A Master Without a Masterpiece... Again

Rating: 7/10 (21 July 2005)

Spielberg is a master filmmaker, when he wants to. He often wanted to, in "The War of the Worlds". I will not dwell into that, but he conveys the more than human grandiosity, the monstrosity of the war and the sense of fear and helplessness.
But he's a prisoner of his own let's-please-the-American-audience device.
The happy ending is terrible. Just about everybody agrees on that. Some one told me the Martians spared Boston because they're Red Sox fans. In both the novel and the aura of the film, it was clear that those who survived were the ones who moved. Well, there is one block in Boston where nothing happened and Granma had time for putting her nice make-up on in the midst of chaos. And the son not only survives a certain blast, but goes back to momma unharmed.
What is not clear for all American audiences, I think, is the absurdity and the morals of the Spielberg film. First, it is a freaking "family history" in the midst of war, just like in "Saving Private Ryan". Can't wars be personal and collective for once? What we see is a family fighting exclusively for themselves, and let the other humans by. I hardly sensed a moment of human solidarity from the Cruise character towards their fellow Americans. Yet he is supposed to be heroic.
There is also a lack of common sense. If mobility equals survival opportunity, then a moving car is the most valuable, coveted and desired commodity. You have to be both selfish and stupid to not carry several people like yourself with whom you can forge a survival alliance. But in the movie, most of the people who flee move like zombies, letting the (supposedly)legitimate owner of a car pass by. Hours pass before the car is taken for what it's supposedly worth. Is the value of private property in America, so important that it would be sanctified even in those moments? (And I wonder, do all kids who attend rock concerts in the US travel in their own car? Doesn't anyone somehow force fellow music lovers to give them a ride?) Finally, there is this ridiculous thing about child rearing. The girls screams, is claustrophobic; the boy is plain obnoxious. And the freaking blue-helmet father is unbelievably incapable of slapping them, showing some authority, even if to save their lives, lest some well-thinker say "Spielberg condones child beating".
You can be a master filmmaker and yet make films that are caged in a non-obvious, but quite distinguishable, ideological trap. That is why Spielberg, a master of cinema, has never, in my opinion, made a true masterpiece