Mission Imposspielberg, Vol 3: Grails and Planes

Having made film after film of capers, adventures and blockbusters for kids, Spielberg’s output took a more serious turn in the mid 80s.  Whether an effort to be taken more seriously as a filmmaker or just to try his hand at something a little different (hell, Scorsese made a musical in the late 70s), the results are not the sort of films that you turn to for something reliable on a Saturday night, but the quality remains high.

His 1985 Alice Walker adaptation The Colour Purple marked a departure from anything he’d done before.  A mostly very serious film with some essential flashes of levity, this covers 30 years in the life of the abused and downtrodden Celie Johnson (Whoopi Goldberg and Desreta Jackson), from her forced marriage to ‘Mister’ Albert (a monstrous but slightly comical Danny Glover), the forging of her friendships, and her eventual emancipation.  Covering such a long period, it’s an oddly meandering film with a loose narrative structure, but it features some wonderful emotional payoffs.  The moment where Oprah Winfrey’s defeated, almost catatonic Sofia breaks her fugue state and lays down some home truths is nothing short of beautiful, and if Celie’s family reunion fails to bring a lump to your throat, I would recommend checking your pulse.

Grown up Spielberg is still fun and recognisably Spielberg, with some wonderful grace notes, his trademark visual flair used where appropriate, and an uplifting very deserved happy ending.  One or two things didn’t set well with me: despite his moment of generosity, I didn’t think that Albert had earned enough sympathy for redemption, but the film stops short of demonising him; and Quincy Jones’ score has not aged well.  In fact, there are times in the film where it borders on twee and threatens to step on the toes of the brilliant drama.

Keeping things literary and serious, Spielberg went for J.G Ballard adaptation Empire Of The Sun.  Probably the second best film of the 80s to feature the word ‘Empire’ in the title, it’s a brilliant movie, often meandering and without a traditional cause-and-effect plot.  It’s typical Spielberg fare (fractured family unit, centred around a child character coming of age/losing innocence, strong sense of awe and amazement throughout), despite the heavy subject matter.

A story about a boy (Jim – a brilliant, 13-year-old Christian Bale) who is separated from his parents as Japan invades China, and follows his experiences to the end of WW2.  Obsessed with aviation, he admires the Japanese fighter pilots despite being the enemy, and in a heartbreaking climactic scene, shows how a child’s naivety can build friendships on opposing sides.  This is classic Spielberg, showing a more serious side of his work which was not widely acknowledged until Schindler’s List 6 years later.  Empire has some truly spectacular moments, on par with anything he’s done before or since; the scene where Jim is separated from his parents is brilliantly orchestrated chaos, and the sequence where Jim watches the U.S. bombing of the Japanese airbase from the roof of a half-destroyed building is nothing short of spectacular.

Opting to return to familiar territory next with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Spielberg brought his most popular character back for (what we hoped was) one last adventure.  After seeing Temple Of Doom falling a little short of the high standards set by Raiders, the ante is well and truly upped for Indy’s third film. Again using a well-known religious artefact as a Macguffin, the juggernaut plot takes in one classic set piece after another.  A young Indy intro gives us some pleasing insight into the events that made him the character we know, as well as establish his relationship with Henry Jones Sr. (Sean Connery).  Spielberg is clearly relishing putting Indy in all kinds of peril as snakes, a lion, a rhino, and grave robbing goons all have a go at him but we see the origins of the whip, the phobia, and the hat in the process.  After a brief stop for exposition courtesy of the villainous Julian Glover (kind of a weak link in the film, but that’s nitpicking on my part) we are then treated to the Venice catacombs (with rats starring in the obligatory disgusting animal sequence) and boat chase, Austrian castle and motorbike escape, the airship escape, the German tank fight (probably my favourite part of the film) before the final holy grail sequence.  Thanks to Monty Python, anything that now involves the holy grail will do well to avoid any unwanted humour, and the final sequence with the 900 year-old knight and skirts very close to being silly, but Spielberg manages to keep the tone just right and the unpleasant death of Glover’s Walter Donovan is up there with Raiders’ melting Nazis.

Spielberg manages to create a really messed up family unit (Indy, his dad, the buffoonish Sallah, and the childlike Brody) and provides a much better female character than he did in Temple with Alison Doody’s treacherous Elsa.  It’s better than the predecessor, never going to live up to Raiders but The Last Crusade is still cracking entertainment, and really should have lived up to it’s name.

I don’t remember having seen Always before.  Despite being a lifelong Spielberg fan, it’s just not about anything I’m interested in.  A story about a pilot (Richard Dreyfuss) who dies fighting a forest fire, and then pretty much stalks his girlfriend (Holly Hunter) from beyond the grave, it always (see what I did there?) struck me as saccharine and schmaltzy.  And I was kind of right.

Dreyfuss is brilliant in Always, as he frequently is.  He brings an everyman humanity and sense of humour to a part that would maybe seemed better suited to Richard Gere or Kevin Costner at the time.  Dreyfuss nails it: the scene where, as a ghost, he professes his undying love to an unhearing Hunter’s is earnest and powerful because of him.  Hunter is also great, as she normally is, in a role that makes her at once love interest and independent, highly competent pilot.  Also great is John Goodman, whose comic relief makes the film much better and less twee than it could have been.

That said, Always is not a great film.  A remake of 1943 Victor Fleming film A Guy Named Joe, it tells a tale of a man who has to let go of his past in order for his soul to settle.  In this respect, it’s almost an anti-love story. A few of his nifty trademark gracenotes aside, there’s not a massive amount of his visual flair at work here and few truly memorable scenes.  The whole thing seems to have been shot in various degrees of soft focus, too.

So maybe this is just Spielberg’s romantic side coming out to play for a while; maybe it’s just his tribute to a more innocent time. Ultimately though, the 80s, arguably the decade that was kindest to his career, both started and ended on relative low points for him.  But Spielberg at a low point is easily the match for most directors on their best day.  Except for 1941. Never 1941.