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.