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December 07, 2012
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The Atlantic have been running a fascinating roundtable discussion between Ta-Nehisi Coates, A.O. Scott, Kate Masur and Tony Horwitz about history and Lincoln. Each writer has argued their point in individual articles (which can be read here), and AO Scott is the latest to be featured. His pieces looks about how Spielberg has portrayed racism and slavery throughout his career, and how criticisms of Lincoln should be understood through the prism of what has come before. “One of the more facile slaps at Lincoln is that it’s a movie about abolition that focuses on a white man, just as Schindler’s List was a Holocaust movie with a German (a Nazi, for that matter) at its center. To isolate those two movies is to miss the deeper chord that connects them with other films. Spielberg has always been interested in—even obsessed by—the relationship between the human and the other, a category that includes classes of people defined as less than human. Sometimes, as in Schindler and Lincoln, he explores this relationship mainly from the perspective of a member of the empowered, fully “human” caste whose conscience is engaged by the plight of the other. The Righteous Gentile, or the Great Emancipator. But at other times he has gone the other way, most notably in A.I., which is a movie about the existential agony of being condemned to a state of servitude and social death very much like slavery. “The world of A.I. is divided into humans and sentient robots known as mecha. There is intimacy between the two groups, but also absolute domination. Humans live with mecha servants and surrogate children, have sex with mecha prostitutes, and depend on mecha labor, but mecha can be sold, discarded, or killed at any time, and “free” mecha are hunted down and rounded up by slave-catchers. The movie’s hero, a young boy named David, refuses to accept this arrangement, and his journey is both a search for his lost origins and an assertion of his humanity in a society that is based on the denial of it. In effect, he is asking a version of the fundamental abolitionist question: Am I Not a Man and Brother? It takes him 2000 years to get the answer he deserves.” These are wonderful articles and it’s great to see Spielberg’s film inspiring such significant debate.

The Atlantic have been running a fascinating roundtable discussion between Ta-Nehisi Coates, A.O. Scott, Kate Masur and Tony Horwitz about history and Lincoln.

Each writer has argued their point in individual articles (which can be read here), and AO Scott is the latest to be featured. His pieces looks about how Spielberg has portrayed racism and slavery throughout his career, and how criticisms of Lincoln should be understood through the prism of what has come before.

“One of the more facile slaps at Lincoln is that it’s a movie about abolition that focuses on a white man, just as Schindler’s List was a Holocaust movie with a German (a Nazi, for that matter) at its center. To isolate those two movies is to miss the deeper chord that connects them with other films. Spielberg has always been interested in—even obsessed by—the relationship between the human and the other, a category that includes classes of people defined as less than human. Sometimes, as in Schindler and Lincoln, he explores this relationship mainly from the perspective of a member of the empowered, fully “human” caste whose conscience is engaged by the plight of the other. The Righteous Gentile, or the Great Emancipator. But at other times he has gone the other way, most notably in A.I., which is a movie about the existential agony of being condemned to a state of servitude and social death very much like slavery.

“The world of A.I. is divided into humans and sentient robots known as mecha. There is intimacy between the two groups, but also absolute domination. Humans live with mecha servants and surrogate children, have sex with mecha prostitutes, and depend on mecha labor, but mecha can be sold, discarded, or killed at any time, and “free” mecha are hunted down and rounded up by slave-catchers. The movie’s hero, a young boy named David, refuses to accept this arrangement, and his journey is both a search for his lost origins and an assertion of his humanity in a society that is based on the denial of it. In effect, he is asking a version of the fundamental abolitionist question: Am I Not a Man and Brother? It takes him 2000 years to get the answer he deserves.”

These are wonderful articles and it’s great to see Spielberg’s film inspiring such significant debate.

Tags: Spielberg Steven Spielberg AI A.I. ai: artificial intelligence A.I.: Artifical Intelligence a.i. artificial intelligence Amistad Lincoln film

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November 08, 2012
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Roger Ebert’s review of Spielberg’s much under-rated slavery drama Amistad is a good read and the below passage stuck out to me.

Ebert points out that Amistad, like Schindler’s List before it, is about good men trying to manipulate evil systems to achieve noble causes. From the looks of the trailers, it seems like Lincoln will focus on the same idea - is this enough to call it a running theme in Spielberg’s later work?

“Amistad, like Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, is not simply an argument against immorality. We do not need movies to convince us of the evil of slavery and the Holocaust. Both films are about the ways good men try to work realistically within an evil system to spare a few of its victims. Schindler’s strategies are ingenious and suspenseful, and lead to a more gripping and powerful film than the legal tactics in Amistad, where lawyers in powdered wigs try to determine the origin of men whose language they do not speak.”

Tags: Steven Spielberg Spielberg Amistad Schindler's List Lincoln film

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October 26, 2012
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If there’s one Spielberg film you should watch before Lincoln, it’s the under-rated slavery drama Amistad. It’s a slow and talky picture that’s admittedly hard to get into; even Spielberg himself has suggested that it’s perhaps a little too stately.

What it lacks in pace it more than makes up for in elegance and integrity though. Amistad is one of Spielberg’s most heartfelt dramas, an impassioned plea for equality, communication and tolerance that rings as true today as it ever has.

Lincoln is sure to touch on many of the same themes and I hope it does so as powerfully as Amistad does. It is a film I don’t watch often, but one that dazzles me every time I do.

Tags: Spielberg Steven Spielberg Amistad Lincoln film

Text
October 25, 2012
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Some great pictures for any Spielberg fans interested in the director’s historical films. Robert Capa, whose work had a huge influence on Saving Private Ryan, is featured.

filmcigarettes:

If you guys are interested in history I created davincings a couple days ago it’s still a work in progress (like all my blogs). 

Tags: Steven Spielberg Spielberg Saving Private Ryan Schindler's List Amistad Munich Lincoln History

Photoset
March 10, 2012
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Spielberg closes the opening rebellion of Amistad with a shot of the ship’s head moving into bright light. The slaves believe they have finally won their freedom and are now heading home. It proves to be a false dawn though, as the owners of the ship sail it back to America where the slaves are forced to stand trial.

This shot is echoed in the film’s closing shot, where the slaves do finally sail home. However, Spielberg does not suggest that the events of the film solved the slavery issue. We are told that Cinque’s family have disappeared, presumably sold into slavery, and Spielberg reflects this with moody lighting that fades slowly into black.

Tags: Steven Spielberg Amistad film

Photoset
March 10, 2012
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Amistad opens with a mutiny on the titular slave ship. It takes place during a violent storm, and Spielberg alternates between darkness and overwhelming light (his representation of communication and understanding) to highlight the complex politics of violence.

Tags: Steven Spielberg Themes Light Amistad film