Minority Report (2002)

The short story by Philip Dick has no references to a lost daughter and son and there is also no father figure (whether good or treacherous) in the form of Lamar Burgess. Spielberg has once again created a film in which the issue of the longed for mother (as well as child in this version) is placed at odds with and finally subverted by an uncaring and dishonest evil father figure. It is interesting to note that it is the female figure that has the ability to create and the father literally has to kill the mother in order to control the child’s gift. Spielberg has added so many levels dealing with the family that are not found in the original story – so many that the two stories are barely recognizable as similar. In Spielberg’s modern take on Oedipus we are shown a father missing a son (both with similar names as John and Sean have similar origins), a mother missing a daughter (Anne and Agatha also with similar origins), true brothers (the twins) and symbolic ones (John and Danny Witner), good mothers (Anne) and monstrous mothers (Iris) that is can be argued that the screenplay has more to do with the story of Oedipus and the struggle of the child between the powerful forces of the mother and father than it does to Dick’s original story. As in many Spielberg films, it is the female that drives the story and it is the father that threatens to destroy the creative power. Spielberg again seems to be working through issues from his childhood, perhaps the scars he still feels from his father’s abandonment and the struggle for dominance between the maternal and paternal that resulted. The father figures in his films are typically disinterested (A.I.), failing at their role as father (Close Encounters), lacking feeling (Empire of the Sun), immoral (Minority Report) or gone (as for Elliot in E.T. and the boy/man Indian Jones). The mothers can be at times too dominant (Sugerland Express) or even monstrous (Minority Report) but it is typically the female that is responsible for the narrative (Marion becomes the true Ark, the concern for Ryan’s mother is what starts the quest to get him home, Agatha longs for her mother and shows John her vision). It is when the male tries to dominant and control this art (where Agatha’s pre-visions or the chaos that transpires when nature introduces males into the female only world of The Lost World). Perhaps much of Spielberg’s popularity is due not only to his technical skills, but his constant return to this struggle between the maternal and paternal, as it is something we all struggle with, whether consciously or unconsciously at times.

Artificial Intelligence: A.I. (2001)

In the story of Oedipus, the main character pokes out his eyes when he learns that he has killed his father, slept with his mother, and fathered children with her. In A.I., David cuts his mother’s eye with scissors he was using to obtain her hair (which coincidently holds her DNA – the building blocks for reproduction). When physically assaulted by his father as to why he did this, David replies he wanted his mother to love him. This scene is set in motion by David’s “real brother” who tricks him in to promising to obtain her hair and with the promise the Monica will love him if he is successful. It is not until David physically touches the bed (the father’s domain) that Monica is startled and nearly loses her eye. Spielberg has twisted the Oedipus story so that the son almost stabs his mother’s eye less due to the fact the son wishes to replace the father, but because he wishes her to love him as much as, if not more, than her biological son - echoing the familiar motif that one sometimes needs to be blinded before they can truly see. The wish fulfillment of this desire is granted at the end of the film, but Monica and David’s positions have changed – she is not the replicant and David is the special or unique individual. It is no surprise that the wish fulfilled day begins and ends on the mother’s bed. Spielberg again provided a story driven by the desire for the mother, where the main character struggles through many obstacles for her approval, where the father is distant and threatening, and where the final images (which appear as film or dreams) would not have been possible without the muse of the mother.

Saving Private Ryan (1998)

The first twenty minutes of this film are mind blowing. Spielberg shows you visions both terrifying and sublime. It is interesting that he chooses to start the film concentrating on the eyes of the veteran at the grave (which turns out to be Private Ryan) then matches it only a few scenes later with the eyes of Captain John Miller. When the film ends and you realize that Ryan's remembrances of the storming of the beach could not have been first hand, rather stories that were told to him (as the young Spielberg was told war stories by his father). Perhaps this is simply a conceit to surprise the audience, but it is also likely that Spielberg was commenting on how memory is not completely reliable and can never capture the essence of an event or life. The plot of having a group of soldiers risk their lives on a mission to bring one soldier back to his mom won't lose her last son is of course ridiculous and is just too much of a hurdle to get over and keeps this film form being a masterpiece. I was surprised however that even given this ridiculous plot device the film was still very powerful.

Schindler’s List

I feel I have to first state that I think this is a powerful film and one that should have been made given the ignorance of the majority of people regarding the Holocaust. However, I do not view Schindler’s List as a film that focuses primarily on the Holocaust and it is perhaps this reason that I do not agree with the many detractors of this film. I see the film focusing on the character of Oscar Schindler and his development as a human being. The movie is fascinating as it explores a human being that winds up doing great acts, yet a man that at least initially lacks any moral center. As we witness Itzhak Stern guide Schindler on his path to becoming a compassionate human being, the images of the Holocaust are moving, but they do come close to representing the Holocaust itself. The fact that none of the characters we come to know lose their lives, the overall positive feeling of the film (and one can perhaps fault Spielberg for making his film sometimes too beautiful for the subject matter), the need for him to find an escape for his persecuted characters, and his betrayal of his exploration of an imperfect main character (having Schindler break down and cry wishing he had spent more money) do give ammunition to his critics. The scene where the Jewish woman and children are placed into what we think are gas chambers, only to find (to the characters’ relief and ours) it is only a shower, is aggravating. Spielberg it seems can not go that far into the darkness and we perhaps subconsciously are relieved he has provided an escape. For millions of people however, there was no escape and providing one for a Hollywood production may ultimately sell more tickets, but fails to help us grasp the horror that ended so many lives.

However, if you acknowledge that no film or work of art can ever represent the Holocaust, then the moments and images Spielberg does capture are powerful and add to the main focus of the film, which is the character of Oscar Schindler. On that level, had Spielberg not chosen to have Schindler break down out of character at the end of the film, but instead left him the enigma he was (perhaps even suggesting he could have been doing this as he knew Germany was losing the war), the character of Oscar Schindler would have gone down as one of the most interesting in films. In the end however, Spielberg has given us a fascinating character portrayal and glimpses of some of the atrocities. Merely for this and the fact he helped bring awareness to the subject, he succeeded and must be commended.

I would also argue that even with the failing on the part of Spielberg to hold true to the character of Oscar Schindler due to his apparent constant need for melodrama in his characters and feel good endings to his movies, the character of Oscar Schindler that existed up until the last few moments of the film is so fascinating, that it still manages to rise to the level of brilliance. Few people could have even dared to make Schindler’s List into a movie and Spielberg’s masterpiece is flawed, but I can’t help but admire him for what he was able to accomplish.

Jurassic Park (1993)

I found it interesting that Spielberg called Jurassic Park "a sequel to Jaws on land" as Spielberg did seam to be throwing in references to many of his most successful movies - the raptors of course similar to the shark of Jaws, but Alan Grant appears to be an aging Indiana Jones (again more interested in the past than those around him) and the scene in which Alan Grant and Tim flee from a jeep (which looks like it is driving down a tree to attack them) brings to mind the Truck in Duel. The movie is one of my favorite Spielberg films for its sheer pleasure of watching dinosaurs brought to life so spectacularly (though later versions would have better affects, they lacked the superior writing and acting of the original) and eyeing humans as their new favorite meal. Spielberg's playfulness while commentating on merchandising and Disneyland (w/ a Disneyland-like theme park where the pirates of the Caribbean breaking down can result in the visitors being eaten)

It is interesting to note that the character of Alan Grant did not have the initial discomfort around children that Spielberg added to the film. Again, Spielberg shows us a male father figure that lacks basic father skills. The character of Ian Malcolm is an absentee father that spends most of his time hitting on the mother figure of Ellie Sattler. However, over the course of the film Alan loses his uncaring attitude (his first encounter with a child borders on contempt) towards children to a protective and caring father figure.

Empire of the Sun

Another film with a family torn apart – this time by war. I didn’t enjoy this film as much as I thought I would (I think Hope and Glory is a better picture along the same lines) and I was actually struck by how the film didn’t stand out as a Spielberg production – not so much control of the audience through the placement of the camera, less over sentimentality than you would normally expect from Spielberg (especially given the subject matter) and none of the out of place or strained humor that sometimes detaches you from his stories. Perhaps the greatest obstacle was the character of Jamie/Jim himself. He was just too self-centered and unaware of the suffering of those around him for me to really care for his character. A few interesting scenes though - sexuality is at least referred to (uncommon in a Spielberg film) while the boy watches the couple from his makeshift room, the flash of the atomic bomb being mistake for a soul ascending (but could he have seen the bombs in Japan from where he was?) and the mother and father’s response when they are reunited with Jamie (the father at first walks right by him as if he no longer recognizes his son and later only the mother embraces Jamie – the father only able to stand by uncomfortably witnessing this show of emotion even though they have been separate by years of hardships). We come to see flying equated with freedom, however, there is very little freedom in the film – it feels stifling and depressing most of the time. Even Jamie’s rising above the stupidity of war and not seeing the world as black or white, good or evil, but seeing the honorable characters of the flyers and soldiers on both sides trapped in a war they did not choose, but will fight till their deaths was hard to embrace at times – and we too may wish to remind him that rooting for the enemy to be glorious may work fine in a comic book or the dreams of a child, but have no place in the real world where people are suffering and dying.

The Color Purple

In The Color Purple we watch as Celie and Nettie devise a way of overcoming Mister’s attempt to keep them apart. Common in Spielberg’s films, they are seen though an open doorway (initially as shadows in an off screen space but then Nettie breaks into the on screen space behind the doorway). As the scene progresses, the camera pulls back and we realize that we have been eavesdropping on the two young women from the perspective of Mister. Spielberg has taken us from being a co-conspirator with the young women to becoming their oppressor merely by the use of his camera to establish an off-screen presence. It is perhaps normal to assume an omniscient perspective when we peer through a doorway, but Spielberg continually plays on our assumptions and jolts us at times as we realize we are standing in the place of the character we most revile or fear. Spielberg also plays on distorting our environment by not always letting us know where we are. As the older Celie reads her sister’s letters, we become aware that the sun she is looking at is actually in the sky above her sister in Africa and then before we know it, Mister has stepped in front of it, transporting us back to Celie. The technique not only compacts the images and ideas on the screen, but adds a unity to the characters and to the theme of the story. This technique may be seen as too artful for some, taking the viewer out of the story for a moment as they struggle to get their bearings and also marvel at the director’s skill, but it does add to the poetic unity of the whole as the sisters stories intertwine.

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

It is hard to find fault with this film in terms of Spielberg’s sheer mastery of his craft. Each frame of the film is orchestrated so expertly that Spielberg maintains a level of control of his audience unseen before (they are constantly torn between feelings of anxiety and excitement at the hero’s adventures and rewarded with the pleasures of near death escapes and expertly choreographed actions sequences). Spielberg’s camera becomes a character in its own right, with the audience constantly placed in the position of an unknown listener, native, idol, etc.

Spielberg benefits enormously by having the visual blueprint of the old Republic serials as he can concentrate on what he is best at – the visual telling of his tale and the problem solving in which this entails. By recreating many of the best of the Republic serials, he is able to use them as a starting point and then find ingenious ways to build on the excitement while adding to the organic unity of the film. His use of combing and contrasting the images of Marion w/ the Ark and sand w/ the sacred heighten the journey that Indy is himself on, of understanding that his quest for artifacts is never as important as his real quest, a spiritual awakening of his place in the community and his appreciation of the human (sand a metaphor of the dust we all become?) and those that love him. I love how Spielberg transforms the macho heroes of the serials to a fallible nerd/action hero that always winds up losing the artifact he is on a quest for. At the conclusion of the movie, The Lost Ark is lost again (this time in bureaucracy) but Indy has found the true Ark (though he too apparently doesn’t know what he has as the credits role as it will take decades and three more movies/adventures before he marries Marian).

The arc of the four films is interesting, as Indy slowly begins to lose his cynicism regarding the power of the spiritual and in each films bonds closer with those around him – perhaps more importantly he comes to understand his role in the community. His fear of snakes is interesting also, as snakes represent the circle of life and death in many cultures – as if Indy is subconsciously terrified of growing up and taking his position in society (he would be happy at the beginning of the series to remain the boy on his adventures). The series ends however with Indy accepting his role as father and husband.

Whether due to insecurities over the critical and financial failure of 1941 or due to his love of the old Republic serials, Spielberg raises the bar with Raiders. Despite the criticism of his treatment of women, racism, and apparent pro-Reagan era themes, Spielberg is doing so much more than his critics give him credit for. He has taken a tired genre and turned it upside down. His hero is not Ronald Regan from “They Died w/ Their Boots On” or John Wayne from “Stagecoach”, he is a man that makes mistakes, runs from danger when discretion is the better part of valor, is usually dirty and covered with sweat, never keeps the physical object he is seeking, and comes to understand that spiritual/religious object from indigenous cultures have power and belong to them. I love this series, including the even numbered ones which lack the great stories of the first and third installments.

E.T – The Extra-Terrestrial

I am constantly amazed at the reaction people have towards this “fairy tale”. Some children are terrified by E.T., some adults hate the film for the regressive role it places the viewer in, while other think it is a story about hope for people from all different backgrounds (if an alien can bond with a human, why can’t we all just get along?). We begin with another Spielberg film with a family in crisis. Another father that has abandoned his duties (this time for another woman) and left the pieces to be sorted out by those he left behind. From the very beginning we are show teenagers sitting around a table (as if trying to be men playing poker, but it is steam not smoke that swills around them) trying to work out who has “absolute power” in a board game. Elliot tries to join in their "manly" pursuits and his mother appears unaware (or is she in need of?) the sexual attention she is receiving from the boys. The male figure that will replace the father at the end of the film is only known to us as “keys” (with a little too heavy handed use of an image to represented the missing phallus in the family). When “keys” finally puts his keys back into his pants and connects with Elliot, it is at that moment that Elliot breaks his connection with E.T. When E.T. finally ascends to the mother ship (or is he just returning back to the womb) he walks up the ramp like a tottering child just learning to walk. Some see this as a progression for Elliot, he has begun the transition to adulthood (no longer a boy wishing to stay connected more to the mother/child (E.T. even looks like an undeveloped fetus near the end film) but to the reunited family as “keys” and Mom look on with approval. Yet, Spielberg does a match shoot with Elliot and the Mom at the end of the film and the “dekeyed” Keys is off to the background, seemingly commenting that Elliot has become more aligned with the maternal, not the new father figure. This is not necessarily a regression; Elliot has grown in confidence over the course of the film and who is to say the maternal is any less powerful than the paternal? But having the film shot from the point of a child, having E.T. (which Elliot has some sort of connection with that involves his feelings, mind, and body) appear like a child retuning to the womb (and uncanny at times due to this regression), and resolving the missing father with an emasculated Keys (he appears himself more like a boy towards the end of the film when he describes his quest for E.T.), leaves many adults put off (and some children frightened) by the regressive nature of viewing E.T.

Spielberg seems to be still working out some of the scars left from his father's absence during his childhood, but the fetus like E.T. is uncanny and the resolution of the fairy tale a little too forced and a little too dominated by the mother-child relationship.

Poltergeist

Douglas Kellner has it all wrong – Spielberg is not celebrating some middle class ideal of possessions. We can't forget that underneath this "idealic" community, lies the bodies of those that the developers bulled over to increased their profits (the community is even named Cuesta Vista, as if commenting on the cost of the viewed afforded by the lifestyles by the middle class homeowners).
Once again Spielberg shows us a family in crisis, with the father’s actions (or job in this case) being the catalyst that threatens to destroy the family. Once could even argue that the “evil presence” that is described leading the lost souls in the next life is paralleled in this world by Steve's boss, who also leads the living souls in this life astray in pursuit of his own desires (both keep the people from what they should do and redirect their energies to their own end). The fact that the evil uses the TV to enter our world is also interesting (the image of the TV is strewn throughout the film and is paralleled in the lighting of out objects in the film with flashes of lightening and moonlight); the “possessions" that Kellner feels Spielberg is celebrating threaten us most in the media that also celebrates the middle class lifestyle while bombarding it with commercials to wet our consumer appetites even more. The family is constantly mesmerized by its screen, staring it at (or falling asleep in front of it) instead of looking and interacting with each other. It is also interesting to note that the spirits first reveal themselves to the mother by moving the (abandoned) kitchen table chairs around, as if pointing to the fact that they are missing. I think Kellner and many others miss the underlying critique of modernity which Spielberg has in many of his films. In some ways he is like the poet Robert Frost or the musician Bruce Springsteen – both popular performers commenting on American society but whose message is sometimes lost on people that apparently become overwhelmed by their mastery of their craft and their popular appeal (how the Republican’s missed the whole point of the song “Born in the USA’ still mystifies me to this day). Spielberg’s film constantly show a family in crisis, battling modernity and trying to remain intact as they struggle for their place within it.

Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

Older post - reposted to contrast Spielberg's Space Odyssey

I had seen Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey a few times over the course of my life, but never felt I really understood what Kubrick was up to until I read Miller and Hanson’s takes on the film. My most recent viewing did seem to support Hanson’s argument that Kubrick was showing through the similarities (i.e. the repetition of behaviors, though granted transformed over time) between the apes and space age man, that “the human race has gone nowhere fast”. The future is shown as a technological marvel, but with the price of isolating man from his fellow creatures (they communicate without touching, families separated by vast space, whose only tool is a telephone to make some connections (the apes at least had each other to huddle against in the cold world that surrounded them. Also the repression of sex (w/ sex only alluded to via the Lolita reference to an abandoned cashmere sweater) also permeates the film, so much so that Hanson’s article regarding the repressed homosexual tendencies of not only the astronauts, but HAL, made the film take on a deeper meaning. Not only do the scenes showing the narcissistic crewmen (who watch themselves on monitors), the penetration back into the ship that mirrors an ejaculation, and the (un)screwing of HAL become obvious with this reading, but the malfunctioning “unit” that Hal thinks is about to fail and which turns out to be nothing wrong with (HAL's problems are only in his head), make HAL’s deadly actions make sense. If we grant that HAL has evolved into a being, with all the psychological baggage consciousness brings with it, then his castration by the astronauts he cares for no longer seeing him as perfect and his concern for the “malfunctioning unit” (I love how Kubrick has Poole cross his arms like an injured lover as he first discovers that HAL my be malfunctioning) make the following actions become clearer. As HAL discovers Dave and Poole are going to castrate him by terminating his memory, he, as can be expected of a conscious being, attempts to kill them first.

When Dave enters HAL and begins (un)screwing him, HAL sings him a love song as he says he is losing his mind. The video (HAL’s unconscious) that results in the termination of his memory shows that deep within HAL was the knowledge that not only was he not considered perfect by the astronauts any longer (due to his worrying over his malfunctioning unit) but they were on a mission to seek out an intelligence even greater than HAL’s. HAL knew consciously as well as unconsciously that his potency was waning. HAL could be seen as a lover that was being castrated and abandoned and given his was a relatively new conscious, his actions can be better understood. He was a consciousness that had yet to understand what consciousness and desire were (though I am not sure any of us really do). As for the final ending with the “starchild” hovering over earth - as the whole movie dealt with the separation of humanity by their technology, I don’t think the lone, isolated floating fetus was suppose to be a happy ending as some would claim it is. Given Kubrick’s genius and all that led up to that moment, I think the final scene is more a tongue-in-cheek finale that actually criticizes our belief that technology will somehow assist us in reaching a higher level of consciousness.

Close Encounters of the Turd Kind

This film was written by Spielberg so his treatment of a family in crisis (a common theme in his films) is perhaps all the more fascinating. Roy (as many of the men in Spielberg films) appears unsure how to fulfill his role as father. We are first introduced to him in his living room where his wife appears more of a mom scolding him on the mess his massive train set is causing to her home. He even attempts, reluctantly, to explain his son’s homework problem to him through the use of his toy trains. The early references to Pinocchio (who of course dreamed of becoming a boy) culminate with Roy proclaiming “I grew up on Pinocchio”. Later, after his close encounter with an alien ship, he begins being drawn to a shape (later revealed to be a mountain). It is interesting to note he first sees the shape in his shaving cream (a product exclusively for adults, facial hair denoting passage from childhood). He stops shaving and stares at the shape as if it is something he should remember (an uncanny object from his past?). His wife ends the scene by slapping the shaving cream onto his face, as if to remind him of its (and his) correct place. Later, a child’s recreation of the shape in dirt draws him even more intently. Here, he reaches out almost absent mindedly and touches the object, getting his hands dirty in the process. Unlike Kubrick’s monolith in 2001, A Space Odyssey (which has many obvious similarities to Spielberg’s space movie), the object produced by the child (and also touch by his mother) resembles a turd – fascinating to a child as it his first production that he willfully controls according to Freud; Kubrick’s characters sustain leaps in evolution due to his monolith, while Roy appears to be de-evolving into a fantasized childhood where his adult responsibilities no longer exist.

Roy’s wife, Ronnie, is later upset that he has lost his job and then in a fit of inspiration, she watches as Roy begins destroying her garden (and that of their neighbor) and throws dirty objects through her kitchen window. Ronnie leaves Roy, who proceeds to create what resembles a giant turd in the middle of the living room. Dirty and exhausted, Roy sees the same image on his TV and abandons his home (forever) in search of the object. When the aliens (or is it the Blue Fairy?) do land Roy deserts his family to ascend in the alien ship for some romanticized heaven. During his final ascent into the slip in the mountain, Roy literally struggles to crawl and stand up as he reaches to the outstretched hand of Gillian (a surrogate mother figure as he has left Ronnie and the kids for good earlier in the film) – Roy appears to have regressed back to a baby learning to crawl and stand on his own with his mother cheering him on. Gillian descends into the mountain with Roy, but she pulls back when Barry returns from the spaceship, accepting her role as an adult and parent. Roy then (fulfilling his oral fixation) kisses Gillian on the mouth and heads for the ship. Perhaps a little heavy handedly, Spielberg next has Roy and Barry mirror each other in a matched shot while a variation of “When You Wish Upon a Star” plays in the background – Roy has regressed back into the childhood he dreamed of. The first alien we see appears tall (perhaps the adult), but the aliens that pick Roy out of the crowd and surround him appear to be children (they have picked him as their playmate and let him join their circle). Roy has regressed back to a child with what appears to be no regret or sense of loss of the family and adult life he is deserting. Spielberg doesn’t even have Roy’s family there to look on and wish goodbye to their father (having long ago disappeared in the family station wagon half way through the film when Ronnie raced off in response to Roy’s messing up of her home); perhaps Spielberg sense that had they been there, Roy’s decision might have appeared too selfish for the film to offer what little bit of resolution it does at its conclusion.

Spielberg has created an anti-fairy tale, or a fairy tale in reverse. Whereas fairy tales are designed to help the child learn to cope with the challenges of becoming an adult and functioning in the world without being attached to mom and dad (such as Hansel & Gretel overcoming their oral fixation on the ginger bread and their too controlling parents to defeat the witch on their own), Spielberg has his main character regress from adulthood to infancy. There is no villain in the film, unless perhaps the human condition of having to grow up and become and adult. Many critics have a difficult time with this film, as they expect the narrative to fit into the normal paradigm of the main character progressing over the course of the film. Andrew Gordon skewered the film because the aliens act irrationally and he is unable to make sense of why Roy decides to flings the dirt and himself through the kitchen window when he could have use the sliding glass door. However, if we view the film as a fairy tale in reverse, these events make more sense. The aliens’ actions can be viewed as those of playful children more than having any rational explanation. Roy’s crawling through the kitchen window could be seen as his desire to crawl back into the womb.

In his films, Spielberg normally shows the aftermath of the missing father (Elliot in E.T., Jim in Empire of the Sun/son), but in this film he shows us a man abandoning his family for some higher ideal but without the consequences to those he leaves behind. The film reads to me as if he is exploring and almost justifying (though not quite) the father’s need to pursue his own desires over that of his family. As if the pain he felt from his father’s own abandonment still exists, but is perhaps tempered by an older Spielberg understanding that sometimes fathers make choices which abandons their role in the family not because they don't love their family or are bad people, but simply they sometimes have other callings which they are more drawn to.

Jaws

When I was nine years old, my father took me to the movie that everyone was talking about – a thriller about a shark terrorizing a northeastern beach community. My father had seen the movie already and felt that I was old enough to view it (though to this day, like most people who saw the movie, I still am not completely at ease in the ocean). Over 30 years later, I still remember my father sitting on my right side. He told me later he would watch me out of the corner of his eye for my reaction to the two big “jump-out-of-your-seat” scenes (the head popping out of the hole in the bottom of the boat and the “we are going to need a bigger boat” scene). It is funny, but in my mind I see us sitting there, like we were strapped into a thrill ride at an amusement park – tense for the shocks we know are coming and yet excited and enthralled with the experience.

Upon viewing the film years later, I am still impressed with the direction and film editing which contribute to making such a thrilling and all around fun film. However, the thrills and fast pace of the film which lend it to being compared to an amusement park ride, come at a price. The original story had Chief Brody’s wife have an affair with Matt Hooper. Given the Freudian undercurrents of a monster lurking beneath the surface, this would have seemed a crucial element of the story that would have given it more depth – perhaps making it a thriller worthy of Hitchcock. Brody’s overcoming of his fear (regaining his manhood) and killing the shark could have provided another level to the film. Many criticize Spielberg for his films being more gloss and less substance and one could only wonder if Jaws would have been an even better film with this extra layer added to it. However the many ways Jaws can still be interpreted even without this key plot (nature vs. science as seen in the story of the Indianapolis being one of my favorites) temper some of these criticisms. Spielberg made a conscious choice to favor a faster pace for his story over a more academically appealing telling of the story and it is true that many of his films seem to value the visceral experience over the intellectual. Whether this is a conscious belief on his part that the intellectual is somehow not as authentic as the visceral, or as critics would argue, he is simply pandering to the popular culture, it is hard to say. I am reminded of the image of the young man in Amblin’ that hides in his guitar case not an instrument for art, but toilet paper, a tie, etc. (and seems ashamed to reveal it). As if even at that early an age, Spielberg was keenly aware of the conflict between art and commerce, and made his choice to never forget the necessities of real life over art – he desired to swim in the Pacific Ocean over the romanticized continued road trip of his travel companion. Spielberg is a hard man to peg. His masterful technique, inventiveness to overcome obstacles (the fog to hide the pond they were filming in, filming from water level and from beneath with the perspective of a shark) and seeming ability to read the pulse of public (a modern day P.T. Barnum) make him elusive. Is he simply pandering, or does he see the gut reaction as the true aim of great filmmaking? Viewing Jaws can be related to the experience you have in a good amusement park ride (it was of course made into a popular ride after the film's incredible success), but one must wonder, does this make it less artful or relevant? Does a work of art have to appeal as much or more to the intellect than the gut to have value? I think Spielberg would say no.

The Sugarland Express

For a first full length film, there is much to be appreciated. Spielberg's use of mis-en-scene to move the story forward and to mirror the growth and inner lives of the characters is miles ahead of where he was in Amblin' and Eyes. He places and moves the actors in many scenes in ways that heighten our understanding of the characters' relationship to each other. When Patrolman Slide removes Lou Jean from the car (from the private to the public) she pulls his gun (castrates him?) and throws the gun near Clovis. Clovis grabs the gun (thought doesn’t know apparently how to point it) and says he has never shot anyone before (which will mirror Captain Tanner’s statement in a later scene). Spielberg films the scene from the perspective of the Patrolman looking up at Clovis and (like a puppet master positioned above him) Lou Jean - having us identify with the Patrolman/society. If Lou Jean is meant to represent the private life of the individual (who like Antigone places family above the law) and if Patrolman Slide is to be viewed as the demands of society, Clovis is perfectly placed between the two opposing forces that are demanding of him to obey. The next scene we get a glimpse or foreshadowing of the fickleness and stupidity of the general public as the drunken passenger in the police car flees from them saying “God bless you”. It is hard to decide which of the two opposing forces Spielberg wants us to relate to the most (or perhaps we are simply to acknowledge their competing and irreconcilable forces) but it is clear he has no love of the general public (or the media for that matter). When he positions Clovis and Slide at opposite sides of the screen, with Lou Jean directly behind the gun that Clovis is holding, we see in Clovis’ face the uncertainty of what he should do next. It is when he accidentally fires the gun (with Lou Jean shuttering and yelling as the gun goes off) that he regains his manhood. The movie has faults including its straight narrative and lack of real depth to its characters), however, the story of a broken family trying to hold itself together against the rules and demands of society is a powerful and reoccurring theme for Spielberg. It is interesting to note that foster parents seem eerily un-parent like (the child seems to continual scream in panic when they are near) and that we are always aware from the beginning (which overdone foreshadowing such as the cartoon scene) that their quest to become a whole family again is doomed. Lou Jean’s character is interesting as she has, through the force of her will, not only given back Clovis his manhood, but managed to create during their journey a pseudo child in Slide (she feeds him, tucks, him in, and asks him if he need to use the potty) and a temporary American home in the mobile home they break into (with a stove and movie running in the bedroom). The darker side of course is that we are constantly aware that his private life cannot continue to exist for long. It is also interesting that the place they dream of going, where their child awaits, is called Sugarland. As if even this dream world (where only death is truely waiting) is too syrupy to exist in reality too. In the end there is no whole family that exists in a world that places rules and demands on its inhabitants.