Stuck in Mellowville

Rating: Null/10 (22 June 2004)

Spoilers herein.
If you are an American filmmaker, you live a life registered in American storytelling. And that registration falls into one of two camps, each of which defined their own type of American novel.
One camp was invented by Melville. His notion of the world was rooted in the Bible-as- allegory. He set out to create literature - a uniquely American literature - that had broad, complex sweeps of allegory. It was only incidentally about people and always steeped in some great machine that represented the world. In `Moby-Dick' that world was the world of whaling and whalers.
The tapestry may be complex, but the allegory is clear and distinct. The author takes this allegory very seriously and expects the reader to as well.
The other great stream of America storytelling is from Mark Twain. He tells two stories: the story itself and a story about the story. There are always two narrative levels. This is also uniquely American, especially the nature of humor in the metanarrative. It is immediately based on Austen though the particular notion has roots in Cervantes and Shakespeare. This `twoness' is why Twain chose his name. Twain's aura was of the same colors that would revolutionize the world of introspection with Freud and Darwin.
Why do I mention this? Because nearly all worthwhile films these days are in the `Twain` tradition of storytelling and has been since the `new wave' of the sixties. This `American' notion has spun all sorts of cool varieties, which I am surveying in a book under the rubric of `folding.'
Its just the way it is: to be considered a serious filmmaker, you have to innovate, to invent or twist some way of folding or introspection or reflection. Spielberg is a simple man who makes simple films, films that are to rest of the film world as product wrappers are to art.
Having made enough money, he's been trying to make `important' films so that some day he just might be remembered as someone not unintelligent and unaware of film ideas. He's tried on a few suits, from Kubrick's folding to historical reflections. In each case they seem merely copied and he knows it.
Some years back he tried a real new wave film: `Close Encounters' and even featured Truffaut as the one who `spoke the language.' A couple years ago with Hanks he tried the old folding game of a story about a guy who fabricates stories. Flat. Old shoes.
Here he tries a Melville, a serious, straight ahead allegory. Presumably he thought his audience would be ready for a complex tone poem about what it might mean to be on the threshold of America. The model of the world in this case is the terminal. All sorts of little symbolic episodes are woven in, and one big one: the importance of getting a `real' image, a signature, to go with a false image (a photograph). This is mirrored by his having to get a stamp himself. The very contrast that this blunt agenda of collecting autographs has with the ad hoc nature of the Jazz involved is stark allegory - as stark as the stasis of waiting in a place that everyone else passes through.
Well, as allegory for the masses, it works I suppose. But as film, well it is just another copy.
Tom Hanks gets to do Chaplin's Trampwalk.
Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.