By Matt Zoller Seitz
Links to the fourth, fifth and sixth entries in a series of countdown essays on the most important directors of the 2000s, written for Salon.com. For the entry on Steven Soderbergh, click here. For the entry on Michael Moore, click here. For the entry on Steven Spielberg, click here.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
The Directors of the Decade, Parts 4, 5 and 6: Steven Soderbergh, Michael Moore and Steven Spielberg
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5 comments:
"...termite art in elephant's clothing."
Whoa...that's quite a statement. As much as I'd love to get behind that and quote it (hell, I'll probably do it anyway, it's so good), I don't quite see the extent of it being termite art. But it's a bold way of looking at Spielberg (one of my favorites). Still, Matt, I think my favorite writing of yours on the topic is your huge review of 'The Terminal'. As simple as it sounds, your 'friend theory' has been hugely helpful in my grappling with filmmakers I like but find problemtic (as well as the concept you present of leading the audience to the edge only to walk them back down-especially resonant with Pixar).
I love this series and really miss regular writing from you, Matt. It would be great if you did more blogging on 2010. I'm also curious to hear what you thought of some of this year's movies, especially Inlgourious Basterds (knowing that you're a Tarantino agnostic).
The coincidence of your post juxtaposing Soderbergh and Spielberg calls up my one major complaint with the latter, whom I otherwise consider about as good as it gets. It's not the happy endings; I'm not fond of their inevitablity but they're clearly as much a part of Spielberg's DNA as rock and roll is for Scorsese or anticlericalism was for Buñuel, so I've learned to ride with them. It's that, like both Disney and Hitchcock whom your friend aptly marked for his lineage, he's resolutely a studio-bound creator.
Soderbergh has been too wildly uneven for me to rate as a major director, but several of his projects (not always the on-the-cheap ones) find him out on location, soaking up the atmosphere and casting unmistakably amateur faces and voices for their inimitable snap. Whereas Spielberg's such a universalist--it's one of his greatest strengths--that a teenage American hustler and an Israeli military man can both find their epiphanies while staring through a storefront window.
The contrast is even greater with a comparable figure like Zhang Yimou, whose blockbusters are every bit as humane and sincerely populist as Spielberg's (if attuned to a different set of cultural values), but whose smaller projects revel in the unpredictable hustle of crowds unaware they're being filmed, and the reserved urgency of nonactors tossing out their lines. While the mall crowd in Minority Report or even the pleasant boredom of the stalled travelers in The Terminal feel staged, and in the director's total control.
It's as if the neorealists have no influence on him whatsoever. Off the top of my head, Spielberg is the only great director I can think of who never casts nonprofessionals, even for such procedural performances as policemen or medical teams. (The one exception that comes to mind--UFO peddler Allen Hynek beaming smugly at the alien ship in Close Encounters--is somewhat embarrassing today.) It hasn't hampered him in any real way, and his portraits of domestic normalcy still rank among the most honest and observant ever filmed. But every time Spielberg's technical proficiency and moral and emotional decency lead me to think there's nothing he can't do, I remember Wei Minzhi's utterly natural exasperation in Not One Less, or the casual, unforced professionalism of Decker Moody in Bubble--hell, even the nifty offbeat rhythms of Ed McDonald laying it all out for Mr. and Mrs. Hill in Goodfellas--and recognize a pitch completely foreign to an otherwise dazzlingly varied body of work.
Bruce,
A fine point about Spielberg's uniformity of industry professionals on his productions & the effect on his work.
I agree, also, that he's about as good as it gets.
As someone who loves films from every walk (and philosophy) of life, I am never less than stunned to silence by the assumed dismissal of Steven Spielberg by people who care about movies.
War of the Worlds and Munich alone rank him among THIS decade's most important American filmmakers, putting the heartfelt work of many of his peers to shame. His talent seems to draw from a well so deep 4 decades haven't tapped it out.
I'm enjoying this series very much, especially today's Dardennes entry. Anyone want to take bets on the next four? I've got Nolan, Denis, Eastwood, and Lassiter et al. from Pixar.
Joel
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