The Black ET

Rating: Null/10 (19 October 2007)

Spielberg's quest to be taken seriously has taken him many places. What's surprising, though, is that he's never made a film about Vietnam. While documenting the fears, hopes, and joys of Baby Boomers, Spielberg has overlooked one of the shaping experiences of his generation.
This avoidance, I suspect, is due to two reasons. The first, is simply discomfort. Spielberg's a conservative filmmaker. His films reinforce a familiar status quo: American common sense in the form of a decent, white, suburban middle class. When he has dealt with serious issues, Spielberg has ALWAYS looked to the past. Racism in "Amistad", racism and sexism in "The Color Purple", anti-semitism and genocide in "Schindler's List", war in "Saving Private Ryan" and "Empire of the Sun" (he's visited WW2 seven times throughout his filmography). He can't even tackle modern terrorism (Munich) without going back 3 decades.
On the other hand, the contemporary world, for Spielberg, seems not to be threatened by such serious social and political issues but by imaginary beasts: aliens, giant sharks, resurrected dinosaurs etc. While he's critical of certain aspects of contemporary life (anonymous scientists and military officials who want to take our aliens away, self-serving civic leaders who want to keep our beaches open, showmen who cut corners on theme-park safety), there's little sense of history or place in these films. The legacies of slavery and the Holocaust are absent. The contemporary world, according to Spielberg, is a flat landscape of suburban tracts, amusement parks, and seaside resorts. In Spielberg's contemporary films, good triumphs, order is restored, families are united, and the malls open on time. Vietnam is too unwieldy to exist within this orderly and traditional world. A world devoid of US militarism, third world poverty or capitalism. Spielbergland is noble. All the human horrors exist in the past.
All artists digest and absorb. Spielberg's second reason for not visiting Vietnam is simply that he has a very narrow view of the world. His world view was shaped by countless hours sitting in his bedroom, absorbing John Wayne films, magazines, toys, comic books, cartoons and TV serials. They're the building blocks of how he sees the word. Most artists mature as they get older. They throw away the old blocks and develop more complex building blocks. But like an autistic man with the mind of a child, a part of Spielberg is stuck in ten year old mode. He's still a kid in the 50's, locked in his tiny suburban bedroom, oblivious to the world around him.
As such, the entry way into most of his project is always from the point of view of a child. "Saving Private Ryan" isn't a war movie, it's Spielberg playing with toy soldiers, "Empire of the" Sun isn't a war drama, it's horror seen (or remembered) through the eyes of a boy. Same story for "AI", and "Catch Me If You Can". He even turns Tom Hanks' character in "The Terminal", into an awkward, inarticulate, man boy.
This innocence and childlike fear is fine for some projects, but it often ruins his serious ones. In "Amistad" the child's view, and Spielberg's entryway into the project, are the eyes of Cinque.
Cinque is a black ET, plucked from his family and thrust into an alien world. He just wants to go home. Spielberg handles Cinque effortlessly well, the problem is how he handles the adults around him. With ET, Spielberg kept the adults at a distance. They were faceless, out of focus, their faces not shown. Throughout his filmography, parents and adults are likewise often divorced, distant or unapproachable. He doesn't understand them, so he throws them away.
But with Amistad, the story rests not solely on the shoulder's of ET (Cinque) but on the shoulders of adults. The result is the usual "serious" Spielberg movie. Crigne worthy drama peppered with moments of gleefull Spielberg horror.
6/10- While Spielberg's earlier "Color Purple" felt like a cynical attempt to cash in on the success of the (superior) Roots TV series and the rising popularity of black literature, Amistad has far nobler intentions. Still though, it's plagued by bland direction, unimaginative scripting, poor dialogue, jarring cinematography and a talky ending. It's a watered down version of "Goodbye Uncle Tom", worth viewing only for 2 brilliant sequences and a well paced first 30 minutes.