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May 02, 2012
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Browsing IMDB last night, I noticed that Catch Me If You Can is credited as the closing chapter of Spielberg’s unofficial ‘Running Man’ Trilogy. The other two films in the trio are AI and Minority Report. Spielberg has made a few loose trilogies during his career, the director bonding films together by theme, subject and mood. These are listed below. Running Man - AI, Minority Report, Catch Me If You Can All are films about characters running from and to things. David, Anderton and Frank are fleeing the law but also chasing a dream; David the dream of becoming a real boy, Anderton the dream that his son is still alive and Frank the dream that his parents will get back together. By the end of the films, these dreams have been recognised by the audience and characters as futile and, in many ways, destructive. War - Empire of the Sun, Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan Each film takes on a different literal and thematic aspect of WWII. Empire of the Sun is set in a POW camp and is about the death of innocence; Schindler’s List is set around the Holocaust and is about the survival of hope in dark times and Saving Private Ryan is set around the conflict itself and is about memorialising those who lost their lives. Suburbia - Close Encounters, E.T., Poltergeist This is a trilogy mentioned by Andrew M Gordon in his book Empire of Dreams and, of course, it rests upon Poltergeist being credited as Spielberg’s film and not Tobe Hooper’s. All the movies in this trilogy are set in suburban households, but whereas Close Encounters and E.T. are hopeful, Poltergeist shows suburbia as a source of horror. Terror - The Terminal, War of the Worlds, Munich All take on a different aspect of the War on Terror. The Terminal focuses on the distrust of foreigners that rose in America after 9/11 and asks us to question the American Dream. War of the Worlds focuses on the visceral horror of the attacks and asks us to question the nature of screen violence. Munich focuses on the response to the terror attacks at the Munich Olympics in 1972 and asks us to question the morality of revenge. You could also group Duel, Jaws and Jurassic Park as Spielberg’s ‘Monster’ Trilogy, but to do so you’d have to ignore The Lost World: Jurassic Park, so it doesn’t really work.

Browsing IMDB last night, I noticed that Catch Me If You Can is credited as the closing chapter of Spielberg’s unofficial ‘Running Man’ Trilogy. The other two films in the trio are AI and Minority Report.

Spielberg has made a few loose trilogies during his career, the director bonding films together by theme, subject and mood. These are listed below.

Running Man - AI, Minority Report, Catch Me If You Can

All are films about characters running from and to things. David, Anderton and Frank are fleeing the law but also chasing a dream; David the dream of becoming a real boy, Anderton the dream that his son is still alive and Frank the dream that his parents will get back together. By the end of the films, these dreams have been recognised by the audience and characters as futile and, in many ways, destructive.

War - Empire of the Sun, Schindler’s List, Saving Private Ryan

Each film takes on a different literal and thematic aspect of WWII. Empire of the Sun is set in a POW camp and is about the death of innocence; Schindler’s List is set around the Holocaust and is about the survival of hope in dark times and Saving Private Ryan is set around the conflict itself and is about memorialising those who lost their lives.

Suburbia - Close Encounters, E.T., Poltergeist

This is a trilogy mentioned by Andrew M Gordon in his book Empire of Dreams and, of course, it rests upon Poltergeist being credited as Spielberg’s film and not Tobe Hooper’s. All the movies in this trilogy are set in suburban households, but whereas Close Encounters and E.T. are hopeful, Poltergeist shows suburbia as a source of horror.

Terror - The Terminal, War of the Worlds, Munich

All take on a different aspect of the War on Terror. The Terminal focuses on the distrust of foreigners that rose in America after 9/11 and asks us to question the American Dream. War of the Worlds focuses on the visceral horror of the attacks and asks us to question the nature of screen violence. Munich focuses on the response to the terror attacks at the Munich Olympics in 1972 and asks us to question the morality of revenge.

You could also group Duel, Jaws and Jurassic Park as Spielberg’s ‘Monster’ Trilogy, but to do so you’d have to ignore The Lost World: Jurassic Park, so it doesn’t really work.

Tags: Jaws Jurassic Park: The Lost World Jurassic Park Duel War of the Worlds Munich The Terminal Poltergeist E.T ET E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial Close Encounters of the Third Kind Close Encounters Catch Me If You Can Minority Report AI A.I Artificial Intelligence a.i. artificial intelligence Spielberg Steven Spielberg film

Photoset
April 12, 2012
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There’s an interesting contrast that Spielberg uses in A.I. involving the moon. As I noted in this post, Spielberg uses a fake moon to inspire terror when David and Gigolo Joe are captured and taken to the Flesh Fair.

Once the pair have escaped though, Spielberg once again references the moon, as Joe informs David of Rogue City. This is a debauched metropolis which houses Dr Know, a sort of future Google that will tell David where the Blue Fairy resides.

Joe tells David that they must follow the moon to get to Rogue City. Though Joe says that the journey will be fraught with peril (again linking the moon with danger) the lunar body is ultimately a source of hope, a star guiding David to what he believes will be answers.

This distinction between natural and artificial is used sporadically by Spielberg throughout his career, most recently in The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn.

Tags: The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn Tintin Spielberg Steven Spielberg AI A.I. A.I Artificial Intelligence film

Photoset
April 11, 2012
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By the end of A.I. Artificial Intelligence, humans and robots have switched places. The film begins with humans in the dominant position, creating artificial life to fill our emotional voids, but ends with humans being subservient to robots, who are now doing the same thing by resurrecting Monica so they might learn from David’s emotional response to her.

Spielberg anticipates this at the very beginning of the film. In the opening sequence, we see Professor Hobby giving a lecture about artificial intelligence and testing his theories out on his robot secretary. The scene ends with the secretary doing her make-up. We then cut to a shot of Monica doing hers. The glacial way Spielberg presents this cut suggests a weight and meaning that won’t become fully evident until the concluding scenes.

Tags: A.I Artificial Intelligence Steven Spielberg film

Text
March 27, 2012
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After receiving a critical mauling upon release, A.I. Artificial Intelligence has become one of Spielberg’s most debated and admired films, with a vast number of great essays being written about it. Film Quarterly have the latest, as penned by the great critic Jonathan Rosenbaum.

Tags: A.I Artificial Intelligence Steven Spielberg film

Text
February 22, 2012
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The A.I. passage in the Vanity Fair piece I posted last night got me thinking about the film. Spielberg said, “A substitute love child, you know, is almost a crime, and the human race pays for that crime” and that’s certainly true. The only human we see at the end of the film is a projection of David’s mother. Everyone else is long gone, replaced by robots.

What interested me though is the idea of David as a victim of the crime Spielberg speaks of. He’s certainly a victim of sorts. He’s first created by Professor Hobby as a means to help the man recover from his son’s death, and then adopted by Monica and Henry Swinton to perform a similar task for them. In the end, he’s taken in by the advanced mechas and is again used - he becomes a lab rat who is experimented on to help the mechas understand human love.

But is David totally innocent in all this? Perhaps not. David is committing the same crimes that are being inflicted upon him. Just as he was used, he is now using Monica to help him feel loved. It’s the tragic brutality at the heart of the film. Humanity’s most basic need is for love, and we’ll do anything to gain it.

Tags: A.I Artificial Intelligence Steven Spielberg film

Text
February 21, 2012
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Written around the time of A.I Artificial Intelligence’s release, this is a great look at Brian Aldiss, the author of the short story on which the film is based - Super Toys Last All Summer Long.

It’s a fascinating interview that includes the following passage about the creative differences between Aldiss and Stanley Kubrick:

“Stanley was set upon making a modernised version of Pinocchio in which David the android boy meets the Blue Fairy and becomes transformed into a real boy.

“I hoped that Stanley would create another future myth and not really look back.

Tags: A.I Artificial Intelligence film