Janusz Kaminski, who has shot all of Spielberg’s films since Schindler’s List, gives his thoughts on some of his most famous images in this fascinating interview with Vulture.

Minority Report, A.I., Catch Me If You Can and Saving Private Ryan are among the films mentioned, and Kaminski has some very interesting things to say.

Of the above shot from Minority Report, he explains:

“It’s just a gorgeous shot of two lost people. I used a bluish side light, which to some degree glamorized them, but also made them very lonely and alienated from the rest of the scene. You work in metaphors through lights and composition, and the worst thing for me is to see a movie that doesn’t have that. You see a cinematographer’s work and there are no visual metaphors, or they are so afraid to create a style that it just becomes this nothing.”

An Etsy map of Jurassic Park I was given as a present.

With War Horse out on DVD in the UK this week, I take a look at Steven Spielberg’s use of nature in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., Always, Jurassic Park and Saving Private Ryan.

Check out Celebrate the Land: Spielberg’s War Horse on Quiet of the Matinee.

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.

In the Jurassic Park chapter of his book Empire of Dreams, Andrew M Gordon quotes Spielberg on his point of identification in the film’s sequel, The Lost World: Jurassic Park.

“I liken myself to the hunters that go after the animals. They’ll do anything for money, and so will I.”

Though delivered “self-mockingly”, it’s an intriguing statement for Spielberg to make and one that doesn’t seem to quite tally with the film or its predecessor, which clearly established flawed-but-loveable John Hammond as Spielberg’s avatar.

In The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Hammond has been deposed from his position at the head of Ingen and replaced by his power-hungry nephew Peter Ludlow. Hammond is consigned to (almost locked in) his bedroom and Ludlow is allowed to do with the company, and the genetically engineered dinosaurs it owns, as he pleases.

Looking to expand his uncle’s plans, Ludlow aims to remove the dinosaurs from their island and reproduce Jurassic Park on the mainland. Taking a group of hunters to Site B, he becomes the clueless head of a doomed expedition to exploit the wonder of these creatures for profit.

With his quote, Spielberg is criticising himself for doing the same, but in the context of his career at the time, he was doing anything but. The Lost World was sandwiched between Spielberg’s serious efforts Schindler’s List and Amistad. He closed the 90s with Saving Private Ryan, another serious film, and then embarked upon a period of dark, experimental movies that didn’t come to an end until Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in 2008.

I would argue then that Hammond still represents Spielberg in this film, and that the hunters symbolise the Hollywood system - the studios and producers who look to water down the wonder of escapist cinema with cash-in sequels.

Hammond’s closing speech, in which he implores civilization to let the dinosaurs live and flourish on their island without interruption, only further establishes this point.

“It is absolutely imperative that we work with the Costa Rican Department of Biological Preserves to establish a set of rules for the preservation and isolation of that island. These creatures require our absence to survive, not our help. And if we could only step aside and trust in nature, life will find a way.”

Spielberg, like Hammond, has grown wise to the limitations of simple escapism, and this is his farewell to that kind of cinema. He too understands that sometimes you’ve got to “trust in nature” - trust in reality - leave fantasy behind and let life find a way.