Rating: 4.5/5 stars
“Spielberg” successfully touches the heart and finally puts audiences in the head of a remarkable filmmaker.
At the start of “Spielberg,” Steven Spielberg talks about a moment during his teenage years when he said he considered not being a director at all. That moment came when he saw “Lawrence of Arabia” for the first time at age 16. He said it could not be outdone. Without a doubt, many cinema students must have felt this way.
Spielberg started making movies as a child, using the medium to tell war stories and even a short about aliens called “Firelight.” After working in TV for Universal Pictures for a few years, he made feature-length films, with “Jaws” being the first widely recognized film of his career. The classic film about an aggressive great white shark eating people at the beach became the highest-grossing film of all time, and summer blockbusters became a thing. The making and release of “Jaws” is the first major segment of “Spielberg,” and it feels appropriate, given how much he owed that film for his career, despite his frustration making it.
The numerous interviewees in this documentary, critics, actors and directors, examine the ideas and themes behind each of Spielberg’s movies and offer their own views about them. In fact, not all of those views are positive. It also feels appropriate that a good number of the interviewees were part of the “film brats” from the 1970s that Spielberg was a part of. There is a lot of Super 8 footage of private parties between Spielberg and directors like Martin Scorsese, George Lucas and Brian De Palma. Almost everyone who has worked on one of Spielberg’s movies makes an appearance here.
Surprisingly, two films considered to be weaker ones in Spielberg’s filmography, “Always” and “Hook,” are never touched upon. While “Always” is seen as merely a small blip on his career, “Hook” was a successful blockbuster that has gained the love of some, but the director himself is not that proud of it. Other films not considered as important to Spielberg’s life and overall career are also only given a slight amount of focus. One segment groups all of his sci-fi films from the early 2000s such as “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” and his “War of the Worlds” adaptation together.
The segments focusing on Spielberg’s personal life are especially important, since more often than not, a person puts what they have experienced in life into their own work. New details, some quite heartbreaking, are revealed, such as why Spielberg’s parents divorced in the first place. Listening to interviews from Spielberg’s parents and even his sisters are welcome. One segment that shows Spielberg’s personal life coinciding with his movies that flows almost seamlessly is one that covers his rejection of his Jewish heritage as a child, his marriage to Kate Capshaw, who was an actress from his film “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom,” in a Jewish ceremony and finally, the making of what many cinephiles think is his best film, “Schindler’s List.” Not only did the film inform millions about the Holocaust, it also allowed Spielberg to start the Shoah Foundation, an organization dedicated to preserving records of accounts by Holocaust survivors, and won him his first Best Director Oscar and the Oscar for Best Picture. It is extremely clear that “Schindler’s List” was a moment that defined who he would be for the rest of his life.
Despite the initial confusion of his filmography being covered out of order and a couple of details on Steven Spielberg’s personal life getting short-changed, like his marriage to actress Amy Irving, “Spielberg” presents a definitive life story of a filmmaker who has dedicated himself to entertaining millions and looking for something to say in his work.
A final and special touch from this documentary is that the soundtrack is mostly filled with themes from film composer John Williams, who has been the source of Spielberg’s longest-running collaboration, starting all the way back to his first feature film, “The Sugarland Express.”
Photo: HBO via YouTube.com
