Spielberg is like...
Thursday Theses: The man, the myth, the filmmaker explained in other artforms
The Fabelmans is out now, telling a fictionalized version of the life of one Steven Spielberg.
The names have been changed to avoid making a documentary, but for the most part, we’re generally led to believe this film will be true to life.
One of the great things about finding a craft you love is that you get to treat yourself to research.
In my case, that’s watching good movies or watching documentaries about good movies and filmmakers.
Recently, I sat down with HBO’s documentary on Spielberg.
Laterally is geared centrally to think about the way different domains intersect.
There were many nuggets the doc leaves you to chew on, namely with regards to how different artforms interact and intermingle.
At a number of points in the film, analogies are drawn between different features of Spielberg’s work and different crafts altogether.
Spielberg is, as one should expect of any great artist, multifaceted.
He experiences a number of modes of expression in the medium.
Here are some of the most interesting observations from the documentary, “Spielberg”.
Spielberg is like an abstract painter
Liam Neeson compares him to an abstract artist:
When Spielberg gets into the zone on set, he begins to paint with strokes according to a knack, an intuition.
He draws from an “extraordinary palette of colors.”
“Once he’s committed to that color, he’s just firing on all cylinders.”
Neeson recounts Spielberg running around with the camera to chase the scene.
He gets into the zone, finding a way of formulating sentences in the visual language.
He enters into flow, which I imagine must be a particularly interesting state for the director.
In essence, this is the practice of conducting an assembly of visuals, vibes, and variables in order to deliver shot-after-shot.
We imagine of Pollock — though his paintings would not be examples of well-used color — acting out the flow of his painting as he dashes out splats and splooshes on the canvased ground around him.
At that point, it becomes about the motion.
It becomes about the pursuit of the abstract until you can capture it in the frames on the camera or in the painting under your feet.
Spielberg is a great conductor
There is a point at which Neeson recounts complaining about Spielberg’s incision with which he worked on a scene.
In this case, he required incredibly precise detail with how Neeson was smoking his cigarette in a scene from Schindler’s List.
Neeson said he had felt like a puppet.
Neeson then recounted that his interlocutor compared him to a great soloist — a great soloist working with a great conductor.
The medium that’s chosen for the analogy changes the entire message.
This is not puppetry — using a dangling effigy made to act out human likeness.
This is a collaboration with equal prowess but unequal directive control.
Both the work of the actor-soloist and the director-conductor is essential to making the best film-performance possible.
Spielberg is like Gershwin
Francis Ford Coppola compares our man Spielberg to Gershwin.
Gershwin wrote music for theatre (for the masses), and he wrote chamber pieces (for those of elite taste).
Spielberg is versatile.
He makes incredible movies that appeal to a range of people, but he does it with style and cinematic glory.
I mean, come on.
He makes movies about dinosaur theme parks.
But the dinosaurs at the theme parks are a thing of beauty — a breakthrough in visual storytelling.
He advanced cinema while offering up something with broad appeal.
While Spielberg was at first panned because of his broad appeal, as the documentary recounts, he found himself pushing further and further on different boundaries.
And I think this is the balance one wants to strike: both reach people and but lift the medium to a new level.
Spielberg is like Rockwell
Spielberg is known to be a collector of Norman Rockwell’s art.
Rockwell is known for a particular view of American life and the American family.
He present rosy, sentimental scenes, a sweet and earnest feeling to them that draws on an experience of small town and rural life.
He captures and codifies a portrait-in-series of familial life in long-gone days.
And it invokes a yearning: why can’t things be as simple as they were in childhood days?
Central to the HBO documentary is an exploration of Spielberg’s personal struggles that he draws on and externalizes in the movies.
You may have noticed the recurring theme of the broken home in his movies.
Parents are getting divorced.
Children are learning to deal with it.
This is a portrait of Spielberg’s own life growing up after his Rockwellian, suburban life was shattered by his parents’ divorce.
Still, the playfulness and wonder of his films draws on this sentimental feeling about life.
This is what makes his movies so universal and timeless — he has this common struggle of families ripped apart by divorce —
Then, he suddenly then imposes some otherwordly force in their midst, perhaps an extraterrestrial.
This wonder plays out and imbues the setting with a glow that bounces off the fractures in the protagonist’s world — till it arrives in a rectification, a reflection.
It’s the wonder that allows you to reorient your perspective: it’s gonna be okay.