When good films go bad

The movie "Spider" this this to me. I was really looking forward to watching it, and I was really engaged with the first half of the film--this strange, nearly mute creature reacting with a harsh world. and i commented to my girlfriend about how refreshing it was to watch a film like this that didn't resort to backstory and flashbacks because they felt this overarching need to EXPLAIN why he's the way he is.

Then it happens. The cheesy flashbacks, the murdered mother, the "wild strawberries" rip-off where the grown man is watching his childhood--completely ruined the movie for me.

"julian donkey-boy" did kind of a similar thing with the whole sister getting pregnant stuff, but what i'm glad it DIDN'T do is resort to cheesy flashbacks about the mother who died & is seemingly responsible for the breakdown of the family.

"It sounds like typical Spielberg goo -- for better and for worse -- and when you're watching the film it feels that way. But the minute you start thinking about it, it's at least as grim as any other future in Kubrick's work. Humankind's final gasp belongs to a fucked-up boy robot with an Oedipus complex who's in bed with his adopted mother and who finally becomes a real boy at the very moment that he seemingly autodestructs -- assuming he vanishes along with her, though if he survives her, it could only be to look back in perpetual longing at their one day together. Real boy or dead robot? Whatever he is, his apotheosis with mommy seems to exhaust his reason for existing. As Richard Pryor once described the death of his father while having sex, "He came and went at the same time." Like the death of 2001's HAL, which might be regarded as David's grandfather, it's the film's most sentimental moment, yet it's questionable whether it involves any real people at all.

white even voted for it in the sight and sound poll!

I'm hard-pressed to think of anything, because if a film goes wrong, I'm far less likely to consider the first part good anymore. I guess In the Bedroom is a recent example of something that I was moderately going along with until the last 30 minutes.

That review does much to illuminate this "dialectic."

Rosenbaum also more or less sums what it is about the ending I cannot get past:

"The testimonials to humanity given by the future beings are a prime example of Spielberg's dishonesty working hand in hand with his fluidity as a storyteller. Their expression of admiration and even envy for the "genius" of humans leads them to conclude, "Human beings must be the key of existence." This sentiment runs counter to the view of humanity expressed by the remainder of the movie..."

With Duel, Spielberg showed the power of ambiguity and insecurity, concepts which he has rarely allowed in his movies since.

Spielberg just can't leave people (or robots) in the lurch: their children emerge from comas, they evade inevitable genocide, their bizarre experiences with U.F.O.s are verified, they are even saved from eviction by little mechanical alien handymen.

...so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that he couldn't leave David sitting at the bottom of the sea, immersed in his dreams and delusions. Still, the conclusion seems so poor, so trite and manipulative as to be insulting. It is as if Spielberg tries to do for the audience what the aliens try to do for David, fulfilling every senseless desire - emotions as programmed response - then hailing the resultant insipid obsessions. There is a profound depth of cynicism behind this desire to "keep me safe" as a viewer, piling artifice on top of artifice (this time in the form of an essentially fake Monica) then declaring in a hackneyed tone that the sum of all these misconceptions and illusions is reality.

It is as if Spielberg tries to do for the audience what the aliens try to do for David, fulfilling every senseless desire - emotions as programmed response - then hailing the resultant insipid obsessions.

you could read the ending as this, sure, and it is to some extent, but what makes it brilliant is that the dissonance inherent in the set up makes it also a commentary on that kind of ending, it's a sentimental ending ABOUT sentimental endings, our need for them, their spiritual necessity and impossibility in real life.

Not nearly as eloquent as McKay's above, I'm sad to say.

That Rosenbaum really loved this film hit me very hard at the time. He was my mentor, my beacon -- and then this.

Fight Club

Dark City

Those reviews were written years ago, so my English might be a bit rough and my views might've changed a bit (I may have misinterpreted Fight Club's final scene), but the main points still hold.

in other words, spielberg trying to justify the rest of his manipulative, audience-pleasing dribble he calls films.

i sure has hell don't need a sentimental ending. i need a director to challenge me & surprise me, and especially to not cave in & just give me what i want. it's like spielberg can't exist unless he pleases everyone, and it's the sheer reason why he'll never transcend beyond the point of entertainer into artist. i don't even know why he bothers trying.

But, at the same time, I'm not out to put limits on what artists can and cannot express. Leo McCarey makes a damned good case for sentimentality as an artistic quality.

Where?