World Cinema - Report Example

Being one of the most influential contemporary film figures, Steven Spielberg has directed countless movies and he is perhaps one of the wealthiest film producers in the world. Born in Cincinnati Ohio, he went to California State University but in the end decided to drop out of college to pursue his career as a celebrity. His talent for appealing to the emotion but most especially to the imagination of audiences all over the world has been apparent since his first major role as an international director in the film Jaws. Though success hasn’t always been there for Spielberg, he continued to improve on his craft and he has already left his own signature in many of his movies ever since. Particularly in the movies Minority Report (2002) and War of the Worlds (2005), he has used various technical aspects to focus on the microcosmic world of the characters, but at the same time expanding on the macrocosmic world of man and his own vulnerabilities by incorporating themes that often have an open-ended effect on the viewer. Minority Report is a film about John Anderton, a police officer who apprehends suspects who are about to commit crimes based on the data from three “precogs”, human beings who have the uncanny ability to have visions of the future. As the foundation of the story is laid, the plot thickens when Anderton is observed by an agent from the Department of Justice to evaluate and to assess whether the Precrime program should be enforced nationally. After an investigation by the agent, Anderton is notified of a new murder with the named suspect as him and thus he sets out to find who set him up in a crime that he himself has no freedom over. Later, he finds out that when one of the precogs deviate from the vision of the majority of precogs, then the vision of the deviating precog is ignored and tagged as a minority report. “With “Minority Report”, Steven Spielberg has ditched the romanticism of “A.I.” in favor of the paranoid creepiness of futuristic noir” (Bushell). What is this feeling of paranoia? It is what John Anderton, played by Tom Cruise, felt when he was implicated in a murder that couldn’t possibly be of his own actions. This feeling of extreme and unreasonable suspicion of other people and their motives in the midst of complacency in technological advancement is what the director, Spielberg, wanted the audience to feel while watching the movie. This idea is shown by the film’s focus of Anderton’s aloneness while he watches his family virtually recorded on discs, and in this, Anderton perhaps senses a semblance of love. Anderton is the perfect example of a person who is overly dependent on the “system”, the whole construct of progress. But when the whole system falls down and tries to implicate him in a murder, he becomes full of distrust to the point of running away from his own colleagues in the crime department. This is the kind of inner world that Spielberg suggests when we become dominated by complacency in the simple thought of advancement and progress for the sake of advancement and progress. “Spielberg convened a three-day think tank conference in which leaders in many fields- science, crime, transportation, architecture, health et al.- weighed in on their visions of the future” (McCarthy). It is the vision of the future and how future can be equivalent to reality is what deserves the most philosophical musings and highlight from the film itself. Though our world may be governed by rules and trends, which to some extent limits our actions into something foreseeable, human freedom and choice is the most requisite in determining the fate of people. For this reason the film “treats the matter in a very even handed way, leaving room for consideration and arguments on both sides” (McCarthy). And in my opinion, this is where the director, Spielberg, truly shined: he emphasized this question by putting at stake people’s feelings, emotions and lives at least in the context of the movie. War of the World is a film about Ray Ferrier, also played by Tom Cruise, a divorced construction crane operator who seems mediocre at best in being a father and much worse at being a husband. Ray’s ex-wife leaves him in charge of their two kids for the weekend and over the next few hours, a strange storm hits their town and machines of terror and destruction come alive from beneath the streets. These aliens that just landed on earth destroyed everything in sight and mishaps between people surface as they run and save for their own lives in the name of self-preservation. Ironically, it is only at this moment that Ray begins to stop caring only about himself, but also for the people that he loves including his kids. By the end of the movie, Ray and his young daughter survived the onslaught while the aliens perish from cellular organisms that man has built a natural immunity to. Only then did the war between worlds subside as men became victorious by the very fact of what is deep within them. “There are three Steven Spielbergs. First up is warm, fuzzy Stevie, who makes life-affirming slush like The Terminal. Then there’s Serious Steven, who makes worthy films about Important Issues. And finally, you have psycho Steve, who just wants to creep up behind you and yell “Boo!” Psycho Steve is the guy who made Jaws, Jurassic Park, the best bits of Minority Report, and (yes!) War of the Worlds” (Arendt). It is the whole notion of the unexpected that really pushes the envelope forward for this film; after all, who would expect that during a normal day, such an occurrence of invasion and mayhem would arise, and this, Spielberg has portrayed with stunning and nightmarish imagery. Yet what puts more depth to the film is that perhaps no one would expect such a seemingly normal father of two to achieve such feats of bravery, not only in defending his daughter with his own life, but also having the courage to let go of his own son in a situation of sure death. Who knew that Ray Ferrier had it in him? The dynamic growth of this character was due to two reasons: the suffering that was caused by the aliens on his surroundings, and his personal choice to love his kids more than his own life. And that is what makes Spielberg successful; he initially draws a lot of attention on the surroundings of the world inside the film, but at the end of the day, in the backdrop of events, he makes outstanding the life of his main character. “Encountering a half-cracked man… Ray and Rachel (his daughter) hide with him in the basement, which is soon penetrated by an enormous tentacle that slithers around every wall and post as the humans scurry to avoid detection. The framing, cutting and timing of this breathless sequence are unerring, revealing the master hands of Spielberg and editor Michael Kahn” (McCarthy). Interestingly, the aliens in this movie were never identified and this stresses the weapons of mass destruction brought by the aliens rather than the aliens themselves. "War of the Worlds alludes to many of Spielbergs previous works, and not just his sci-fi features. The contrast could not be more obvious between the gentle-spirited aliens of Close Encounters and E.T. and the present films murdering monsters” (McCarthy). However, it is precisely the paranoia and the fear of humanity in the uncertain and unknown that is encapsulated in this film by Spielberg. Again, there is an overbearing atmosphere in the presentation of advanced weaponry through the invading aliens while society is displaced in a warped notion of war, almost to the point of being a mass genocide and a hysterical slaughter of man. In conclusion, Spielberg’s emphasis is always on the character of man in general, depicted by the protagonists of the film, and his surroundings, which at least in the two films discussed is embodied by advanced technology. Spielberg suggests both in the Minority Report, but even stronger in War of the Worlds that there is something to be scared about in cutting-edge technology. It was implicitly stated that technology destroys lives by distorting man’s view of reality in Minority Report and explicitly stated as human lives are literally annihilated in War of the Worlds. As a reaction, man will have to go back to the basics to fight his own paranoia: trusting his own instincts, self-reliance and finally choosing the path that he thinks is right for him. But that is exactly what Spielberg leaves as open-ended for his audience: what path will you personally choose? Works Cited Arendt, Paul. “War of The Worlds (2005)”. BBC Film Reviews. BBC, 1 July 2005. Web. 24 November 2009. Bushell, Laura. “Minority Report (2002)”. BBC Film Reviews. BBC, 4 July 2002. Web. 24 November 2009. McCarthy, Todd. “War of The Worlds”. Variety. RBL: Reed Elsevier, 28 June 2005. Web. 24 November 2009. McCarthy, Todd. “Minority Report”. Variety. RBL: Reed Elsevier, 4 July 2002. Web. 24 November 2009. Read More