Why I Despize Steven Spielberg And George Lucas

Probably every cinephile has a favorite decade in movie History. Mine's not an exact decade but it's a period that had its peak in the mid 1960's and started to fade a bit after the mid 1970's. Some of my favorite directors, such as Woody Allen, Mike Nichols and Martin Scorcese had their debuts or major hits during this period. Woody had his Annie Hall, Nichols did Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, while Scorcese had Taxi Driver.

Tonight I watched a film from the very end of this era [which I'll come to definition very soon] that gave me two insights about my movie tastes. The first was the one I started the post with, and the second was the final explanation [at least to me] of my hate towards Steven Spielberg and George Lucas.

The movie I saw was Kramer vs. Kramer [1979, by Robert Benton with heavenly Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep]. It's a court-drama about a divorcing couple disputing the custody of their 7-year-old boy; in a first abstraction I instantly liked this movie because of the similarity with my own life. No, my parents didn't go on court to dispute my sister and I, but the reasons Meryl's character leaves her husband for are very similar to the ones my mother left my father for. But it was during the documentary on the bonus material that I had my insight.

Someone [I don't remember if Meryl or producer Stanley R. Jaffe] says that KvK was a very specific movie, about one or two characters and their psyche and very deep feelings about the situations in life, instead of a generic film with more to look at than to think about. Right then I remembered an article I once read in a magazine.

The article talked about an era in film History that sort of started in the 60's with deep psychological dramas, especially historical-dramas, but mainly psychological thrillers and comedies; the latter contained subtle comic elements that actually hid the deepness of the characters. Movies such as Breakfast At Tiffany's followed that premise and reinvented the very basis of the usual dramedy. As for the thrillers, the world saw the decade rise with the masterpiece of the genre Hitchcock's Psycho and we also had classics as Polanski's Rosemary's Baby. These films talked mostly about human behavior; but it's the way they did it that fascinates me the most. The dramatic and psychological thrillers were more deep plunges into the characters' disturbed minds than shocking and superficial sensorial exploitation. Marvelous pieces such as Alan J. Pakula's Klute and Brian de Palma's Carrie were delivered and also classics like the unforgettable A Clockwork Orange and "Taxi Driver".

But as the times and society changed, along came the 1980's with its vibrant superficiality that seemed like people didn't think that going deeper was interesting anymore. [I believe these era is still on.] But it was in the mid 70's that this new way of dealing with art and life hit the cinemas, with the catastrophe cinema. And which was the big 1975 catastrophe hit that was like a fancy exploitation films springoff? Yup, Spielberg's Jaws. A while before we had the phenomenon called The Exorcist, that was more about spinning heads, bad hair and green vomit than a deep character study. These tragic and dumb movies became a fever, along with the visually psychotic Star Wars.

I'm not by any means saying these films aren't worth a damn, after all they saved the industry from brankruptcy [said the magazine article]; but they put to an end the era of technically great films with deep content. Of course I'm not that naive by saying Spielberg and Lucas killed the human behavior movies, but I need scapegoats for society's shallow turn. So I guess it's them.