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The Real Steven Spielberg
Yesterday I went to buy myself a hamburger that I allow my fat ass only about once a month or so. When it was time to take the finished package ( since I prefer to eat at home ) the cashier lady called me "Steven". I blushed and felt both amazing and embarrassing. No, she doesn't know that I do movies and that soon a movie of mine comes out. She has no actual idea who I am. That was the first time I ever saw her. It's just when you order something, their machine asks you to write a name, so they could call you when it's ready. Writing my own name would be a horrible privacy problem. So instead I write names of celebrities. And this time I wrote "Steven Spielberg".
Shmuel Steven Allan Spielberg is known in the industry as one of the best movie directors ever. And also known for being overly sentimental. His films include such classics as Jaws, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, A.I. the Artificial Intelligence, Schindler's List and many other films. And though it looks on the surface that he is either overly sentimental, like in E.T. or overly serious about history like in Schindler's List or Lincoln, I believe that it's not a true way to categorize Spielberg. I think the truest form at which he has ever been is in his film 1941.
1941 was not received very well in 1979 when it was released. It was supposed to be a comedy. But it was a not very funny parody on World War II together with being perhaps the loudest movie ever made ( until Christopher Nolan said "Hold my beer" ). Being written by Robert Zemekys ( who would later direct such classics like Back To The Future and Forest Gump ) and Bob Gale the script was what the producer John Milius describes as "social irresponsibility". And what attracted Steven Spielberg to it was the fact that he could blow, break and destroy in multiple ways a bunch of stuff.
If you look at 1941 today it feels like a Michael Bay movie. Explosions are everywhere. Gun shots fired at the sky for no reason ( which was the comedic punchline of the film ). Chase scenes crash through paint factories to add color to the spectacle. A fight scene happens in the middle of a huge dance number involving one bazillion extras. Everything is huge and you feel like it's way too huge.
Spielberg later regretted making this movie, even though he said that he is still proud of some of it, like the aforementioned fight / dance scene. The movie doesn't give the audience a break. When you want to feel that something has a particular characteristic you can't just show it. You have to contrast it with something of an opposite characteristic. If a film is mostly silent and suddenly has a huge, loud action scene, it would feel as a huge loud action scene. 1941 is all huge and loud and though you have here and there a scene where there are no gun shots, those scenes are still full of practical gags. It starts with two kids cleaning dishes. Supposed to be a rather mundane thing that would contrast well with the mayhem that follows. But no. The scene is full of destruction. The two boys decided to practice a dance number which leads to props being broken and set destroyed. The movie was trying to end on a sentimental note of people meeting the morning after the mayhem to reflect on what happened. But just for fun the film includes a scene of an entire building falling off a cliff ( which by the way, they did for real ).
The madness of 1941 made me think. Spielberg's later movies are way smaller, way more intimate, even though he can go huge, he stays with the point of view of the characters. Take for example the 2005 epic War Of The Worlds that he directed. It's a movie of a world-wide genocide of all humans. Just this concept alone makes the movie feel much more grandiose than 1941. But it feels more intimate. We are not focusing on everything and everyone. We are following basically only 3 characters for the first half of the film. And only 2 characters for the second half. And those character are from one family.
But it doesn't mean that Steven Spielberg doesn't unleash his madness in this film. He does and does it plenty. From the scene of the first tripod killing everyone. To the ship sinking of bazillion extras. To the other action scenes. This is true Spielberg unleashing himself. But he holds himself too.
There is a duality in his movies. From one side he wants to go crazy and do the most spectacular action stuff ever. On the other side he wants the movie to be good. And just bombarding it with action will make it worse. So he has to go silent. He has to go intimate and small often enough so you could feel the bigness of the rest of the films. And even then he does it with way too much energy.
Look at The Post. A movie about an article in the newspaper. Like, how can you make this interesting? The movie has no action scenes. Oh wait... There are actions scenes! It's Steven Spielberg we are talking about. He cannot bloody live without action. The movie starts with a war scene in Vietnam. It's not as gruesome as the one he did in the beginning of Saving Private Ryan, but it bloody damn good and has a very similar feeling to it.
But then we go back to America and there are no action scene in the movie from that point on. Oh... There are! Well technically it's not an action scene. At least in the script it wouldn't be an action scene. But Steven Spielberg goes out of his way to present it as one. Tom Hanks's character learns that he needs to get somewhere quickly. So he talks in his phone in the car while driving at a bazillion miles per hour. Sitting in the cinema I though that it must be a Visual Effects shot, since who in their right mind would allow their lead actor drive so damn fast while talking on the phone!
Apart from that. Even if the scene is boring on paper. Like the scene where they are literally reading documents and trying to make sense of them. Sounds like the most boring thing that can ever be. Steven Spielberg adds action ( even though this time, not dangerous ) into the scene to make the entire thing have a ton of momentum. For example in the scene that I just mentioned, where a bunch of reporters get their hands on the Pentagon Papers and need to make sense of them, right before they open the box with the papers, we learn that a little girl is trying to sell lemonade outside of the house.
As the people inside of the house go deeper and deeper into the papers, the little girl changes her strategy and goes inside, selling lemonade to the reporters, who buy the damn lemonade! The scene ends with a shot that pans through the little girl counting a big pile of cash in her hands. The little girl in this scene is a part of the background, so to speak. But she injects so much momentum into the scene that you feel not like you are watching people reading papers. But you feel like you are watching an action scene.
I think The Real Steven Spielberg has only two modes. And those are suspense and action. And suspense happens before the action and is shot as meticulously as action. He doesn't do normal kind of coverage. You know the standard Hollywood system of shooting first the master shot showing both characters in the scene. Then shooting medium shots of both actors. And then shooting closeups of both actors. And then editing the scene using only this. Steven Spielberg doesn't do that.
Even in his early days in TV in the late 60s early 70s crews were stunned that he will do complex master shots. Not a static shot with two characters either sitting in their chairs, or standing one in-front of the other. But a complex ballet of movement, both of the characters and of the camera. Every conversation scene for Steven Spielberg, even in the very early beginning was an action scene. No wonder that when he was given to direct Duel ( his first true action movie ) he was good! This stuff just changed people into cars. But the way he approached it was the same.
Sometimes though it seems like Steven Spielberg is slowing himself down too much. It feels like this in A.I. Artificial Intelligence that he tried to do in half his style and half Kubrick's style since originally it was supposed to be a Kubrick's film.
And here is the thing! The film still gets tons of momentum here and there despite trying to be slower. A good example is the whole Flash Fair sequence. Which is suddenly explosive and loud. It has a motorcycle chase. It has a metal band playing very distorted music. It has sparks and fire and explosions. Even though the movie is technically a drama.
But my favorite example of Steven's Spielbergness comes at the scene where David is trying to steal an Amphibicopter ( helicopter that can also go underwater ). Even the Flash Fair scene was rather tame compared to the two shots he did in the Amphibicopter scene. As the Amphibicopter rises in the air and asks "Destination?" and Joe answers "Manhattan", you see elaborate action stuff that is just so Spielberg. Yes! It's only about 10 seconds long. But damn! It's so Steve! The thing flies into the air controlled badly by the characters that do not know how to control it. The camera sweeps around the Amphibicopter in a perfect Spielbergian ballet. You have a flash of red light blinding you as you see that Joe is about to hit a sign! Cut! He hits the sing! The Amphibicopter falls for about a second but then catches on and rises again going though the elaborately built architecture of the future and through a holograph of lips. Exiting the Rouge City. He could just show the damn thing fly away and that would be more than enough. But he went the extra mile to make it into a proper action scene.
There is a very good movie directed by Brian Percival called "The Book Thief" about a little girl during World War II that steals books because they are interesting to read. A lot of people I know think it was directed by Steven Spielberg. Perhaps because it was scored by John Williams ( a composer that did almost all Spielberg movie soundtracks ). But it's not Spielberg. And here is the main difference between Spielberg and Brian Percival. The movie needed to show that her stepfather is being injured at war and thus comes back. Basically a scene to further the plot. Brian directs the scene very matter-of-fact-ly. He shows the character enter a truck. He shows the truck go. He shows the truck blow up and fall over. No elaborate anything.
But look at a different movie. Steven Spielberg's Bridge Of Spice. Like Percival's The Book Thief, it's a talking movie about characters talking. Even more than that. The Book Thief is somewhat of a heist movie. It has more action than Bridge Of Spice. At least on paper. Bridge Of Spice is literally about a lawyer who is hired to do a lot of talking.
Bridge Of Spice has a similar problem. There is a need to communicate that a character was captured by the soviets. But rather than doing what Brian Percival did and shooting the damn thing as if it was just another fact to be shown on the screen, Steven Spielberg does the following:
There was already enough in the movie to understand that the US had sent a spy to fly over the Soviet territory and make photos of it using very cool looking huge lenses built into the aircraft. So we start with the guy slowly flying through the air making pictures. Suddenly from the back flies a rocket! It misses. Bam! A second rocked just explodes near the aircraft! The pilot panics! And a third rocket hits a wing! In the same shot we learn that one of the engines stops working. And still in the same shot we see the aircraft starting to fall towards the ground. As it falls and pilot panics the window around the pilot starts to slowly crack away as the plane spin-falls towards the ground. The pilot prepares to evacuate, he unlocks his straps. And is about to press the big red button that says "Destruct". Since his mission is also to not let the soviets know that they have been spied on. But bam! The window shutters. The pilot flies out of the aircraft but is still holding to it on the oxygen cable! The spin of the plane accelerates! And the pilot is bumping into the plane in a chaotic fashion. And in one unbroken shot we see the pilot catching onto the spinning plane and reaching again for the Destruct button. Closeup on the finger! And even closer closeup on the finger! The oxygen cable bursts and the pilot is falling away from the plane. From the position at which he fell he is falling faster than the aircraft! But he stabilizes himself in the air and releases the parachute. But it's not the end. The camera pans up and looks through the hole in the top of the parachute. The aircraft is falling right at the pilot! But luckily it misses the pilot by the few inches.
This is a completely different way of saying "They shot him down". But it is a way Steven Spielberg would say it.
You know all this deep dive into Spielberg made me think about Michael Bay. You know that Michael Bay was trying once to make a serious movie? He went with slower pacing, more character, he tried to take everything more seriously. But then one day said "Screw it!" and made Perl Harbor. I wonder if Steven Spielberg is always trying to hold himself from doing another 1941. But once in a while feels like releasing himself a bit. Watching his animated movies such as Adventures Of Tintin and Ready Player One where he allows himself to be the action director he is, makes me wonder what kind of movie would that be if Steven Spielberg said "Screw it!".
Happy Hacking!!!
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