Posted on 02/25/2012 10:31:50 AM PST by rhema
Sl is completely engrossing. I’ve not heard it described as boring before. There was nothing like the Liquidation of the Ghetto scene in any other American film. The closest referent to SL is the Polish filmmaker A. Wajda’s ‘War’ Trilogy from the 1950s. The production designer from SL actually studied with Wajda. Personally I find ‘Star Wars’ boring.
I thought it was wonderful, but it was hard to describe to people and I didn't recommend it because it was so "strange" a movie. And no one could believe I could like a movie with Sean Penn.
Found it lyrical, like a poem where most movies are like novels. I'm not even into "artsy fartsy" movies, but this wasn't artsy, it was art.
I guess I would describe it as “interesting.” I told people it was a movie about the origin of the universe, and a family in Texas. lol Too much “2001:Space Odyssey”-like for me.
There was a whole thing on the Warsaw ghetto, I remember watching with my mom. Can’t remember if it was part of the Holocaust mini-series or some other “event TV” but liquidating ghettos had happened before. And sorry but SL is boring as hell, largely because it had all been done before. Maybe if I’d never seen anything on the Holocaust before it would have been interesting, but if you’ve seen anything on it before the whole movie is “been there done that”.
If you have a normal sized attention span it isn’t boring. The script is terrific. The dialogue is superb. The tension of the last act of the film is awesome.
It’s got nothing to do with attention span and everything to do with repetitiveness. When every single scene of a movie reminds you of stuff you’ve seen not just in one previous movie but MANY said movie gets boring. And really I find it sad you’re going after the personal attack, you’re better than that.
It wasn’t a personal attack. You talk about how you get bored easily. I’m looking at Leonard Maltin’s Video Guide where they talk about SL not looking or feeling like anything ever made in Hollywood. It’s only similar to earlier films if you take an extremely broad brush.
I didn’t say I got bored easily, I said I got bored by movies that are painfully unoriginal. Yes the look and feel is different, but the STORY is the same old boring seen it once seen it a dozen time Hollywood Holocaust movie, that’s why it’s boring. That’s why so many Spielberg movies are boring, he does brilliant directing in the service pedestrian stories. He takes the same ol cookie cutter stories everybody else does and does them better than anybody else, but in the end it’s still the same ol cookie cutter stories everybody else does. The difference between a Spielberg movie and a Bay movie (most of which Spielberg produces) is that Spielberg actually can direct, but once you get below the surface they both make the same pap.
There aren’t that many “Hollywood Holocaust” films. There was a rash of them in the 1990s post SL. Um, No one will remember Bay’s films in about thirty years but people will still be watching Close Encounters (which Ray Bradbury called the best SF film ever made).
Actually there are quite a lot of Hollywood Holocaust movies, even before SL. That mini-series spawned a bunch. And no one remembers most Spielberg movies. Yeah Close Encounters was great, that was back before Spielberg really got hooked on the cookie cutter. That was in the 80s when he totally went to hell. Somewhere in the 80s he realized that he could throw any crap up there and it would make tons of money. Hell even Hook, which even you agree is a piece of crap, made 300 million bucks. Once he figured out just how little originality and story he needed to make ridiculous cash it was all downhill. And that’s why while many of us fondly remember his great movies like Jaws and Encounters when you bring up stuff like Color Purple and Empire of the Sun and Always and Minority Report (which I actually like the first 135 minutes of) the general movie audience says “that was a Spielberg? I don’t even remember if I saw it”. He used to make great movies, he still has all the skills to make great movies, but he doesn’t make great movies anymore, now he very skillfully directs crap, very lucrative crap, but crap.
‘Empire of the Sun’ was a notorious flop which has gained something of a reputation over the years. I like it. But E.T. is a great film (in its original version). Can you name some of those pre SL Holocaust films? And no ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ doesn’t count. I remember a TV film called ‘Escape from Sobibor’ (which was quite good actually) but nothing that dealt with every multiple aspects of the experience. EFS was basically a suspense/action film.
E.T. early 80s, hadn’t really gone all the way down the path yet. I always though the movie was kind of annoying, and it certainly started a lot of the trends he gets hit for (mouthy kids, lack of risk, simplistic story, trite), but I can understand why people like it.
Yeah The Diary of Anne Frank does count, along with: Playing For Time, Remembrance of Love, Sophie’s Choice, The Wall (this I think is the Warsaw Ghetto movie I referred to earlier), The Scarlet and the Black. And that’s just 1980 to 1983.
E.T. was pretty risky actually. Films about children (pre-teens) hadn’t been big box office since the mid 1960s. E.T. started the trend for better or worse. Spielberg’s friends thought he was wasting his time making a ‘Disney-like’ film (not a compliment back then) which would only play to little kids and their grandma.
Pink Floyd’s The Wall? ‘Anne Frank’ (the play and the films) obviously doesn’t address what SL deals with. They could be hiding from anything really. Sophie’s Choice had only brief flashbacks and again deals with one person’s story as opposed to a general feeling for the events. Again stuff like that and Playing for Time deal with ‘one Jewish pesron/family’ and not the economic reality and basis which SL has long with considerable breadth.
I don’t think it was risky. Sure those type of movies hadn’t made fat cash in the 70s, but it was a 10 million dollar movie to make, didn’t need to make fat cash. Even if it had only played to little kids and their grandma it would have made a profit. had he spent a hundred million making it that would have been a risk. The big problem to me, even when it came out and I was age 11, was how simple it was. The characters are two dimensional at best, ET is the animation embodiment of Deus Ex Machina (he can heal the dead, come back from the dead, make a bike fly, turn a Speak-and-Spell into a both a universal translator and a subspace radio). He went from making complex interesting movies with characters I’d love to meet in the real world (then and now, by age 11 Jaws was already firmly entrenched as my favorite movie ever) to a big eyed alien and a crying Drew Barrymore. I suppose for “normal” kids (ones that weren’t already addicted to Jaws and Close Encounters) it was a good movie, but to me it was Disney-like, slightly less insulting than The Apple Dumpling Gang, but mostly only because it was better directed.
No The Wall based on a John Hersey Novel dealing with the Warsaw Ghetto. Anne Frank addressed a lot of what SL deals with, you’ve got Jews getting slaughtered and somebody risking their life to save one. They COULD be hiding from anything but that holds for SL as well. SL deals with ONE person’s story. You’re picking and choosing and wiggling for nuance. Face reality: all holocaust movies are basically the same. Some are better executed than others, but like I told you DAYS ago the story is functionally identical, which makes them repetitive and boring once you’ve already seen more than half a dozen. And none of your silly wiggling will change that basic fact.
If you want to be precise then E.T. was Christian allegory. He appears in a manger (garage), heals the dead, performs miracles(flying), dies, is resurrected and finally ‘ascends’ in front of his followers. It’s also a poetic meditation on childhood (like the great early Disney features like Bambi and Pinnochio).
You’re using a broad brush with the Holocaust stories. Elie Weisel’s Night isn’t about the same thing as ‘Death Fugue’. ‘Anne Frank’ is banal and limited middlebrow moralizing. The way that she and her family are depicted as a normal every day middle American family is just pandering and offensive. The 1959 film version is especially insufferable. SL has a subtext of how something like that could be depicted (a conversation that Neeson and Kingsley have about ‘creating a new language’). It’s a complex film experience (albeit flawed) that’s filled with jaw dropping sequences that can be watched just for their own value. The John Williams music is also great btw. He conducts it at virtually all of his concerts and the soundtrack is listenable all on its own.
ET is overly simplistic and kind of insulting. Especially given the movies that it came after. The character depth is what always got me, in Jaws all of the characters, even the ostensibly bad people like the Mayor, are fully realized and interesting, you feel they could be actual people and they might be fun to talk to. In ET all of the characters are cardboard cutouts, ET is the only one you get any sense of back story on, the rest might as well be in a commercial. And what makes the Spielberg career frustrating is that in the 30 years sense more of his characters are like the ones in ET than the ones in Jaws.
I am using a broad brush, doesn’t make it not true. Sorry but for me SL has no jaw dropping sequences and is instead made 1090% of sequences stolen from other movies. I suppose the audacity of all that theft might give me some pause if it wasn’t from Spielberg, but by the end of the 80s that’s all he did. John Williams music is always great.
E.T. adheres to the point of view of the Henry Thomas character. It’s seen from his perspective...hence before the final sequences, the only adult seen from the waste up is his mother.
All films about historical events have events ‘stolen’ from other films. That’s silly. SL has been praised in virtually every quarter for sequences of astounding precision and impact.
You can make a movie from a 10 year-old’s perspective and still give the characters depth. By age 10 kids comprehend that people have pasts. Which is the big problem with the ET characters, they have none, they spawned forth seconds before the camera rolled, no back story, no discernible motives, they’re just there to be there.
The problem for SL isn’t that some events are stolen it’s that EVERY SINGLE SCENE is stolen. That’s why it’s ridiculously boring, and why you’re weaseling around this painfully obvious fact is even more boring. Face facts or walk away.
E.T. nailed what living in the suburbs in the early 1980s was like at that age. I was that age back then.
Face facts that you disagree with an overwhelming majority of film-goers and critics who loved SL and found it riveting and no it’s not because people feel obliged to be positive about a film dealing with that subject.
Being 11 and in the burbs when ET came out I can say irrefutably that ET bore no resemblance what so ever to my life. It was Spielberg’s oft repeated 100% false degrading and frankly insulting fantasy of suburban life. If your life was like that I feel sorry for you because really the life Spielberg depicts as typically suburban would suck. No parental love, no guidance, just foul mouthed brats running lose in a messy home. He really has issues with suburbia, it’s sad how many people think his depictions are accurate.
I’m perfectly comfortably disagreeing with the majority, they like Madonna, they’re usually full of crap. Meanwhile there’s actually plenty of critics out there that say much worse things about SL than I ever have. At least I never called it kitschy melodrama, though I won’t disagree. And given how few Holocaust movies get bad reviews ever I’m sticking to the idea that majority of the praise is because if you say something bad about them everybody gets to call you a Nazi. Notice how most of the people that do say bad things about SL have bigger Jew cards than Spielberg, hard to call the director of Shoah a Nazi.
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