An IMDB post from 2006

On the Greatness of Steven Spielberg

by - jonathanara (Fri Mar 24 2006 16:20:34 ) Ignore
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UPDATED Thu Apr 13 2006 14:21:01


Spielberg is perhaps our greatest living director. In fact, he is
one of the best directors that has ever lived - easily in the top
10; perhaps even the top 3. Spielberg is great because, at his best, he is not pretentious and his movies are all about entertainment. He understands that great art is really great entertainment and that's why he's movies tend to be very good. He understands (generally) that movies are not really about the message (though he does have a tendency to thrown in too much MESSAGE).

Movies, like all great works of art, are great not because of what they say (or because of what they teach us) but rather because of the way they take us on a rollercoaster ride.

First, let's get Spielberg's flaws out of the way. He has his share
of bad movies. Yet these movies don't fail because they are not
entertaining - they fail because they tend to get weighed down by what William Goldman calls "medicinal [crap]." Even his masterpieces are often undercut by these embarassing moments. I have tried to reconcile them (perhaps someone here can help me). Take Schindler's List - greatness and perfection in the entire film . . . except (as I'm sure you've heard before) in Schindler's goodbye scene.

Everything else works flawlessly but that one scene feels jarring.
Saving Private Ryan - the unnecessary bookends that start and end the film. I'll stop here, but the point I'm trying to make is that the flaws occur where Spielberg makes himself visible. A great director (or author or musician) is the one who manipulates his audience to feel what he wants it to feel yet does not make himself visible. In these flawed moments, Spielberg's veil falls off and we see him tugging at the heart strings. There's nothing wrong with being manipulated - all great art is great because of how much it manipulates us. The problem occurs when we are aware of the manipulation.

This of course means that when Spielberg is invisible - pretty much during most of the time in his movies - he is perfection and a half. He is what movies (and art in general) are all about. [Spoiler Warning] Take the scene in Schindler's List (SL) where the women are taken to the showers. The movie sets up that scene so that we expect there to be gas (the set up is from an earlier conversation about what showers in Aushwitz are really like). The audience expects one thing - waits for it in fear. We're sure it's going to happen. We see it happening and then . . . it's not gas but WATER! Imagine a rollercoaster. We go up in the cart and see the drop coming. We expect the drop. We nervously wait for it. The drop happens and even though we knew it we still had fun. What Spielberg does is take that expected drop (that we would have enjoyed anyway) and adds an extra
twist. Yes, SL is about the Holocaust but more importantly it is a well made piece of entertainment. Don't take this the wrong way - it is the most moving picture I have seen. By entertainment, I mean that it's a lot of fun for your emotions. Spielberg plays us the way Hitchcock played the audience with Psycho (another masterpiece that gets a little bogged down by message in the very end).

Another example: Munich - the scene with the little girl. Classic
Spielberg. We expect one thing, and then BAM, something else. The explosion doesn't go off. Why is this so great? Well first,
Spielberg aligns us with Avner and his crew. Spielberg, by putting us in hte trenches with them, makes us want the explosion to occur.
What does he do then? He completely turns us around and makes us want more than anything else for the bomb NOT to go off. He sets us up and then pulls a twist on us.

[side note on twists: they are great. they are what art is all
about. Sixth Sense, Usual Suspects, Psycho, Kane, Planet of the
Apes. These twists are big - they take the twist to the extreme.
What Spielberg does (along with most other great directors) is to
fill his movies with tiny little twists like the ones mentioned
before).