| RATING: | 80% |
| FORMAT: | DVD |
HALLOWEEN FOR GROWNUPS
A flawed masterpiece, because it is ontologically unsound, yet numinous; revealing a great dramatic, imaginative and cinematic mind at work in director Steven Spielberg. A superb silent filmmaker since he tells his story visually with an impressive and pertinent musical score.
Spielberg even incorporates the process of artistic creation itself, in his own creation, as the central characters realize that they must do what their dreams are telling them - no matter what - as the director has done to make this movie. They possess a strong inner compulsion to find an answer to their existential plight - despite the danger. People who take risks make for compelling and suspenseful entertainment in the sense of an itch that they must scratch (even while wearing a spacesuit).
Family life is rendered in great detail and helps overcome the unrealistic emotional logic of the behavior of, and the humans relationship with, aliens. The director gets around the fact that the story makes little sense with his genuine and sincere thematic concerns and emotive ability to make you feel rather than think too much about what you are watching.
The great problem with this movie is its approach to fatherhood. The father figure’s desertion of his family - without any hint of regret - suggests someone we should not be being invited to identify with. His rejection of his family suggests unresolved issues in Spielberg’s own life that were resolved in his later (& better) ET - the effective sequel to this movie since it also deals with a fatherless family.
Trying to weld a story of a couple disintegrating towards divorce and of alien visitation makes little sense unless the idea of external salvation is introduced - but it never is, save to make the decidedly-naive implication that aliens are automatically going to be friendly. But why would they be any more sociable than humans?
Ultimately, a rather pacifist movie; positing the notion that aliens would be friendly even though - on balance - this is rather unlikely since space exploration necessarily requires the search for resources to enable and pay for the exploration in the first place. And since resources are limited throughout the universe, conflict is more likely. Yet wishful-thinking still does make for exciting entertainment.
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