Minority Report: The Last Great Spielberg Film?

Minority Report not only happens to be the last film screened for this class, but it is also the last Steven Spielberg movie that I consider to be one of his great films. Its superb story and equally impressive execution make the film innovative, interesting, and one that will continue to be talked about for years. Watching this film for the first time in an academic setting, I was amazed that I hadn't previously noticed the overwhelming number of references to eyes, seeing, lack of sight, etc. Clearly all of these things are important to the plot and themes of the film, but it is absolutely amazing to see how many times Spielberg brings up or refers to the idea of eyes or sight throughout the movie, with allusions in literally every scene. For example, after the film begins with one of Agatha's pre-visions ("seeing" the future), there is a close up on Agatha's bright blue eyes, followed by more of her pre-vision where we see someone cutting out the eyes from an Abraham Lincoln cardboard cutout. That's a lot of eyes in just the first couple minutes of the film, and it continues like this throughout the rest of Minority Report. References such as these are a small part of what makes the film so well integrated, creating its "organic unity" as Warren Buckland would say.

However, surprisingly, Buckland argues that Minority Report as a whole ultimately does not manifest organic unity, despite such acheivements as "effective narrational strategies" and "links between scenes." Buckland claims that the film doesn't acheive organic unity because of its numerous "gaping plot holes" as well as Spielberg's use of "inappropriate" or "unmotivated" humor. He says that this inappropriate humor leads to a loss of the film's credibility, and "ends up (along with the plot holes) destroying the film's overall unity." While I can agree with Buckland that Minority Report does have a signficant number of plot holes, I think that this is forgivable since nearly every science fiction film, especially those that have to do with predicting or changing the future, are always wrought with them. I don't think that such plot holes ruin the story in Minority Report or make it any less compelling. I feel the same way about Spielberg's use of humor. I find it odd that Buckland would argue that this ruins the unity of the film, since quirky and out-of-place humor has become one of Steven Spielberg's trademarks, and it hasn't ruined a number of other great Spielberg achievements. (For example, take the scene where Goeth is hung at the end of Schindler's List and the stool must be kicked out from under him before he finally falls.)

In any case, I disagree with Buckland that Minority Report ultimately fails to attain organic unity, since I don't think that something as minor as humorous moments or insignifcant plot holes can detract from the other amazing things that Spielberg does in the film, including things that Buckland highlights, like the "smooth integration of cinematography and set design" or "virtuoso camera movements." Use of techniques such as this, especially in the brilliant opening scene, make introductions of characters and enormous amounts of exposition seem both subtle and entertaining, something that is very hard to pull off even for the most experienced of directors. Although Steven Spielberg's more recent films have not shown quite as much technical mastery or brilliance of storytelling, I am sure that we will have another instant classic from Spielberg in the coming years. Since, as Minority Report shows, he remains one of the most talented and promising directors working today. And though many remember him for his early masterpieces like Jaws or Raiders of the Lost Ark, I believe that he will continue to direct outstanding motion pictures in the future; and who knows, perhaps the best of Steven Spielberg is yet to come!

Artificial Ending: How Spielberg Ruined Kubrick's Story

Okay, so the title of this blog entry might be a little unnecessarily harsh. However, I do think that the ending of Spielberg's A.I.: Artificial Intelligence essentially ruins the rest of the film (which has a fittingly dark and mature tone given the subject matter), by "artificially" tacking on a typical Spielbergian "happy ending." I really wanted to like A.I., and throughout the film I enjoyed the interesting dynamic of human characters that were more "robot-like" than their mechanical counterparts. I started to really get into it, loving the Pinocchio connections, and if the film had ended with David underwater talking to the Blue Fairy and asking to be made into a real boy for the rest of eternity, I would have thought that the film was a near masterpiece of a tragedy. Unfortunately, Spielberg added on about twenty more minutes of absurdity, with mind-reading super-robots that could bring humans back from the dead but only for one day (for some unknown reason). This allowed David to finally see his mother once again and have her treat him like a real boy, turning the film from a tragedy into a perfect example of Spielberg's oft-criticized overly wish-fullfilling happy endings.

Despite there were a lot of things in A.I. that I found very interesting. The question of whether robots could ever feel emotion is a very compelling idea, and I thought that Spielberg did an excellent job of exploring that in this film. Since most science fiction films that involve robots attaining artificial intelligence usually have those robots then turn against humans and trying to destroy them (as in The Terminator series or I, Robot), I thought that the choice to show robots from a sympathetic perspective was very innovative. This became especially clear when the meccas were "mistreated" by their human counterparts, almost as an inferior or rejected race of people. The Flesh Fair as well as the interactions between David and Martin (and his friends) truly showcase the potential for human cruelty to those who are different from us. Although, is it even reasonable to call it cruelty if they're being "cruel" to what are essentially just machines?

Overall, I guess A.I. wasn't a total disappointment, since the film raised a number of deep and moving questions, and the performances were great across the board (especially Jude Law as Gigolo Joe, and that's saying something coming from me, since I don't usually like him as an actor). However, I do wish that I could just chop off the last portion of the film or pretend that it never happened. I wonder how similar (or different) the film would have been if Kubrick had directed it as planned, but I would bet that the ending is definitely one thing he would have improved upon. Either way, after giving it some more thought, I don't really believe that Spielberg "ruined" Kubrick's story, since he did many things very well. And perhaps, since I have only seen the film once, I will grow to appreciate it more upon repeated viewings. Maybe next time I'll just accidentally press "STOP" twenty minutes early...

Private Ryan Saves the WWII Film

Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan is one of the few war movies that I actually enjoy. This was my first time seeing it, and I was surprised to find that I thought it was a great film, not only because I have been disappointed with my last few first Spielberg experiences (like The Color Purple or Empire of the Sun) but also because I just don't generally like the war genre. After classic Vietnam war movies like Oliver Stone's Platoon or Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket, I have found that for some reason I just do not have much of an interest in non-Vietnam war films. I think the reason for that is that the material just hasn't been handled very well, that is, until Saving Private Ryan. In this film, Steven Spielberg approaches the topic of World War II with what Nigel Morris refers to as "asserting psychological as well as sensual realism." This approach to war is what makes Spielberg's film truly astonishing and it is the reason people often describe Saving Private Ryan as one of the most "realistic" war films.

Specifically, one of the most realistic and most powerful scenes in the film is the D-Day landing at Normandy. Shot in "real time" with several hand-held cameras, this sequence is one of the most "realistic" and effective because it feels as though we, the audience, are right there with the soldiers, experiencing the fighting and chaos all around us just as the characters in the story are. Other effects, such as blood splattering on the lens (something that Spielberg claims was unplanned), add another element of that same feeling of "immediacy and involvement," according to Nigel Morris. Morris also quotes John Corner, who writes how this sequence tackles subjective realism, in relation to Captain Miller, on three separate levels -- the cinematic (with the elimination of sound), performance (with Tom Hanks' shaking hand), and narrative (with the character's reluctance to explain his pre-war background).

Another reason that I think Saving Private Ryan is great, aside from its successful and masterful portrayal of the realism of war, is its compelling story and cast of characters. As with Schindler's List, Steven Spielberg chooses a remarkable story that is interesting in its own right while also showcasing an important time in history. By focusing on this one group of soldiers setting out to rescue a single man within this gigantic war, Spielberg really puts a personal touch on World War II that many other war films fail to achieve. One way he does this is by developing a core group of unique and engaging characters, from the stubborn and bull-headed Reiben to the inexperienced and cowardly Upham (even though I couldn't help seeing actor Jeremy Davies as Faraday from LOST). But yet another way that this personal take on war plays out is in one particular sequence near the end of the film, where Mellish is stabbed to death by a German soldier, after they battle in close combat in a small room, alone and separate from the war going on outside. This scene brings up another connection to Schindler's List -- that war is not about the faceless masses of victims, but that it is instead made up of individuals. And when Spielberg ends the film at Arlington cemetery (closing out the bookend from the beginning) and we see all those white crosses covering the grass, we are reminded of just how many individuals have been affected, and it makes the film even more powerful.

Schindler's List: The Hollywoodcaust Film?

First off, I must say that I think Schindler's List is a great film and one of Spielberg's biggest accomplishments. However, as many film critics and other theorists have pointed out, there is an inherent problem in representing the Holocaust on film -- the problem of "representing the unrepresentable," as many have claimed. While I think that these claims sometimes go too far, such as Adorno's infamous statement that "poetry after Auschwitz is blasphemy," I do agree that making a fictional film about the Holocaust can present some problems in terms of Hollywood-izing the atrocities that occurred. For example, since most average American movie-goers prefer not to sit through two hours (or more) of depressing, horrific imagery without any sort of positive or uplifting payoff at the end, there is almost a necessity to create an inspirational Holocaust film, which on its face seems clearly oxymoronic and morally objectionable.

However, given all of these things, I think that Steven Spielberg did a great job of finding a story set during the Holocaust that is both inspirational in some sense (since it involves the saving of a tremendous number of Jewish lives) yet doesn't shy away from the horrors of the genocide that occurred and doesn't fall into the trap of Hollywood-izing the people or events. Instead, Spielberg presents the killings in an amazingly realistic way. For instance, whenever one of the Jewish victims is shot by a Nazi soldier, their body immediately becomes limp and falls to the ground in a shockingly (and subtley) lifeless fashion. Unlike shootings in most Hollywood-produced films, there is no blood splattered everywhere (although there is sometimes blood), no screaming as they fall in slo-mo towards the ground, and no need to shoot the victims over and over again to make sure they're dead. Spielberg even takes this realism of murder one step further, showing that it also doesn't always go as planned, as with the scene where Goeth's gun jams and he is unable to shoot the old man. This more realistic approach to killing is something that makes Schindler's List much more than just a Hollywood portrayal of the Holocaust.

Spielberg also expertly solves another potential problem with cinematic presentations of the Holocaust -- the "impersonal Jews argument," as Nigel Morris describes, where they "end up as extras in their own tragedy." Morris points out how this argument recurs in denunciations of the film, but like Morris, I think that Spielberg actually avoids this issue with the way that he structures the film. As Lester Friedman explains, Spielberg's "sustained interconnection of recurring Jewish characters" makes them "far more than simply marginalized bystanders." Spielberg chooses to introduce and name a number of specific characters at the beginning of the film (from different classes of society, different types of people, etc.) and then follows them throughout the film to finally see their fate at the end, and this technique makes the Jews more human than if they had merely been presented as a nameless mass of victims. Only a director of Steven Spielberg's caliber could portray the Holocaust in such an effective, realistic, and compassionate way. Thus, it is no wonder that Schindler's List is the film that won Spielberg is first Best Director Oscar.

Welcome to Jurassic Park: The Blog Entry!

Jurassic Park is definitely one of my favorite Spielberg films, purely in terms of entertainment and enjoyment. And surprisingly, I have actually already watched Jurassic Park in an academic setting, so this was not my first experience looking at the film through an analytical eye (as with these other Spielberg films so far). As I expected, the main topic of conversation around Jurassic Park, both in my film theory class and here, is the creation of the CGI-created dinosaurs and how amazingly "real" they look in the film. This begs the question -- what is "realism" in film, which is itself a reproduction? And how can we describe something (such as the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park) as seeming to be "real" even though we have no actual referent for them in our world today? According to Walter Benjamin, simply by photographing (or filming something) in the process of mecahnical reproduction, the "aura" of that object or place is destroyed. So for Benjamin, the entire film of Jurassic Park may not be classifiable as "real."

To answer (or dodge around) all of these questions, and to avoid a whole ton of other philosophical questions about what reality truly means, I think it is best to simply change the way that we talk about the dinosaurs in the film. Instead of trying to determine whether or not it makes any sense to talk about how "real" they are, perhaps it is better to just refer to them as real-like or realistic or life-like, or whatever. These terms have to do with our perception of hoow the dinosaurs seem to look and act as though they are a part of our natural world even though we recognize that they can't possibly have been filmed by Spielberg's camera. Or, you could avoid this entire question of reality altogether and simply admire the brilliant technology designed by ILM that allows us to create these magnificent images in the first place.

That brings me to what I think is one of the most fascinating things about Jurassic Park, and one of the reasons that it remains one of my favorite Spielberg films -- its amazing vision of what the future of technology may hold and the questions it raises about the implications of such potential power. Even if we reach the point where we are able to genetically engineer dinosaurs as Mr. Hammond does in the film, is it right to do so? Spielberg doesn't seem to take a strong stance on either side of this issue, presenting both sides of the argument around this theme (as he usually does with the themes of his films). This conflict is illustrated by a number of scenes throughout the film, even at the very beginning with Dr. Grant digging for bones and the sonar tool that makes it superfluous to do so. However, my favorite scene that addresses this issue most directly is the scene where John Hammond faces off against Ian Malcolm and Dr. Grant about the morality of his project with only the "bloodsucking lawyer" on his side. This scene, even without the CGI dinosaurs that captivate us for the majority of the film, is wholly entertaining and reveals a lot about all the major characters, a true credit to Spielberg's talent yet again.

Spielberg's "Empire" < Lucas's "Empire"

Empire of the Sun was yet again a first-time film viewing experience for me. I had heard about the film in the past but had never actually gotten a chance to see it, and until recently, was not even aware that it was directed by Steven Spielberg! Although...I do feel that there is good reason for that. To me, Empire of the Sun does not really "feel like" a Spielberg film. Aside from the recurring theme of a family torn apart, the use of a child protagonist, and the stunning displays of light, I did not notice many similarities in terms of film style or technique compared to the other Spielberg films that we have watched so far. Surprisingly, even though the plot revolves around a child protagonist, there are not very many typical Spielbergian shots with the camera low to the ground, as in E.T. where the camera seems to be taking on Elliot or E.T.'s view of the world. Also, another Spielberg trademark that was noticeably absent from Empire of the Sun was his often-praised use of off-screen space to manipulate audience expectations.

However, I don't think the lack of Spielberg trademark techniques is what caused me to ultimately end up disappointed with the film. I felt that it was often hard to remain interested in the story because of the very episodic nature of the film's structure. (And not episodic in a good way, as in Raiders of the Lost Ark.) The film seemed to jump from one event in Jim's adventure to the next, and as a result, I would sometimes get lost and not know how much time had passed between scenes. This was confusing at times, but even after I realized where we were in the story, I still felt that this sort of structure threw off the pacing of the film and kept it from flowing as nicely as most Spielberg pictures.

There were a few things that I liked about the film, though. Christian Bale gave a great performance, and it was interesting to see one of my favorite actors of this generation carrying a film at such a young age. Also, the music and cinematography were amazing (which is par for a Spielberg film), but unfortunately, as with The Color Purple, this was not enough to make me truly enjoy the film.

Purple's Not My Favorite Color

This was my first time seeing The Color Purple, and I was excited to watch it (despite its more controversial and serious subject matter compared to previous Spielberg films) because I finally had the opportunity to watch a Spielberg film that I had yet to see! Sadly, I was disappointed. Although I did not have high hopes for the film, since I had heard from many that it wasn't great, and although I tried to give it a chance as I watched, it just didn't grab me like I wanted it to. Most of the time I felt like everything was just a little too over-the-top, especially the acting from both Danny Glover and Whoopi Goldberg. (But I thought that Oprah did a great job!) Perhaps this is just because the film was made in 1985 when acting styles and forms of representation were very different; however, I still felt that this sort of pulled me out of the movie.

It's impossible to talk about The Color Purple without mentioning the controversy surrounding its release, namely the accusations of racism in portrayal of African Americans in the film. However, interestingly, Jaqueline Bobo writes about how black women in general had an "overwhelmingly positive response" to the film, according to interviews that she conducted. Given that they were the target audience, perhaps the claims of racism or misrepresentation are unfounded. Bobo does mention, though, that some black women said the film was "too pretty" and criticized it for not being gritty in its portrayal of Celie's African American slave lifestyle. But, as Alice Walker later pointed out, this was not really even a part of her novel, since the African Americans in the film are actually fairly well-off and although Celie went through some abuse and harsh times, she did not intend for a "gritty" atmosphere or environment for the story.

In any case, I think that this argument of Spielberg's film being "too pretty" is absurd, especially considering that Walker herself even said that this was not her intention. Not to mention, this also happened to be my favorite thing about the film -- that it looked great! As always, Steven Spielberg did an excellent job photographing the film and choosing a number of dazziling shots, specifically in his use of the sun for transitions and his showcasing of countless amazing landscapes, especially those in Africa. In fact, the only scene that I truly enjoyed in the film was the one with the cross-cutting between Celie about to kill Mister with the razor with the ritual cutting ceremony in Africa. Not only was the cinematography beautiful and fantastic, but also the editing, music, pacing, colors, everything was executed perfectly. I was glued to my seat waiting to see if Celie would go through with it, as Spielberg once again proves his mastery of creating suspense and playing with audiences' expectations. As a result, even though I disliked the film as a whole, this scene stuck with me, and I still think that it was very well done.