaf swerving between histrionically performed drama and the silly slapstick, the cartoonish villains and the unconditionally good protagonist, the heaps of white guilt through the mayor's wife subplot, everything works towards robbing the story of the emotional impact it should have and rendering it unchallenging and safe.

A slog to sit through as it may be, I want to give the movie props for at least being brave enough not to shy away from the lesbianism angle of Celie and Shug's relationship, and the letter-reading scenes were interesting in that they weren't literal renditions, but rather Celie's interpretations of Nettie's accounts. Otherwise, The Color Purple rests squarely on its perfomers' shoulders, and instead of Goldberg, Avery or Winfrey, I want to single out Danny Glover for praise. The man takes a nonthreatening buffoon and manages to make him a scary presence (in at least the scenes where he's supposed to be scary; I wish he'd have kept a menacing edge in the lighter comedic scenes, but I believe he did the best with what he was given).

[StanleyK]

From The Color Purple to Empire of the Sun, Spielberg seems to have learned to be a lot more willing to step outside of his comfort zone. And so, instead of a suffering saint for a protagonist, we get a child who switches allegiance at the drop of a hat and looks out mostly for himself. Instead of cartoon slapstick for comic relief, we get grim humor (Jim repeating the Hershey's Bar taunt to a littler child; or when it looks like he's going to give a hand to a beaten man, and instead grabs a rock to carry and avoid the same beating) which feels a necessary part of the whole rather than a simple distraction from its horrors. Most of all, instead of a safe movie which provides us all the easy answers, we get a complex and unflinching look at the effects of colonialism, the obliviousness of the upper class, and the amorality necessary to survive in extreme situations. From the opening shot of the coffins floating down the river, to the closing shot which echoes it with Jim's suitcase in the same river, all the traumatic experiences which reshaped him from a clueless kid to a shell-shocked survivor floating adrift, this is Spielberg's most potent film yet, standing alongside Close Encounters of the Third Kind as some of the most arresting imagery he's ever captured, his use of pure sound and images to convey meaning and evoke emotions as keen as ever.

[Irish]

152 minutes of pure pain.

I haven't seen this in years, having viewed it once is one times too many.

Spielberg runs into trouble when he pushes too hard for profundity or emotion. It ends up mawkish and false. The guy just can't do subtlety at all.

Which is fine, because the other things he does, he does very well.

[

Show Spoiler

As always, Stanley, great write up

]

[StanleyK]

Spielberg runs into trouble when he pushes too hard for profundity or emotion. It ends up mawkish and false. The guy just can't do subtlety at all.

I agree with this on The Color Purple, which is phony and doesn't trust its audience, but Empire of the Sun is very effective and rewarding of emotional investment. The dreamy quality of early scenes such as the limo ride through the crowded streets make a sharp contrast with the grit of the camp, reflecting Jim's journey from an utopian, sheltered life to having to face the harsh reality. Towards the end of the film, the dreaminess and grit merge (the kamikaze planes taking off to the music which goes on even after Jim stops singing, the A-bomb which feels like a soul going to heaven) as his sanity slips, coming to a head in the "I can bring everyone back" scene, where he confronts himself: his lost innocence, his selfishness, all the people he's hurt, the consequences to his actions. It's a very powerful moment because it's the pay-off to the whole movie's build-up of the character, a rich portrayal which doesn't sanctify or demonize, idealize or distance from him. I find it very emotionally honest, as far from mawkish or false as drama gets.

[Bosco B Thug]

152 minutes of pure pain.

I haven't seen this in years, having viewed it once is one times too many.

Spielberg runs into trouble when he pushes too hard for profundity or emotion. It ends up mawkish and false. The guy just can't do subtlety at all.

Which is fine, because the other things he does, he does very well.

[

Show Spoiler

As always, Stanley, great write up

]

You are one tough cookie, Irish. Never anything positive to say. I'm what you call not a Spielberg fan, and I thought Empire of the Sun was superb. As Stanley says, it's the one film of his that leaves safe zones.

[Irish]

It's a very powerful moment because it's the pay-off to the whole movie's build-up of the character, a rich portrayal which doesn't sanctify or demonize, idealize or distance from him. I find it very emotionally honest, as far from mawkish or false as drama gets.

You are one tough cookie, Irish. Never anything positive to say. I'm what you call not a Spielberg fan, and I thought it was superb.

To be honest, I'd have to see it again. It's been yeeeeeeeeaaaaars since I watched it.

Given what you've both said here, I'm tempted to give it another watch.

[soitgoes...]

Yeah, Empire of the Sun is my second favorite Speilberg film. So good.

[Bosco B Thug]

To be honest, I'd have to see it again. It's been yeeeeeeeeaaaaars since I watched it.

Given what you've both said here, I'm tempted to give it another watch.

That's better.


Oh, and I watched Schindler's List. It's solid. Well-arrived documentary impulse throughout (balancing out Spielberg's often manic stylizing) and a strong dramatic device in the dual storylines of Schindler and Goeth.

[Irish]

Grabbing it off iTunes, will watch tonight.

[Bosco B Thug]

Grabbing it off iTunes, will watch tonight.

Oh my God.

*runs around like a chicken that got its head cut off, then prepares for possible battle*