Stephen Spielberg (l, appropriately) and Daniel Day-Lewis on the set of ‘Lincoln’
Hollywood director Steven Spielberg has carved a wide swathe through Hollywood. The guy’s pretty good, I grant you. From Jaws and Jurassic Park to ET and Raiders of the Lost Ark, he’s managed to transfer a reasonably talented suburban kid’s passion for Saturday afternoon entertainments into bona fide blockbusters.
No harm in that. Those movies that aim for nothing but entertainment are sometimes the best.
It’s when directors of popular film aim a bit higher that their creative wings sometimes melt. Spielberg belongs squarely in this category – especially after going all Joel McCrea-Sullivan’s Travels in Lincoln, his high-handed attempt to make a serious movie about the 16th U.S. president. Sullivan’s Travels, readers may recall, was Preston Sturges’ satire on movie directors who abandon their successes as creators of screwball comedies in order to make films of social significance. As the director John Lloyd Sullivan, McCrea learned the hard way that sometimes laughter (or, in Spielberg’s case, thrills) is the best medicine.
Trouble is, come Oscar nomination time, Spielberg winds up the Academy’s red-headed stepchild. There’s plenty of gold-plated statues for special effects, but nary a one for his actors, costume, and set designers – or for his own direction. So, every once in a while, he attempts to dazzle viewers’ brains and hearts as well as their eyes with films such asSchindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan, Munich and Lincoln.
Oscar-bait each and every one.
The problem is, Spielberg simply doesn’t have the chops to pull off the job completely. Each one of the above-listed “serious” films, for all their presumed gravitas and actual merits, lacks an intellectual center that would lift the film from wannabe cinema classic to the real thing.
Until recently, it was a mystery as to why Spielberg could never successfully pull the trigger on a truly great dramatic picture. Until October that is, when he premiered Lincoln at the New York Film Festival. As it turns out, the reason is quite simple – the guy’s not a deep thinker. A capably talented maker of action-adventure movies (if readers forget Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) to be sure, but someone who daydreamed about reanimated dinosaurs and aliens during history and social studies classes to the detriment of his intellectual development.
Case in point: Spielberg explained his reasons for delaying release of Lincoln until after the election because he thought viewers might interpret it as an endorsement of the Republican Party’s candidates.
“I just said, please don’t release this until the election is over,” Spielberg said. “I didn’t want it to be this political football going back and forth.”
Why? Explained Spielberg: “Because it’s kind of confusing. The parties traded political places over the last 150 years. That in itself is a great story, how the Republican Party went from a progressive party in 1865, and how the Democrats were represented in the picture, to the way it’s just the opposite today. But that’s a whole other story.”
Get it? In Spielberg’s worldview, today’s Democrats represent all that’s well and good in the political arena and yesterday’s Republican repudiation of slavery was an historical anomaly because contemporary Republicans are just so durned opposed to basic human rights.
Screenwriter Tony Kushner doubled down on his director’s clown-shoe pronouncements by comparing Honest Abe to the current occupant of the White House on The Colbert Report. True, both presidents envisioned the U.S. Constitution as a mere speed bump on the path of realizing their respective agendas, but one could argue that ending slavery was a far sight more constitutionally legitimate than forcing the adoption of nationalized healthcare and squandering billions of taxpayer dollars on ill-advised green energy programs and UAW bailouts.
Let’s hope Lincoln is Spielberg’s last foray into “serious” filmmaking. He excels far better at cinematic thrill rides than he does political drama, which is no slight. After all, America could benefit from a little distraction over the course of the next four years.
Bruce Edward Walker is a regular contributor to The American Culture and arts and culture critic for The Michigan View, where this article first appeared. Reprinted with permission.
The writer says Spielberg doesn’t have the chops to pull the trigger on a truly great dramatic picture. I’m not a big Spielberg fan, but “Catch Me If You Can” is a great dramatic picture. I think this particular work will, over time, enter the cannon of great movies like “The Searchers”, “Citizen Kane”, “Taxi Driver”, etc.
I agree about “Catch Me if You Can,” it’s an excellent and under-rated film. However, I agree largely with Bruce about Spielberg’s lack of depth, with the exception of “Schindler’s List,” which I think reaches for greatness and succeeds. The “intellectual center” of that movie may be fairly simple but it seems clear to me – a vain, self-centered man can’t ignore the evil around him and, at great personal risk, changes his life and uses all his wits to save as many Jews as he can and generally undermine the Nazi effort. The dramatic arc is simple – Schindler grows from a bad to a good man – and the evil that leads to the change is so obvious it doesn’t need specific dramatic events to be illustrated. The film succeeds because it is so emotionally powerful and demonstrates the good that one man can do (the generations that are alive and bear witness to Schindler at the end of the movie) even in the worst possible circumstances.
First, Schindler’s List is easily top 15 movies of all time. Not gross, not for excitement, but squarely in the category of cinema classics. Saving Private Ryan is also in the conversation for any list of cinema classics, but I’ll agree is not a shoe-in, the way that Schindler’s List most certainly is. If you were going to decry his directing chops, you should have gone after The Good German. Man you didn’t even do an IMDB search before writing this puff piece.
Second, as far as I can see, you square the entire article on one comment that seems to be taken pretty far out of context. That’s sad.
Third, the Republican Party, in that it is against Gay Rights IS the exact opposite of the 1860s party, and I know you think the Dems are progressive as all get out now. I’ll grant you, the stakes where much higher then (slavery vs. marriage), but the argument is at the very least congruent.
Fourth, and running on that last theme. While the Constitution is silent on Healthcare it was unabashedly PRO Slavery (remember the 3/5ths clause from 7th grade history? I’m assuming you’ve reached the 7th grade, if not forget this comment you are writing at exactly the level you should be). The 13th Amendment was written AFTER the civil war ended so fighting for abolition was DIRECTLY against the Constitution. Not “constitutionally legitimate” at all. Jebus man, or woman … read the Constitution before you knee-jerk defend it. The argument you should have made was that it was morally more necessary.
I do hope you don’t screen out this comment because it was rude to you. It was rude to you, but I’d argue no more rude than you were being to Steven Spielberg. Freedom of speech is important and though I clearly do not respect your writing ability, I do respect your initiative to put yourself out there in the political discourse.
I could spend a bit o’ time pointing out that much of what you say is simply subjective (Schindler’s List being in the Top 15 — mebbe to you and others, but … whatev). But to denigrate me for skipping The Good German? Great movie, but not really directed by Spielberg. Seriously, you can look it up on IMDB.
Stephen Spielberg long ago lost his credibility concerning historical films. His 1999 documentary “The Last Days” about five Hungarian Jewish Holocaust survivors has been revealed to be pure fiction by numerous historians and researchers, including noted historian Prof. Eric Hunt. The fact that Spielberg would see it fit to film and document the obvious lies of these skewed Hungarian women puts into question how any reputable film studio could choose him for a project as important as “Lincoln”. Serious film viewers and intellectuals long ago dismissed Spielberg as being “not a deep thinker”. Thank you Bruce Walker for concurring with them. Spielberg should just continue to make children’s movies and not bother himself with historical and adult issues.
‘Get it? In Spielberg’s worldview, today’s Democrats represent all that’s well and good in the political arena and yesterday’s Republican repudiation of slavery was an historical anomaly because contemporary Republicans are just so durned opposed to basic human rights.’
Yes, exactly. This passage is true. Democrats are progressive and good, full of the light that will dispel the Bronze Age fallacies and superstitions that keep your country in the 17th century, and the Republicans are those old reactionaries who want to re-introduce slavery and the stoning of ‘witches’. When was the last time that a Republican stood up for ‘basic human rights’? The early-1860′s, that’s when.
What does ‘durned’ mean anyway? That’s not a word.
Glad to get your opinion, Peter A. Too bad your only factual claims are so evidently absurd and ignorant. Why, it almost seems like you’re trolling….
My country? It’s not yours as well, Peter? You may want to look into the civil rights battles of the 20th century before you post such assertions against an entire political party. I stand by my use of “durned.” I’m not the first to use it, but I’d be proud to say I coined it in any event a la Mencken.