Steven Spielberg: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

In defense of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, there is at least some kind of push to make the movie distinct from its predecessors. Where the first three films paid homage to serials of the ‘30s and ‘40s, Crystal Skull accounts for the 19-year gap between between this fourth installment in the franchise and 1989’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade by shifting its inspirations accordingly.

Here, the root inspiration is ‘50s-era science fiction (and its attendant Cold War subtext), which, in a way, makes the film unique, at least in relation to the other Indy movies. Instead of relics with supernatural might, the treasured objects of the film’s title are mysterious, perfectly formed skulls with strange powers, powers not of brute strength but of mental manipulation. In keeping with anti-Communist paranoia, the weapon here is the power to brainwash without fail. It’s a clever twist that didn’t get enough credit upon the film’s initial release; the only critic I can recall even mentioning it was, of all people, routine Spielberg-basher Jonathan Rosenbaum.

The film opens not with the usual bombastic, audience-grabbing stunt but with a light-hearted, rock ‘n roll-themed drag race between soldiers headed for a military base and a car filled with high school greasers and girls. The same Western expanses Indy rode through on a horse and train as a young adult now sport the freshly paved lanes of Eisenhower’s interstate system. And when the race ends and the military convoy arrives outside Area 51, Spielberg switches over to Cold War invasion terror when the soldiers turn out to be Commies in disguise, looking for deadly secrets to use against America. It’s a low-key opening for the franchise, but one that displays a refreshing willingness to grow and change. It scarcely feels like an Indiana Jones film at all, an intriguing change of pace that shows off the director’s playfulness.

And then Indy shows up. The second our archaeologist hero is heaved from a car trunk, the sheer force of his iconography commandeers the film. Spielberg only exacerbates Ford’s enduring charisma, ironically, by not showing him immediately. He instead introduces Indy by his synecdochical item of clothing, his fedora, then through a silhouette on a car door. By the time the camera twirls around to capture Ford’s aged but still grizzled face, the director has more or less served the role of James Brown’s announcer, whipping the crowd into a frenzy before throwing over to the main event. By introducing Indy through his shadow, though, Spielberg inadvertently suggests that he is a Nosferatu-like monster, come to steal away a potentially interesting, individual effort and make into the usual tat.

Indeed, Indy’s appearance marks the start of a gradual downturn in quality that lasts the entire film, sapping the initial burst of energy and creativity until Crystal Skull ultimately morphs into a pandering, listless sequel that fails to capitalize upon its ideas. It starts early: forced by the Russians to help them find an alien carcass that holds the key to their plans, Indy of course ends up in a huge chase to escape, a genuinely impressive stunt that shows Ford’s willingness to still do at least some of his own stunt work. But as he careens around the vast warehouse slamming into objects in a military transport vehicle, the camera stays behind one mangled box to reveal the Ark of the Covenant, hidden at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. It’s a trite moment, one that breaks the spell momentarily cast by the sequence and serves only to placate an audience assumed to be getting bored already.

The rest of the film generally plunders past installments for inspiration. The wry father-son dynamic of Last Crusade, as much a parody of Spielberg’s pet theme as one of its finest presentations, is presented in inverse. Now Indiana is the absent, crotchety father, made to contend with the sudden appearance of a son he did not know he had. And just as Indy’s impetuousness and hands-on approach to archaeology caused conflicts with his studious dad, so too does Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf) represent everything Indiana hates. But where the rift between Indy and Henry Sr. played out almost as a professional and personal rivalry, making them brilliant comic and action foils, Mutt’s juxtaposition is simpler. Stacked against Indy’s encyclopedic knowledge and lifetime of academia, Mutt is a greaser dropout whose flits of archaeological know-how seem less deepening personality quirks than necessary add-ons to ensure he’s not total dead weight.

Because of this facile contrast, based in the easy humor of poking Indy for his age, Ford and LaBeouf display none of the chemistry that made Ford and Connery one of the best father-son pairings in film. LaBeouf’s attempts at swagger come off as hollow arrogance, and he lacks the presence to hold his own against Ford’s laconic put-downs. Part of this isn’t LaBeouf’s fault: the spiky energy between Ford and Connery came from an entire history Indy and his father shared off-screen. Thrust upon Doctor Jones as the son he did not know he had, Mutt is as unfamiliar to the hero as he is to the audience. Mutt feels more like Short Round than he does a son. But at least Short Round had comic timing; LaBeouf’s awkward posturing communicates none of the rebellious cool of all the ‘50s teen heroes he studied for the role. Not even Spielberg can make him a striking figure, framing the boy’s introduction through mist at a train station but making his sudden appearance instantly dull and extraneous. The camera immediately picks up on what the script did not: this character does not belong.

As the film presents Mutt as Indy’s son, it must also bring out the boy’s mother, leading to the return of Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen). Probably the most beloved character in the franchise besides Indy himself, Marion should be a welcome sight, and she even avoids the damsel pitfall into which she fell in Raiders’ second half. But there’s something off about her from the moment she appears, a strange look in Allen’s face that suggests she’s so happy to be included that she might break at any moment, turn to the camera and thank Spielberg just for letting her be a part of this wonderful project. It obliterates the edge she gave Marion back in 1981, making her look about as vacant and loopy as John Hurt as a professor driven mad by the strange, thrumming energy of the crystal skulls (vaguely recalling Roy’s obsessive, alien-tweaked behavior in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Of course, crowds flock to see Indiana Jones movies not for depth of character but for the quality of the stunts. Unfortunately, the tactile quality of the old film’s sequences has been swapped for vast, empty CGI that utterly drains Crystal Skull of the suspense and thrill of its predecessors. When the Russians open the warehouse doors at the beginning, Spielberg cuts to an extreme long shot that swoops about as the outsized enormity of the place is illuminated by truck headlights that burn as large and bright as twin suns. It shows off Spielberg’s bombast, but it lacks feeling. Compare this master shot of the warehouse to the one that closes Raiders: that film used its own trickery to make its warehouse seemingly endless, employing a matte painting that creates the illusion of a storage facility that stretches into the vanishing point. Nevertheless, even the old methods of fakery have a texture to them that the too-slick computer animation here lacks.

(That the CGI is so sloppy in Crystal Skull is surprising given the typical level of quality of computer-animated effects in Spielberg’s film, from the landmark, still-gorgeous dinosaurs of Jurassic Park to the finely detailed, artfully odd designs of War of the Worlds. Compare the undated quality of the effects of those films with a scene here of ants swarming a particularly bullish Russian soldier who serves as primary henchman. Granted, CGI faces are always hard to pull off, but try not to laugh at the utterly pedestrian quality of this shot, which looks as if it had been animated in the mid-‘90s, not four years ago.)

The most famous example of the overinflated, stake-less action is, of course, the “nuking the fridge” scene. The moment of total disconnect from the movie when I first saw it, this sequence no longer bothers me as it did. There’s no denying that the sight of Indy surviving a nuclear explosion by hiding in a lead-lined refrigerator is exceedingly stupid, the sort of thing that is clearly meant to be a gag but is then played too straight to work as a joke. But the mock suburb targeted for the test strike is admittedly funny, Spielberg and Kaminski lightening the frame to capture the treacly, bubblegum view of ‘50s middle-class comfort shortly before it is obliterated by the military-industrial complex that constructed that illusion. And though the sight of the Indy-filled fridge soaring through the air and slamming into the ground with enough force to liquefy the old man is too stupid to bear, the ending shot of Indy looking up at the mushroom cloud sucking up dust to blot out the sun is as surreal and hauntingly beautiful as anything in War of the Worlds.

For me, the more garish sequence is the epically disastrous centerpiece in the Amazon. With both Indy’s band and the Russians hunting for El Dorado, Spielberg collides the two in an extended sequence that awkwardly mashes up several distinct setpieces into one clumsy whole. The action moves from a truck containing Indy, Marion and Mutt as prisoners to their eventual escape and takeover of that vehicle and others, moves into a sword fight held across two cars, an Aguirre-esque rain of monkeys, the aforementioned bit with the ants and, finally, a trip in an amphibian vehicle down not one, but three waterfalls.

In many ways, this sequence recalls the similarly epic Bagghar sequence from last year’s The Adventures of Tintin. That film’s centerpiece was a masterpiece of mise-en-scène, an unbroken animated shot that kept piling on information into the frame until it threatened to collapse under the strain. But here, Spielberg’s direction lacks any flow; the monkeys, bullet ants and waterfalls do not clearly occupy the same space, not in the way that everything in Bagghar somehow makes sense. When Mutt gets sucked up into the tree canopies an finds the monkeys, it’s as if he’s gone to another place entirely. The same is true of the sudden appearance of the ant mounds, or the almost inevitable waterfalls.

I know some who pardon this sequence, arguing that it is meant to be taken in light jest, but the previous Indiana Jones films all achieved a lighthearted, effervescent energy in their stunts without completely tossing out the tension or a loopy verisimilitude. Can I believe natives hundreds of years ago carved a perfectly spherical boulder and somehow hoisted it into a booby trap that can detect a difference in weight seemingly by the ounce? No, but I can buy it at the start of Raiders because the direction is so exhilarating and the layout of the tomb so clear simply from a few glances. This sequence holds no weight at all, and it’s more visually incoherent than Spielberg’s handheld camerawork.

The only setpiece that really works is the nighttime grave-robbing scene where Indy and Mutt discover a crystal skull of their own. That the scene works at all is somewhat to the film’s detriment, as it is the sequence that most resembles (or rips off) the other movies in the franchise. Like similar sequences in the other films, this is a bridging moment, with Indy wallowing around some grimy, dark place looking for the next piece of the puzzle. This scene lacks the same icky factor of the rat- and bug-infested catacombs of past efforts, but the surreal slapstick of natives diving in and out of holes to torment Indy and Mutt is the only time the comedic approach to the stunts is genuinely funny and not out-of-place. Granted, it resembles a Scooby Doo episode more than an Indiana Jones setpiece, but I’ll take what I can get with this movie. I'm also fond of the effect of an immaculately preserved body vaporizing upon contact with oxygen, a delightfully gruesome aside.

I have not yet mentioned the film’s primary antagonist, Irina Spalko, played with spiky dispassion and an inconsistent accent by Cate Blanchett. Like other villains of the series, Spalko is the avaricious foil to Jones’ prosocial motives for finding artifacts. If anything, she may be the purest contrast for the hero yet, her thirst for power taking the form of a Faustian hunt for ultimate knowledge that is not too different from Jones’ quests of secular enlightenment. Blanchett’s pristine beauty makes her a striking villain aesthetically, but she combines the least memorable aspects of Indy baddies and female characters into one empty shell of a character. The problem also is that the villains in Indiana Jones movies are typically just stand-ins for a larger evil force that can be despised: ask someone who the bad guy in Raiders of the Lost Ark, and you’ll probably hear “Nazis” instead of “Belloq” or “Toht.” Commies don’t hold the same lingering allure/repulsion that Nazis do, further draining Spalko of her thin presence.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ends with some pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo about inter-dimensional beings and a hideously animated maelstrom of a flying saucer taking off, but its worst image may be its last, of the literal riding into the sunset of Last Crusade replaced by a perfunctory wedding. Like other aspects of the movie, this coda is intended to show Indy coming to terms with his age. But for a movie that tries so hard to argue that the old guy’s still got it, these concessions to maturation seem no more than light gags, instead of the criticism they might have been. Crystal Skull’s acknowledgement of its hero’s age might have been a comment on all heroes and how they do not remain frozen in their youthful triumph. That it is instead a lazy, vaudevillian throwaway only compounds the potential wasted on a return to one of the most popular film franchises in history.

Steven Spielberg: A.I. Artificial Intelligence

Given that my return to A.I. is what prompted my decision to revisit all of Steven Spielberg's films in the first place, I was afraid I had nothing to add to my original review. However, I think I mostly avoided retreading and if I have no particularly new point to make about the ending, I do at least come at it from a different angle in response to Roger Ebert's recent addition of the film into his Great Movies canon, a move that makes me happy but does not preclude me from disagreeing with his interpretation. I stand by this being Spielberg's finest film, and also one that I think is better for his involvement, not some second-best option to a Kubrick direction (Kubrick likely would have agreed, since he urged Spielberg to take it well before he passed). Perhaps the most philosophical blockbuster ever made, and certainly one of the finest American films of the Aughts.

Check out my new review of the film at Cinelogue.

Steven Spielberg: Saving Private Ryan

Saving Private Ryan is the most troublesome film in Steven Spielberg's filmography. It, far more than the contested Schindler's List, Amistad or even the tonally inconsistent The Color Purple, is the best evidence for Spielberg's supposed unsuitability for drama. Those films counterbalance Spielberg's worrisome moments of misplaced sentimentality with glimpses of an actual understanding of the gravity of the situation. The understated tilt up from the infamous shower scene in Schindler's List to show the consequences of actual gas chambers works as a response to both accusations that the director was exploiting a world travesty and his supposed lack of subtlety. Saving Private Ryan lacks such a moment. No, that's not right; it does contain such moments, but they feel artificial and forced, feeling like the work of a man who threw them in desperately at the last minute instead of finding organic depth.

In essence, Saving Private Ryan is the Holy Bible of war movies, in the sense that it contains so many contradictory, half-baked themes and morals that it can be used to justify practically any outlook. As such, I cannot say that it is a bad movie, per se; in fact, some moments display an almost overwhelming sense of form. But it is a schizophrenic movie, filled with competing influences of other war films. That indeed is the problem: for a supposedly realistic document, this is a film founded on other films instead of history.

And it starts off so well, too. The D-Day sequence is among the most justly famous in modern film, a strategically planned setpiece that ports over the most important lesson from the similarly masterful Battle of Shrewsbury in Orson Welles' Chimes at Midnight: war is chaos, no matter how well-trained soldiers are. Spielberg's tracking shots and steady, deliberate progression are offset by a careening, bewildering sandstorm of whump-ing bullets and enough blood to turn an ocean red. As clear as the movement through the sequence is, and despite the sequence's gargantuan length, Spielberg did not storyboard it, getting spontaneous moments The horror takes on a surreal flavor: from a soldier shuffling around with dead-eyed determination until we see he's been looking for his own severed arm to the shot of a flamethrower erupting out of a bunker like some belching dragon. Of those who make it to the top of the beach, few feel any real sense of victory, only shuddering relief at being alive.


Yet the sequence also brings out some of the major issues of the film: Spielberg, for all his earnestness, has always had a fair grasp of irony, but many of the dark twists scattered across the D-Day scene and the film at large seem cheap and mean-spirited. Men clamor to safety or survive a glancing bullet, only to be cut down a second later. The issue of perspective arises: as we later learn, the entire fabrication of the framing device is already suspect if not outright abysmal, and the further jumps into the POV of Germans mowing down American GIs essentially shatter the notion of this being a passed-along remembrance.

Furthermore, by opening with an epic battle, Spielberg elides over the need to build character from the outset (there is a time and place for character motivation, and it ain't Omaha Beach). But that absence of fleshed-out character carries through the entire film. Instead, we get stereotypes: you've got your brash Brooklyn Jew (Adam Goldberg) looking to get back at every Nazi for crimes against his people, another Brooklynite (Edward Burns, a roaring vacuum of charisma who doesn't even have Noo Yawk charm to get him by), an Italian (Vin Diesel)—enough with Brooklyn, already—a Bible-quoting, redneck sharpshooter (Barry Pepper), and other clichés. Capt. Miller (Tom Hanks) leads them, and his withholding of personal information is almost laughable. The reveal that he was a schoolteacher back home is so unsurprising even Miller notes that people back home say, "Well, that figures" when he tells them his occupation.

Sent to retrieve James Ryan, a paratrooper whose brothers all died in the D-Day invasion, Miller and his men find themselves at the heart of a treatise on the nature of war, though what that treatise seeks to argue is a mystery. The men are human enough to resent the absurdity of their mission, being sent deep behind enemy lines, but eventually they fall into line, and some of them even come to embrace the task in a facile way. Spielberg does not even attempt to defend the premise that sacrificing many for one is noble, and at times he even seems to attack it before ultimately relying on sentiment over any lucid argument to sell his point. Thus, the men become not soldiers but icons, symbols of the valiant struggle of our last great conflict. But also, war is hell. But it can also be good. But not really.


The constant oscillation between lament for the horror of war and Greatest Generation paean makes every quiet scene a toss-up: will it give the characters dialogue about the pointless waste of war, or will it exalt the valiant struggle of the American soldier (and only American, as the film omits the perspective of the Germans and the presence altogether of other Allies)? If Saving Private Ryan has any true merit as an overview of war, it is in giving visualization to the liberal inner turmoil of supporting the troops but hating the war. Spielberg, whose father served in the war, who made war movies with his Super 8 camera, does not want to fully condemn the act of war, especially not this one. Truthfully, some wars are necessary, and they don't get much more so than World War II. But Spielberg cannot find a way to note the waste and destruction of war, not without sentimentalizing it as glorious. That leaves the film trapped between elegy and irony, creating a muddled tone that dirties his romanticized view and pretties up his disgust.

What Spielberg is trying to figure out is not easy, and I might be inclined to sympathize with his attempts to grapple with conflicting feelings if he treated a deep, multifaceted moral conflict with anything approaching a complex thought process. Instead, he uses a narrative transparently plotted around action sequences and speechifying, all featuring characters without dimension, motivation or, frankly, anything to distinguish a number of them besides geographical background and corresponding regional behavior.

The most troublesome of these characters, and a repository for the film's annihilating collision of opposed ideas, is Cpl. Upham (Jeremy Davies). A translator without combat experience forced to join Miller's excursion because of the deaths of his unit's own translators, Upham is first portrayed not simply as farcically incompetent in a battlefield but, frankly, as a human being. He awkwardly slaps men on the shoulders and asks fatuous questions like an alien sent to monitor this curious phenomenon known as warfare. It's amusing that the film gets thrown into competition with The Thin Red Line, as Upham feels like a paper-thin version of the drifting souls of Malick's film. Upham quotes Emerson, looks innocent and would generally prefer to sit this one out, fellas, thanks.

The general line on Upham, from supporters and detractors of the film alike, is that he is a coward, a charge supported by his collapse in the climax. But I will give Spielberg some credit and say he really is trying with this character—the character, it is worth noting, he openly said he identifies with most in the film. When the medic, Wade, dies in an attack on a machine gun placement, the men corner the one surviving German, dubbed "Steamboat Willie," and mean to execute him. Upham intervenes and ultimately sways Miller into letting the German go, the jeers he receives from the other soldiers and, most likely, a number of audience members, do not disguise the fact that he is right to object to an execution. But Spielberg brings Willie back at the end and even makes him the German to shoot Miller, prompting Upham to execute him, an act that occurs shortly after he is reduced to a simpering pile incapable of saving Mellish.

Adam Zanzie, who has posted the only support of the film that has ever tempted me to change my opinion of this movie, defends this:

"I think the reason why Steamboat Willie ends up becoming the man who shoots Miller is so that Upham’s senses of right and wrong, in regards to killing, can be put to a test: the previous times in which Upham has failed to kill were times in which he should have. Now that he has to live with the shame of those previous failures, can he still manage to avoid killing at a time when it would be wrong for him to do so?"

This is an interesting take, and the best one for trying to figure out what Spielberg at least wanted to accomplish with this character. Upham is a coward throughout, ducking any engagement in battle and falling into such a state outside the room where Mellish is slowly stabbed to death that the emerging German does not even waste time killing him. But the belated execution is the ultimate show of cowardice, ironically inverting the cliché of the weakling achieving wartime manhood in killing. Looking at it on paper, the execution is one of the strongest points of the film.

But there's the matter of the tone hanging over Upham's actions: by making Willie Miller's killer, Spielberg openly puts out the suggestion that Upham bears responsibility for the captain's death for not letting the execution occur when it was first attempted. It is difficult capturing a film's tone, especially in a film with such an inconsistent one, but Upham's killing of Willie feels vindicating rather than expressing the dark complexity of Upham's moral failing. Even the look of self-loathing on Davies' haunted face seems as applicable to his anguish at not acting sooner as his realization of a mistake. I don't think the film condemns Upham for not killing, mind you; I think the film is too confused to say anything about him.


This back-and-forth is why I hate even thinking about this film, much less talking about it. This is not a film demanding serious unpacking of complex themes; it is a simplistic movie that is nevertheless trying so hard to be smart that it elicits apologia even from those of us who do not care for it. This is one of the most visible entries in the type of film I call a "Yeah, but" movie. Regardless of what position you take on it, arriving at it necessitates wading through a sea of contradiction until you're as likely to believe the opposition, whatever side that might be, when you reach the other side.

One aspect of the film that can and should be definitively addressed is the ridiculous notion of the film's realism, something that wouldn't be an issue so much if the film itself broadcasts itself as a depiction of war as it really is. Not even the D-Day sequence, with its skewed feeling of the passage of time, is realistic, and the film only spirals further out of control from there. The entire sequence at Neuville is a wash, featuring the ridiculous sight of Caparzo grabbing a French girl given by her parents to find safety, something he does despite the presence of Germans still within the village. And after several exchanges of gunfire, a nearby wall collapses to reveal Germans standing around idly, leading to a standoff without tension (either the Germans would surrender or they'd just open fire; they're too outnumbered to just stand there making threats). It's all a means to empty, calculated tension, lacking the spontaneity of the D-Day setpiece and feeling like manipulation at every turn.

The entire climax at the bridge assumes gross incompetence on behalf of the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich, an elite, battle-hardened unit seen here behaving like fools—besides, they wouldn't even have made it to Normandy at that time, delayed as they were by French Resistance efforts, but then this film doesn't give a damn about anyone but us so perhaps we can assume the resistance flatly does not exist in the film. They arrive at a strategic point that is wholly silent and proceed without caution. They drive open-top vehicles through streets lined with tall buildings with endless vantage points. As for the Americans, the gunners task Upham with toting around belts of ammo when surely they'd each drape some over them before the ambush, knowing full well of how much displacing they'd be doing. Upham carries the ammo solely to set up Mellish's death, which could have been prevented if he'd fixed his bayonet like anyone anticipating close-quarters combat would do. Not a damn thing in the climax, up to and especially the deus ex machina of intervening air support, feels real.

These problems stem from basing the film on other depictions of war instead of war itself. Spielberg incorporates a flood of references, none clearer than Sam Fuller. As far as looking to filmmakers for insights into reality goes, at least Spielberg went with the one who actually served. But he misses the point of Fuller's films: Fuller hated subtlety but pursued a clearly defined point with such confrontational verve that his bluntness was ultimately subversive. Nothing here save the gore, which loses its shock rapidly, is truly confrontational. The Fuller influence does at least give us Sgt. Horvath (Tom Sizemore), a gruff, stocky sarge who looks and sounds like he really did fall out of one of Fuller's films. He's the sort of man who can collect some dirt from each place he's fought in tins, one of which is unhelpfully labeled "Africa." But Spielberg ultimately tears even him down by foisting a schmaltzy monologue upon the sergeant in which he goes against character to muse "saving Private Ryan might be the one decent thing we were able to pull out of this whole godawful mess."

Horvath's sudden turn to prosaic sub-poetry is but one of several clanging moments of lofty dialogue in a film that's supposed to be a realistic trek through the Western Front. Gen. George Marshall, by all accounts a remarkable, singular man with a genuine care for his troops, is nevertheless pushing it here by A) needlessly being informed of the deaths of the Ryan brothers and B) quoting a letter written by Lincoln as some kind of justification for ordering the extraction and ticket home for the surviving Ryan. And when Miller and co. finally find fresh-faced poster boy Ryan (Matt Damon), he spits in the face of their own sacrifice with the chest-thumping message, "You can tell [my mother] that when you found me, I was with the only brothers I had left," a moment so thick and nauseating it goes down like Castor oil.

And that framing device. Dear God. For one thing, it's a manipulative cheat, clearly leading the audience to believe that the old man is Miller, something communicated by the matching zoom-ins on the elder man's face before the gravestone and Miller's at the conclusion of the taking of Omaha Beach.



And when Spielberg fades Damon's face into Harrison Young's at the end, the sheer awkward hilarity of it is the only thing that can offset the rage of the ruse. Adam says the book-ending shots of a washed-out American flag are ironic, and maybe that's true, but nothing about the framing device suggests any sober rumination on what was given up for James Ryan to have a family of prop blondes. Ryan's simpering question, "Am I a good man?" is a shallow means of sidestepping the total lack of thematic resolution—I mean, honestly, what the hell is his wife going to say? "Actually, James, you were a drinker and emotionally distant and I never got to live my dreams." But I shouldn't take it out on poor James; who wouldn't be psychologically scarred by a dying Miller yanking him close and whispering, "Earn this" into his ear. That might be the single most offensive moment in the film, a disgusting moral imperative extended to the audience watching, sternly reminding us that we owe something to the Greatest Generation. Spielberg seems to think he's fulfilling his own obligation here, which is wishful thinking at best and insulting at worst.

There are aspects of this film I quite like, to be fair. Apart from the D-Day sequence, I enjoy the scene in the church in the aftermath of the disastrous Neuville section. It's the one place in the film anyone acts like a person, Miller quietly voicing his disdain for the mission to Horvath as the rest of the men deal with Caparzo's death and rest up for the next move. And compared to the cheap comedy of the aforementioned sneering deaths in the opening battle, the gallows humor of the men going through paratroopers' dog tags as if playing a game as surviving troopers walk by too tired and scarred to even register disgust, is an unsettling but darkly amusing moment.

But these are flashes of inspiration in a film that doesn't know what it wants to say and goes about looking for answers in the clumsiest manner possible. The film tries to set up its moral core with Upham, but the true spirit of the film might lie with Steamboat Willie, the German with a by-the-nails grasp on English who spits out fractured, stereotypically American references with desperation to win over a cynical, bloodthirsty crowd. Spielberg tackled the subject of World War II with great subtlety and grace with Empire of the Sun, a film that allowed him to use and subvert his sentimentality in brilliant fashion. In seeking to find the deromanticized truth of a necessary, horrid conflict, Spielberg only serves to weaken every interpretation of World War II.

As I said, this is not a bad film, per se—I still watch it from time to time without needing to be coerced into it—but it is a directionless one, and certainly his biggest dramatic misfire. Were it not so self-assured about itself, though, I might be inclined to forgive its excesses. But where Schindler's List and Amistad were prestige pictures, this is the first time you can actually catch Spielberg putting one eye on the viewfinder and another on Oscar gold. The best thing I can say about it is that Spielberg and Hanks went on to produce Band of Brothers, a miniseries large enough to contain the multitudes that are overstuffed and underdeveloped here. So, the single best aspect of Saving Private Ryan is that someone eventually made a smart version of it. Bully.

Steven Spielberg: The Lost World: Jurassic Park

Having filled my viewing gaps in Spielberg's filmography, the status of The Lost World: Jurassic Park as one of the director's weakest films, if not his worst film, has never been less in doubt. Other low points in the director's career have at least shown promise or intriguing premises: Hook may rely far too much on its regrettably hip version of the Lost Boys' hideout, but it sports two great performances and a high concept floated it through many of its glaring flaws. 1941 showed the director's first major, explicit attempt to revive the films of his youth for the modern multiplex, an approach that would soon bear fruit with the Indiana Jones franchise. Even the forgotten Always, with its too-broad combination of haunting movies A Matter of Life and Death and Only Angels Have Wings, had moments of beauty worthy of those wrenching melodramas.

In comparison, The Lost World seems such a cynical cash-in for Spielberg's biggest hit that hardly any visible reason exists as to why he would do it. It's not like the world's richest and most powerful director needed to do this to get approval for another film. His previous two films, the first Jurassic Park and Schindler's List, eradicated whatever sliver of doubt remained that Spielberg was King of Hollywood. The knowledge of the uselessness of the sequel makes its wretched, slapstick construction all the more grating.

The first major transition—is it trying to be a wry match cut? Because to designate it so—sets the whole tone for this film. Awkwardly cutting from a scene so stiff it defeats its own horror to Ian Malcolm on a subway, this poor segue demonstrates the total absence of the director's usual skill; I can't even bring myself to bring his grace into the equation.

Instantly, we get a sense of how simplistic the film will be. The first film certainly didn't display a richness of character and theme, but Malcolm goes from being a collected, smarmy scientist who knows that everything will fall apart to a panicky buffoon, a collection of tics and frantic sarcasm with even less personality than he had in the first film. And once again, he's the most complicated person in the movie; imagine how awful the others are, then.

Malcolm finds himself back in the thick of it with dinosaurs thanks to a series of developments made up out of whole cloth: as it turns out, InGen had a whole other island where they made the dinosaurs, and after a storm they just vacated the place and let the animals run free. 'K. John Hammond, reduced from a showman blind to consequences to an environmentalist…blind to consequences. He casually sends a team of researchers to head off the new board of directors from finding a way to exploit the dinosaurs, ignoring the obvious danger. The only reason Malcolm agrees to go to Site B is because Hammond convinced his girlfriend, Sarah (Julianne Moore) to go, which she does despite hearing Malcolm's tales of his time on Isla Nubar. If this film has any real commentary to impart on the human condition, it is in our ceaseless inability to respond to the statement "Don't do that" with "What, this?" We are a race of scab-pickers.

The convolutions, inconsistencies and outright retconning of this film pile on so fast that no remote connection to the story can ever take hold. The team arrives on the island and promptly set up camp at the edge of a cliff for no reason, and we soon learn that Malcolm's petulant daughter Kelly stowed away in the trailer. Soon, InGen forces arrive with the intent of capturing specimens and bringing them to a park being erected in San Diego, truly one of the stupidest ideas to ever test one's cynicism. Misanthrope that I am, not even I can comprehend anyone approving of such an outrageous idea after the pure catastrophe of the events at Isla Nubar—an island designed from the ground up to contain these creatures.

And then, Spielberg and writer David Koepp actually succeed in making the team sent to stop this madness from occurring worse than the ostensible bad guys. When the director lays a particularly maudlin track over shots of these mercenaries subduing genetically engineered beasts that should be firebombed for the safety of mankind, you know you're in for a tedious bit of moralism. As it turns out, one of the researchers, photographer Nick (Vince Vaughn), is an environmentalist saboteur who promptly releases the captured animals to wreak havoc on the InGen camp, destroying all equipment and stranding dozens of people on a deadly island. Later, when Nick makes the stupefyingly dumb decision to take a wounded baby T-Rex back to their trailer and the parents naturally follow, the "baddies" arrive and lend a helping hand and allow the four remaining members of Hammond's party to accompany them.

But it doesn't stop there! Nick continues to mess with the hired guns, stealing the shells out of the shotgun of Roland (Pete Postlethwaite), the hunter leading the InGen operation for the company's head, Ludlow (Arliss Howard). (It is yet another sign of lazy writing that an experienced professional like Roland wouldn't check his weapon before firing.) This is after Ludlow gives Nick coordinates to a radio station to call for help and largely lets bygones be bygones for being indirectly responsible for the deaths of many people.

Nothing in this movie makes sense. Why does Malcolm deliberately go out into a wild habitat looking as if he's going to stand in front of the nearest brick wall and tell jokes? Why can't the "heroes" put aside their superiority to work together to get as many people off the island alive as possible? Is the well-being of creatures whose existence poses a direct threat to the stability of the natural ecosystem more important than the lives of a people paid to come to an island, some of whom surely must have had no idea what they were getting into? How does the captured adult T-Rex kill everyone on-board the boat as it heads to San Diego yet leave the ship itself unscathed? And, again, WHY would you bring that goddamn baby rex back to your trailer? Kelly's presence is a nuisance and nothing more than a laughable play for easy audience tension (which fails, since the girl is so selfish and unlikeable) and a means to shoehorn in the director's absent parent theme, but even she's smart enough to see what a horrible idea this is.

Suspense is founded on some basic sense of logic. Though I've cooled on it since my childhood, the first Jurassic Park creates genuine suspense because the characters find themselves in plausible situations within the film's suspension of disbelief; here, everything is so blatantly staged that you just keep waiting for the obvious thing to go wrong instead of searching any corner guessing at where the next scare is coming.

Not that scares seem to be high up on the director's list of priorities here, though. Replacing the already thin characterizations of this franchise is a load of broad comedy completely incongruous with the film's haughty moralism and its fleeting attempts to feel darker than the first with the open antipathy of humans to animals compared to the snowblind optimism of Hammond's original enterprise. Goldblum does everything but break out the jazz hands in his hammy performance, and awkward one-liners dot the film. A brief line about Kelly being a gymnast comes into play late in the film with a run-in with a velociraptor that borders on the offensive in its howlingly bad staging.

By far the biggest flaw, however, is the total absence of magic and wonder, especially because the film still attempts to trade on the awe of the first film. Instead of scientists like Grant and Sattler being overwhelmed by the sight of dinosaurs and framing their discussions in moral terms, we get eggheaded chatter that sounds as if some of the actors were reading from an encyclopedia. When we first meet Sarah, she runs through dinosaur theory so rapidly and flatly you can almost see the off-screen lines reflected in Moore's eyes. One of the InGen crew, Burke, speaks solely in expository jargon about the dinosaurs, as if he's less a scientist than a tour guide in a museum. There's no insight, no discussion, only the relaying of facts in a desperate bid to suggest some kind of research went into this slapstick farce that ends with a rampage in San Diego so tacked-on it seems someone threw it in on a whim.

I typically don't jive with the Nostalgia Critic's brand of loud, cloying humor, but his video on The Lost World actually serves as a solid summary not only of the incessant plot holes and disregard for continuity but the laziness of execution. The only memorable shot in this film is of the raptors closing in on panicked humans running into a field of long grass, tails raised like shark fins, but Spielberg ruins even this moment by picking off the runners by having them slip out of view. It's a completely nonsensical method of raptor attack considering how tall they are. This is but one small example of the rampant incompetence and lack of care put into the film, a monumental step backward for Steven Spielberg. The only film in his canon I can think of to match it is the fourth Indiana Jones film, and at least the director tried to find a fresh angle for that film. The Lost World exists to educate what handful of people out there might have thought Jaws 2 could have been good if Spielberg directed it. A cash-in is a cash-in, and not even the finest populist director of his time could find any spark in this overwhelming redundancy.

Steven Spielberg: Amistad

Amistad is the last film in Steven Spielberg's corpus I'm visiting for the first time. Surrounded by the more lauded dramatic achievements of Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan, not to mention colored by certain feelings of its preachiness among those who saw it, Spielberg's middle drama of the '90s never appeared on my radar as anything other than a faint blip. But just as I got to see Always through fresh eyes that countered a number of my expectations for that film, so too did Amistad prove far more than the half-forgotten mainstream consensus would have me believe.

In fact, Amistad might well be the most consistent of Spielberg's triumvirate of '90s prestige pictures. It lacks the overwhelming emotional impact of Schindler's List and the visceral power of Saving Private Ryan, but it makes up for these shortcomings by sidestepping the bouts of moral ambiguity and questionable "mainstreamification" of its serious themes. Amistad does have a bit of typical writing in its construction, but by and large it proves a deftly written, fleetingly problematic return to the issue Spielberg did not treat with full sincerity and conviction with The Color Purple: slavery and racism.

In its own way, the opening segment of Amistad is every bit as brilliant, dynamic and self-contained as the D-Day sequence of Saving Private Ryan. Keeping cinematographer Kimenski on board, Spielberg frame the uprising on the titular ship in shocking terms. It starts with extreme close-ups of the face of Cinqué (Djimon Honsou), a slave bound for Cuba, breathing laboriously and clearly struggling. Cut to another extreme close-up of his fingers scraping at the wood of his bench in an attempt to free the nail, the jaw-clenching squeaks across wood deafening in the silence of the rocking ship at night. Lightning flashes (divorced from any masking thunder) illuminate chipped fingernails and bleeding tips. The suspense is as unbearable as any shot of Jews hiding from Nazis.

At last, Cinqué frees himself and releases the other captives, who storm the ship and slaughter the Spanish crew. The same lightning that showed us the slave freeing himself also reveal yet cover up the bloodbath. Spielberg shows glimpses of the violence, flashes of beastly faces in fearsome war yells. The fury is terrible to behold, and Cinqué only just manages to stop himself from killing the final two crew members, aware that he needs them to steer him home. The whole sequence is one of Spielberg's finest moments, playing on his love of Judeo-Christian imagery (of slaves coming out of bondage via the removal of a nail in wood that has direct Christian connotations) and his ability to make something visceral out of moral drama. Were it not such a pure demonstration of humanity's primal urge to survive and assert free will, one might call the animalistic visions of rampaging blacks at least subconsciously racist. Compared to the borderline stereotypical posturing of the actors in The Color Purple, these depictions are prouder and more defiant.

Such depictions are also clarified through the film's later structure, which does not move in easy chronological order but contextualizes what we see in retrospect so we never glory in what's happening. Even when it seems all is won and even the characters cheer in victory, Spielberg is waiting to pull back and reveal the full scope of the issue at hand. It's a clear response to those who felt he focused on the "success story" of the Schindler Jews at the expense of the six million less-fortunate souls.

The rest of the film relies on considerably less showy direction than the opening -- it is a courtroom drama, after all -- but Spielberg manages to maintain his usual penchant for visual storytelling with more static shots. The first 20 minutes or so contain nary a word of English and few subtitles, placing the heft of narrative building solely on Spielberg's camera. With nothing more than the right distance and angle, Spielberg manages to eke out not only what's happening but an emotional current for it. Cinqué spares the two officers and orders the one who understands Mende to turn around and head back to Africa. We see Cinqué's pride and leadership skills as he interacts with other Mende, but we also get a glimpse of how out of his element he is: when he briefly plays with the ship's helm he seems almost childlike. Slowly, the director drops hints of trouble: food runs scarce and the slave ship keeps sailing past vessels with white people on them. At last, when they run aground and some of the rebel slaves go to fetch water, it becomes clear they couldn't be stopping on land at all if they were really on their way back over the Atlantic.

Sure enough, the slaves are captured by an American frigate and placed in jail in Connecticut. When they arrive, the white prisoners protest having to share so much as the same room with the slaves, who are soon brought to court for what promises to be an open-and-shut case. When complications arise, they are not over the issue of whether what the slaves did was justifiable; it is merely a question of whether the Africans are pirates or property. A sub-question: whose property are they? Spielberg has displayed a certain rose-colored view of America from time to time, and his moderate Hollywood liberalism has allowed him to play both sides of the fence with impunity for decades. But here he at last fully confronts that which he only gave a glancing blow 12 years earlier: the nation's history of slavery and racism.

I felt that The Color Purple's chief shortcoming was in its over-reliance of cheap humor that never meshed with the moments of sincerity and pain. Yet I never felt the heaping load of comedy injected into Amistad detracted from the film. Here, Spielberg and writer David Franzoni base the humor in situational comedy instead of the farce of The Color Purple. Baldwin (Matthew McConaughey), the ambulance(-cart)-chasing lawyer who agrees to defend the Africans for a pair of abolitionist journalists (Morgan Freeman and Stellan Skarsgård), tries to communicate with the slaves, but the language barrier leads to minutes worth of mishaps and confusion. Even when a basic form of primitive gestures sort out a handful of problems between him and Cinqué, the two still make for a fine double act. Once a translator (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a Royal Navy officer who joined the fleet after being freed by Britain's anti-slavery forces, enters and tells Cinqué's story, however, the laughs die in the throat.

In fairness, Amistad does have one too many Stanley Kramer-esque lapses of moralizing for its own good. The obvious arc of Baldwin from a brilliant-but-detached lawyer into a crusader for human rights is all too predictable, and the simplification of white characters into good and true liberals and frothing bigots who for some reason gather by the hundreds to jeer blacks for killing people from another country is tedious. Martin Van Buren gets thrown under the bus as a racist and conniver, leaving out the much more complex (and relevant) moral confusion of those politicians who did not support slavery but felt it necessary to keep the peace and avoid war. Amistad glosses over this hairy situation by making Van Buren as loathsome as possible and never giving the threat of war the gravity it deserves, especially in hindsight of the horrific costs of the Civil War.

But there are also flecks of some of Spielberg's most intelligent and thoughtful filmmaking. If he simplifies the bigoted antagonists, he at least explores the gray within the abolitionist cause: Tappan (Skarsgård), who came to anti-slavery through religion, sees value in martyrdom and would be willing to sacrifice the lives of the Africans if it meant stunning the public into action. He balks at Baldwin's strategy -- to render the matter of property null and void by proving the slaves came from Africa and therefore could not be taken as slaves following the criminalization of importing foreign slaves -- because it lacks a moral statement. He compares Baldwin's idea to Christ calling someone to get him off on a technicality, to which Baldwin replies, "But Christ lost."


Spielberg frames the racism in horrendously blunt terms, to the point that a few words of dismissal in the courtroom shock and disgust almost as much as flashbacks of murders, torture and rapes at the hands of Portuguese and Spanish sailors. Through the translator, Cinqué tells his story and of the atrocities he witnessed to Baldwin, and when the camera returns from his reverie he's in the courtroom relating this to the prosecution, U.S. Attorney William S. Holabird (Pete Postlethwaite), who instantly calls Cinqué's story a fabrication. He never once views Cinqué and the others as anything but wayward property, even when the African leader moves everyone else with his pidgin chant "Give us us free!" But really, no one in the court truly takes Cinqué's story seriously until a representative of the Royal Navy's anti-slavery troops, a white man, corroborates the slave's story. The film stresses this irony, laying percussive African music and mournful Western vocalization over Cinqué's flashbacks but reserving the somber, stunned chords for the mere words the naval officer says. And isn't it funny that those white people so disgusted by the very idea of blacks wear nothing but ink-black cloaks and clothes?

Amistad represents an autocritique of the traits Spielberg displayed in Schindler's List, even if, as I've argued, the seemingly problematic issues of that movie smooth out remarkably well on closer study. Schindler's List moved methodically through its horrors, to the point that one would be tempted to cheer if it ended Inlgourious Basterds style with Schinder's Jews machine-gunning Hitler and his companions. Here, he opens with an act of horror that later proves to be scarcely inadequate a show of rage. Yes, the audience will likely end up supporting the slaughter of Spaniards, but by putting so much distance between the outcome and the motivation, Spielberg takes all the "enjoyment" (for want of a better word) out of it and makes it something you think about it retrospect. And when it reaches what seems to be its triumphant climax, Spielberg reveals we've got another hour to go, enough time to let it sink in that, even if these slaves emerge triumphant and go home free men, that will barely put a dent on the slave trade (the illegality of which is ignored by everyone until a court is forced to deal with the issue), and their victory won't bring back the scores who died on their very ship from starvation and murder.

But the most surprising aspect of the film is Spielberg's harsh take on American politics and the notion of the American/Western ideal. John Quincy Adams (Anthony Hopkins), former president and defeated old man, putters about the film for the first two thirds until Baldwin prevails upon him successfully to help the Africans when Van Buren kicks the case to the Supreme Court despite the issue seemingly being resolved. Adams worries about standing in the shadow of his father, a worry confirmed by the dismissive views of other politicians. Yet it eventually becomes clear to the man that the only way to build his own legacy separate from that of his father is to help the document John Adams helped write achieve its full potential instead of being held back by the same sort of reactionary fools who hobbled it in the first place.

Hopkins wisely chooses to play Quincy less as a crotchety old man embittered by his perceived failure than as a resigned idealist. His climactic speech is powerful, all the more so for incorporating Cinqué's own words as a sign of respect and equality, but Hopkins adds labored breaths and grunts under even the most solemn proclamation to ground the moment. When he finishes, no one applauds. They're too busy truly thinking about what was just said.

Its length may be unjustified, it oversimplifies history and some moments fall flat -- the parallels of Cinqué summoning the spirits of his ancestors and Quincy dealing with his own progenitor have too much of a "we're not so different after all!" feel, and the brief clip of Civil War action in the closing montage is embarrassing -- but Amistad deserves more credit than I was willing to give it going into the film. It gets one last parting shot in the final text scroll, noting that Cinqué returned to find his wife and child gone, themselves likely sold in slavery, a reminder that the significant victory he and the others enjoyed only made a small blip on the radar. But it was right, and that is the point Amistad makes even as it acknowledges the darkness of the full scope.

Steven Spielberg: Schindler's List

Perhaps the greatest argument for the sincerity and dedication Steven Spielberg put into Schindler's List is how radical a departure it was for the artist. Spielberg's Holocaust drama was by no means his first serious drama, but it is the first to be largely void of his more flamboyant framing and movement. Spielberg had previously shown a keen ability to cut and frame in such a way as to maximize audience impact, but here he needed them to do more than just be entertained or sympathize with characters. Gravity and respect are required here, and Spielberg wrestles with crafting a working mainstream film without his usual stylistic élan.

Ingeniously, he finds ways to maintain his usual level of craftsmanship while employing unfamiliar techniques. Schindler's List is more static than any of Spielberg's other works, and the camera movement that feels so liberating in his other movies connotes dread here. Whenever the camera starts to track, practically nothing good will come of it, and one fears the movement because it will only display more atrocity, more terror.

Fundamentally, the movie is an indirect conflict between two principal characters, Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) and Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), and Spielberg structures much of the movie as a call and response between them. Perhaps it speaks to the director's limitations that he condenses the Holocaust to a more conventional dramatic structure, but I never really believed the film was "about" the Holocaust anyway. Instead, it concerns the human reaction of those mired in it, not seeking to explicate the motives or moral justifications of the greatest of human failings but demonstrating how some reacted to it. In the case of Goeth, it brought out the worst; for Schindler, the best.

Spielberg introduces the two, though far apart, in similar manners. He does not show them directly, letting us see another person speaking to them until the camera finally reels around to present them. We first see Schindler through close-ups of his material effects, pristine formal wear and wads of cash casually crammed all over the place. We then see an extreme close-up of the man placing a Nazi pin on his business suit, suggesting that the fascist regime is something he wears over his real identity as a money-maker and never thinks twice about. Sure enough, when he arrives at a restaurant to meet with the head of the SS in Kraków, Scherner (Andrzej Seweryn), Schindler flashes that cash to make himself known: he has come to Poland to profit from the war, and getting approval for his business ventures will require greasing some wheels, preferably with Hennessy cognac or Dom Perignon. Sure enough, he soon has a factory up and running, which he populates with Jewish workers because they cost less than anyone else.


When Goeth appears, however, he is in the opposite shape as proud, hale Schindler, hunched over with a handkerchief ever-present at his face as he sniffles. Bent over, Fiennes looks even less impressive than the lumbering Neeson. Where Schindler's initial dealings with Jews display only his money-hungry scheming, Goeth almost seems sympathetic to the Jews. He looks tenderly upon a shivering woman, Helen Hirsch, and his sickly frame makes him pitiable. Then, a Jewish engineer tells him she needs to re-pour the foundations, he calmly has her shot for delaying proceedings, even as he agrees with her assessment and orders his men to fix the problem after having her executed. In an instant, Goeth is revealed to be a tyrant, a man who has internalized the anti-Semitic preachings of the party because it feeds into his desire for power.

His entrance demonstrates how far Schindler has progressed without any outward signs of a change of heart. At the start of the film, Oskar decides to use Jewish labor because it costs less than paying Poles. Furthermore, Jewish wages go to the SS, which allows Schindler to perhaps save a bit of bribe money by sending one monthly payment out instead of two. He tells his accountant, Stern (Ben Kingsley), to round up some Jews whose money is about to be seized anyway to invest in his factory in exchange for the pots and pans his enamel-work factory will produce. "Money is still money," says one Jewish man in disbelief of the insult of this offer. "No it is not," Schindler calmly replies. "That is why we are here." As Stern starts to use the factory to house the intellectual and infirm from harm, Schindler starts to wonder why such under-qualified people work for him. When a one-armed man, who earlier thanked a disinterested Schindler profusely for saving him, gets shot callously by German soldiers for sport, Oskar's complaints to the commander communicate only his annoyance at having to train a new worker.

But Goeth brings with him the full force of antisemitic terror, and not even Schindler can blind himself to his atrocity. In the film's defining setpiece, Goeth leads troops through the Krakow ghetto, killing all who resist or cannot leave and shipping the rest to camps. On a hilltop outside of town, Schindler and his wife watch, and the look on Oskar's face shows the man unable to hold back the fleeting hints of compassion in his unwillingness to expose Stern's account manipulations and his attempts to keep his workers alive.


How could anyone not be moved while watching such sights? Nazis yank suitcases out of the hands of fleeing Jews, pouring out contents into massive piles of loot as more and more corpses fall around the stacks of clothes. The Krakow sequence shows Spielberg at the height of his formalist powers, intricate tracking shots capturing the horror in ethereal detail, highlighting how otherworldly this atrocity is but adding enough grisly close-ups to tie that detached disgust to raw, real feeling. Few escape the pillage: one of Schindler's Jews stops and clears suitcases from the road when Goeth and his men come upon him, avoiding death. A young German boy tasked with alerting soldiers to any strays comes across an old woman but recognizes her as a friend's mom and hides her. These moments provide not relief but terrifying moments of suspense; the slow, relieved exhale never comes because too much carnage continues around these glimpses of fortune to make them relaxing.

The event transforms Oskar, who taps into his latent humanism and resolves to protect those under his stead. Oskar butters up Goeth just as he does every other authority figure, but by this point he displays a care for his employees. He maintains his concern extends only to protecting himself from the cost of training new workers, that by killing his Jews or sending them to camps. Goeth argues Schindler's points but finally agrees, on the condition Oskar pay a bribe for each worker. Schindler, once so obsessed with money, goes deep into debt to protect his people.

Goeth, otherwise an embodiment of merciless antisemitism, accepts his friend's money, revealing the true motivators among men even during these times. Money trumps ingrained social brainwashing, even direct orders of Herr Hitler. Sex, too, clouds the mind. Both Schindler and Goeth take Jewish mistresses, but where Schindler freely enjoys the perks of wealth, Goeth wrestles viciously with his belief system and his clear affection for Helena (Embeth Davidtz), who brings out a repugnant sexual aggression in the monster. When Goeth looks upon her, the longing in Fiennes' eyes brings out the humanity in this devil. He thinks of life with her, even hinting to Oskar that he'd like to take her back to Vienna. But she is still a Jew, and Amon's crisis finds its outlet in blaming Helena for tempting him. Highlighting Goeth's turmoil over his antisemitism and Oskar's increasing fondness for his Jewish workers is a sequence juxtaposing Goeth sadistically beating a stripped-down Helena in a wine cellar with Schindler celebrating his birthday by enjoying too lingering a kiss with a Jewish woman in his factory. (In a moment of grim irony, Schindler goes to jail for this offense while Goeth does not even face questions for his behavior, yet Goeth successfully pressures his superiors to release his friend.)

Much of Schindler's List carries this mordant gallows humor, perhaps a reason for some of the backlash that eventually assailed the film's reputation. One scene shows a rabbi in Schindler's factory caught out slacking on the job by Goeth himself, who drags the man outside for swift execution. Amon forces the man to his knees, pulls out a Lüger, presses it to the man's skull and...click. The gun jams. Goeth tries again, and nothing. At last, he becomes so enraged he beats the rabbi with the butt of the pistol and leaves in a huff with the man alive. Elsewhere, he succeeds in murdering without compunction, and his lazy Sunday sniping of stray Jews in the camp from his villa's balcony takes on an absurdist element.


Yet Spielberg never plays up this repellent, twisted brand of comedy, instead using it to achieve an emotional verisimilitude. I distrust any film depicting atrocity that omits those air-sucking inverse laughs that offer just enough energy to keep people moving in the face of death. Despite the verité style of some handheld shots, Schindler's List does not attempt to present its images as documentary truth. The director's tracking shots are more graceful than they'd ever been, and his use of constant juxtaposition removes the camera from fully capturing How It Really Was. Instead, Spielberg seeks a spiritual truth, and that humor is but one way in which he makes the film feel real.

Bolstering the film further is a sense of moral complexity previously unseen in Spielberg's filmography save for Empire of the Sun (which actually handled it with more subtlety). We meet Schindler as a villain, someone who gleefully exploits the Jews' situation for personal gain and reacts to their gratitude as if he just realized he'd stepped in dog muck. Though he does not subscribe to Nazi ideology, he is more than willing to go along with it if he can make a buck or two. Goeth, on the other hand, enters the film almost sympathetically, his weak, distended frame -- Fiennes made a fascinating choice to lean his thin stomach out until it formed a paunch, making Goeth misshapen -- hinting at a softer, bookish soul. Then we see him morph into a tyrant, but even then Spielberg does not cheapen him with two-dimensional atrocity. His Goeth struggles as much, if not more, with his conscience as Schindler. The aforementioned tryst with Helena adds layers to a man most would be happy to relegate to the pile of History's Greatest Monsters (and not at all without reason), and it demonstrates a maturity on Spielberg's part willfully ignored by those who tore the film apart after its release.

No film in Spielberg's corpus is as fiercely debated as Schindler's List, because none of his other films carries such hefty stakes. Less than two decades after its release, Spielberg's Holocaust drama has become the focal point for nearly any discussion about the propriety of Hollywood making large-scale films about real human tragedies. To this day, contentious arguments arise over the nature to which Spielberg "glamorizes" the Holocaust, which is not to say that he makes it appealing but that he exploits the horror of the event to mine audience reaction.

But let us consider a few of the most debated moments of the film. In the most infamous sequence, the train carrying all the women and children from Schindler's factory in Krakow gets rerouted from his new munitions factory to nearby Auschwitz. When they arrive, guards strip them and send them into showers, where the women shriek in fear of expected death. The terror is unlike anything I've ever felt during a movie, and I continue to seize up at the scene. Then, water flows from the outlets, and the exploding wave of relief and restarting hearts rolls right out of the frame into the theater or living room.

Some accuse Spielberg of manipulating an audience with this moment, but I can never agree. Is any emotion beyond reverent disgust inappropriate? Is it wrong to try to capture what it must have felt like in those seconds of pure fear? Frankly, the only way I can see Spielberg honoring the solemn tone of this kind of film would be to have actually sent those women to their deaths as he lingered outside the chamber, but which of these two scenarios sounds crueler to you? Besides, Spielberg does give the audience a taste of the latter when the women emerge from the showers hugging and crying in joy as, behind them, a single file of Jews enter another chamber that does not hold water in its pipes, and the camera tilts up to show black ash billowing from the building.

At the other end of the supposed emotional manipulation spectrum are the tear-jerking moments. At the end of the film, Schindler, nearly broke but with just enough money to escape the country in advance of the Red Army's breach of the camp and the inevitable shooting first and asking later, stands with his workers gathered around him. More than 1,000 men, women and children assemble, capable of doing so because Schindler and Stern saved their lives. But instead of feeling proud or relieved, Schindler breaks down and sobs, wracked with guilt for the millions he couldn't help. He rips off what trinkets remain his and wonders how many lives he could have saved with each. Even his lapel pin might have worked as a bribe to save one more person. Perhaps it's a maudlin moment, but who could feel satisfied in this situation. Spielberg's film might show the goodness of humanity even in its darkest hour, but he is not so childish as to think one man's actions, despite the Hebrew proverb Stern recites to him ("He who saves one life saves the world entire"), can undo all the pain. But for those he saved, Schindler truly did save their whole world.

I find it somewhat amusing that scenes such as the one just mentioned provide ammunition for the film's detractors. Spielberg, who founded the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation (now the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education) with some of the profits of the film and continues to finance that foundation, has been accused far more often of exploitation and profiteering than Claude Lanzmann, maker of the astonishing, vital and deliberately non-conclusive documentary Shoah.

That film is deservedly lauded, but it is also held up as the answer to Schindler's List by some critics who fail to acknowledge that the methods Lanzmann used to elicit information from both the perpetrators and victims of the Holocaust breached nearly every ethical boundary in the book. He broke the rules not for money but to get the story, but do people really think Spielberg just wanted the cash or a gold-plated statuette? Spielberg wanted a story as much as Lanzmann did, and I find faults and quibbles with Spielberg's otherwise admirable work just as I do Shoah.

This is not to say that I feel every decision Spielberg makes is the right one, or even that he completely honors the subject matter. He paints Schindler's wife, Emilie, into the background, bringing her out only so Oskar can repent for having so many mistresses. According to the Schindler Jews, Emilie was as good a person as her husband, if not better. Even the wallflower cinematic version of her would had to have noticed all the odds and ends slowly disappearing from her house or the debt her husband amassed. When she appears at the end to stand over her husband's breakdown, her disjointed connection to the story stands out in horrible clarity. She should be sharing in that moment, not made to be a spectator.

Every time I watch Schindler's List I feel like I should resent it, if only because of the pressure to do so for its historical inaccuracies or its manipulative moments. But all films must smudge the ink somewhere (even most documentaries cannot get the whole picture), and if Schindler's List is to be considered manipulative, could that be because any imagery of the Holocaust will, must, grab us if we are good-hearted and humane people? The film sears in my memory, and I routinely think about certain aspects: that eerie smile on Fiennes' face, with its lack of gaps but inexplicable space between each tooth that gives every incisor or molar its own dangerous glint; Helena standing in the disorienting center of frame as she reflects upon her doomed life, well aware that Goeth will one day get over his fleeting attraction and put a bullet through her head; Schindler shouting "They're MINE" when Goeth casually speaks of taking his Jews for slaughter, a moment of passion his friend does not fully comprehend.

Schindler's List is not the first film to showcase Spielberg's aesthetic mastery within the confines of more serious-minded narrative ambition, but where The Color Purple used too many tricks to tell its story and Empire of the Sun eased up on the director's visual skills for its cynical but affecting humanism, Schindler's List finds the balance. Spielberg manages to get away with something as stylized as the Krakow raid, which features a scene of an SS officer playing Mozart on a piano in one of the ghetto apartments as muzzle flashes and machine gun ratatats serve as his audiovisual metronome, because he never lets the moment run off the dramatic weight. It may not hit me quite as profoundly as Empire of the Sun and its unique approach to and perspective of war cinema, but that nagging feeling that tugs at me every time I sit down to watch this film evaporates as I experience it. I would never presume to say the film captures even a fraction of the Holocaust; it is instead what Stanley Kubrick labeled it, not a film about six million who died but 1,000 who lived. It is worth telling the good stories with the bad; they deepen our understanding of mankind's darkest hour.

Steven Spielberg: Jurassic Park

At five stages in his career, Steven Spielberg has directed two films in the same year. In each case, both are targeted at a large crowd -- whenever is a Spielberg feature not? -- but one clearly exists to be a massive crowd-pleaser while the other, however grand in scope, is more personal. Usually, the films also offset each other, tackling some unifying aspect from different angles. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade showed Spielberg setting his father themes to rest for awhile, and, appropriately, the more low-key Always dealt with the theme of letting go. Nearly two decades later, War of the Worlds sought to capture the pandemonium of being trapped in the sensory overload of a sudden assault, while Munich dealt with those 9/11-inspired themes with a more analytical oversight.

The link between Jurassic Park and Schindler's List is not immediately as clear, for reasons one can only hope are obvious. Yet the adaptation of a Michael Crichton thriller about recreated dinosaurs and a biopic of a key symbolic figure of the Holocaust do have one element in common: both deal with the arrogance and tyranny of mankind. Schindler's List surveys our capacity for evil against each other; Jurassic Park demonstrates man's constant exploitation of the Earth.

Of course, the film is also, first and foremost, a thriller, and it demonstrates that Spielberg lost not an ounce of his ability to terrify in the two decades separating this film from Jaws. The opening scene sets the mind a-reel: a giant cage being shoved against a gate as men who look like mere foremen carry guns and tasers looking uneasy. Some kind of beast is inside the lumbering metal box, and when a worker lifts a gate for transfer, the unseen creature charges, knocking back the cage and sending the poor man plummeting into the the animal's mouth. The ensuing frenzy bewilders: what is in that cage? How can it move so fast yet be powerful enough to toss a large man around like a rag doll? The suspense still works years later, after we all know what's in that cage and, furthermore, that the tossing around is honestly ridiculous and more a blatant nod to the woman being whipped to and fro in the water. Spielberg, master of effects, makes them felt even in a scene where the dinosaurs are not visible.

Where Jurassic Park breaks from Jaws, however, is in the weakness of the actual human beings in front of the camera. Technical delays permitted constant rewrites of the Jaws script into one of the best screenplays of all time, a mainstream blockbuster with fully realized characters with motives and pathos. Everyone in Jurassic Park now looks less fluid than the 20-year-old computer animation, which has held up astonishingly well. Indeed, the dinosaur animation of this film, save for a few iffy spots generally involving too many creatures on-screen, looks better than a great deal of current work.

But those damn characters. The issue is evident immediately: in the badlands of Montana, paleontologist Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and paleobotanist Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) dig up a velociraptor fossil as a group of tourists inexplicably hangs around the site. Well, I assume they're tourists; they cannot be dedicated paleontology buffs, as Grant gets into argument with a child unimpressed by the raptor and terrifies him into respecting a creature that went extinct 71 millions years ago. It's an absurd scene, serving to introduce these characters via their half-written traits that substitute for actual humanity: Alan hates kids and computers, Ellie has the smarts to match him but also serves as the mediator between Grant and the rest of humanity. Then, a Scottish version of a leprechaun arrives announcing himself as Mr. Hammond (Richard Attenborough), the beneficiary of Grant's dig. Hammond exudes "kooky eccentric billionaire," and he insists the two come out to a theme park he's devising. Along the way, they meet Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), a mathematician who appears to have taken fashion cues from Miles Davis' '80s wardrobe.

But once they arrive on the Latin American island and a jeep pulls into a clearing, for one brief moment the turgid anti-momentum of the film's plot setup gives way to one of the most magical moments of Spielberg's canon, one that takes me right back to a childhood of obsessing over dinosaurs and the sense of complete wonder and awe this movie instilled in me at age 5. That brilliantly laid out sequence of the dinosaurs revealed first through gentle but forceful surround sound whoomps, then the facial reactions of stunned characters and finally the glorious shot of a brachiosaurus as the music swells. In that instant, nothing else matters, and one sympathizes with Grant going weak at the knees.

More than any modern director, Spielberg understands the power of cinema as spectacle. Spectacle does not automatically connote simplicity, and the power to please millions should not be written off as proof of hackdom. Just because Jay Leno builds his audience by diluting his once caustic brand of verbal peroxide with water doesn't mean everyone who become a household name sold his soul. Look at how perfectly Spielberg reaches for the audience's collective jaw and gently pulls it down; this movie began with suspense and fear, gave way to stiff narrative exercises, and then it morphed into this?

The director finds his groove here, using the next scenes, all of which build as much plot as the scenes leading to the arrival at Isla Nublar yet feel lighter, more engaging. A dated but fun segment answering the questions prompted by the sight of a dinosaur walking around -- chief of which being, "How the hell did this happen?!" -- and also tempers the fantastical element of the preceding reveal with genuinely clever pseudo-science from novelist Michael Crichton. Though his explanation is not only impossible but far-fetched even if one were to accept some degree of plausibility, the idea that scientists could get the DNA needed to clone dinosaurs from the drunken blood preserved in fossilized mosquitoes beats the hell out of any previous reason given in dino films for the presence of terrible lizards.

Crichton's setup also allows for explorations of the morality of genetic engineering in a time where scientific breakthroughs made work in the field possible -- two years after Jurassic Park, scientists cloned Dolly the sheep. Hammond expects to be worshiped by his assembled experts, but instead they all express reservations. Malcolm, who specializes in chaos theory, outright lambastes the park and notes that all the genetic safeguards do not guarantee perfection and cryptically forewarns, "Life finds a way." Grant and Sattler note the variables and unseen dangers as well, but they agree to go on a tour of the place. By this point, however, Spielberg has subtly meshed the excitement of the film's trademark scene with the earlier suspense, gracefully intertwining curiosity and terror as the genetic talk deepens.

The tour itself epitomizes the inability to manufacture life to be entertainment. The scientists might be controlling breeding by restricting gender to female, they might even orchestrate a fail-safe protein deficiency in case a creature gets off the island, but they can't make the dinosaurs show up at the edge of the fence in each paddock waiting to dazzle the audience, which by now includes Hammond's tween grandkids, the bookish, dino-loving Tim (Joseph Mazzello) and the hacker tomboy Alex (Ariana Richards). The group does not see the first dinosaur, nor the second. When they all finally come across one, it's a sick triceratops that can only be seen when Ellie spots it and gets out of the automated electric car and everyone follows suit.

Meanwhile, the head programmer of the park's advanced computer system prepares to betray his boss. Dennis Nedry (Wayne Knight) sits at his computer bank surrounded by food wrappers and cola cans, his keyboard likely sticky with grease. Swimming in debt despite being a key staff of the park, Nedry blames Hammond for not paying him even more and decides to sell embryos to a rival genetic engineering firm. If life can be manufactured, life has a price. Not only does cloning raise moral issues of playing God, it turns life into a commodity, a copyright other businesses try to steal.

Looking to cover his tracks, Nedry hacks his own system to shut down all the security features of the park so he can escape. In the process, however, he turns off all the electric fences, letting the dinosaurs get out. At last, the plot thickens, though it still has the viscosity hot sauce. For the rest of the movie, the humans run, hide and run some more from unleashed dinosaurs, either trembling at the onslaught of a T-Rex or waiting for an ambush by the smaller but smarter raptors.

Both predators offer more potential for Spielberg's thriller. The T-Rex, gargantuan, deafening and capable of crushing a whole man in one bite, makes even the massive shark seem simple in comparison. The director announces it by the motif of a soft thud deep in the background and a quiver of water in a puddle or glass, the calm before the storm. Whenever that massive head juts into view, the panic overwhelms. The velocirpators work in an opposite fashion. There is no warning, no trick to contain them. The T-Rex gives itself enough time to let its victims froth in terror; the raptor just strikes. Small, fast and resourceful, the raptors come out to play whenever a human might find itself in an area where it need not fear the tyrannosaur, ensuring that no place in the park is truly safe.

The "baddie" dinosaurs, like the rest of the creatures, are the collective result of four effects masters working in tandem: Stan Winston with his animatronics, Phil Tippet's go-motion, supervisor Michael Lantieri and digital animator Dennis Muren. Though one can tell when a puppet is being used and when the computer animation is on-screen (typically the animatronics are used for close-ups and direct contact with characters while the CGI dinos appear in long shot), the effects work borders on the seamless. Jurassic Park, a film about the potential side effects of technological growth, ironically set off a technical revolution in the cinema, introducing a breakthrough in storytelling potential that almost immediately morphed into a way to make big, silly effects on the cheap. How many movies today survive solely on CGI that dazzles an audience instead of working fluidly in a story? Why, the same is true of Jurassic Park itself.

In fairness, the film does have some clever writing. In smoothing out Crichton's technical writing and heavy plot, David Koepp made the wise decision to alter the characterization of Hammond, who in the novel was a conniving old huckster who abandoned pharmaceutical research for genetic engineering because, despite the gouging policies of Big Pharm, he could not charged as he pleased for medicine. The novel's Hammond would agree with the lawyer here (weakened into a thin stereotype for the movie) that he could charge tens of thousands for a single ticket. Koepp helps drive the point about the dangers of genetic engineering by casting Hammond as a kindly old benefactor who wants, Walt Disney-style, to see smiles on the faces of all the world's children. However, like Disney, Hammond has a hard ambition that cannot be hidden, not even behind that avuncular face, and he allows himself to overlook tiny flaws until they escalate into massive problems.

Elsewhere, however, the characters thin, from the lawyer to Alan, who loved children in the book because of their love of dinosaurs but hates them here so he can fit into Spielberg's running theme of emotionally distant father figures and to set up the ostensibly emotional plot of Grant learning to care for Hammond's grandchildren out in the park. Perhaps if Neill committed, he could make the character work, but he appears to have recognized that the dinosaurs would be the main attraction and coasts through the movie with his Indiana Jones-knockoff hat (and profession, come to think of it) while Laura Dern makes for the world's unlikeliest scream queen as she shrieks and swears in terror for the whole of her time on the island. She has a scene late in the film with Hammond in which she must deliver one of the most eye-rolling "HERE IS THE MESSAGE" speeches ever, and she over-emotes so blatantly it's hard not to laugh when she unhelpfully adds, "People are dying out there!" Only Goldblum is remotely animated, but he spends so much time dancing around tossing out quips that he only manages to cover up for the fact that Malcolm has no actual character.

There's also the issue of some sloppy editing. When the guests get out to see the triceratops, it's barely cloudy outside. After about an hour, a hurricane has blown in and lightning arcs the sky. Not 20 minutes later, it's pitch-black and raining in monsoon quantities, just so Nedry's escape can be all the more confusing and doomed. Alan shoots at raptors with a shotgun, but the glass he shoots shows bullet holes, not shot damage. The clearest example is, of course, the tyrannosaur paddock, which is ground level at the start and suddenly a 30-ft. gulf when the T-Rex busts out and shoves a car into its pen. Everything exists for maximum entertainment, but the lack of even basic continuity at times shows an amateurism that Spielberg never previously allowed in his immaculate work.

I will forgive a film thin characters and predictable plotting if it is told well visually -- it is a visual medium, after all. But Spielberg seems to have dialed back his style to make the computer animation easier for his staff as they felt their way around their own innovation, and Jurassic Park suffers most not from its characters but from Spielberg letting off the gas. Jaws worked so well as a thriller because the director was in control of everything. Here, he must rely on others to put stuff into his frame after he shoots, and he appears out of his element. Of course, he was charting new territory and the degree to which he incorporated CGI meant he had to be the one to brave these unknown waters, but there is an unease with digital animation in this film that Spielberg would only later overcome.

And yet, the film does achieve that maximum entertainment. Jurassic Park may sacrifice character, coherence, even style to grab the audience, but I cannot deny I still thrill at that brachiosaur, still sit on edge when Dern goes into that raptor-ridden bunker and still feel uplifted by John Williams' main theme, one of his finest compositions. Even so, like Hook, Jurassic Park can no longer make me ignore glaring issues for the sake of nostalgia. Its conservatism is particularly tedious: the film emphasizes the need for a nuclear family through Grant's storyline with the kids (who, frankly, are so annoying I wouldn't mind if they made toothpicks for the T-Rex), and it makes a justifiable yet overbearing critique of the unchecked progress of science. Hell, it even has a minor go at electric cars for being silly and reliant upon outside factors that limit our freedom.

Looking back, it seems the perfect blockbuster for the Clinton era, an attempt to add heart back to the blockbuster after the soulless '80s (even Spielberg used the decade to make the largely self-serving Indiana Jones films), but that do-good liberalism ties to old-school conservative values. In that sense, one must credit Universal president Sid Sheinberg insisted Spielberg make this film before Schindler's List: Spielberg, the ultimate Hollywood liberal, had to cleanse his palette with this film before moving totally into the humanism of his next feature. Taken with Schindler's List, Jurassic Park cements the director's domination of all aspects of mainstream American cinema, and for all the film's flaws, it still shows a man capable of pleasing hundreds of millions with the ease of flicking a light switch. Nostalgia be damned: when the film clicks, it transcends its weaknesses, even if but for one blessed instant. Sometimes, that's all it takes.