“Spielberg”– Movie Review

This week at The 55th New York Film Festival, I caught the World Premiere of the new documentary, “Spielberg”.

Synopsis

A documentary that analyzes how the legendary director’s personal life influenced his professional work. 

Story

As a child, Steven Spielberg was something of a loner.  Growing up in Arizona, he didn’t have many friends.  He did, however, have an astounding ability to internalize exactly what made a good movie from the standpoint of visual storytelling as well as the ability to execute that that in the films he would make in his youth.  Exactly how he figured out how to do this isn’t clear – it can only be explained that it is simply a part of what makes the man a genius filmmaker.  While these movies might look primitive on the surface, considering that a boy who was yet to take his first filmmaking class figured out how to simulate special effects is something of a marvel. 

Spielberg grew up with two sisters, who wound up appearing in some of his childhood films, albeit not always voluntarily.  What he tried to do in his movies then was not only to scare his sisters but also scare himself as well; he grew up feeling always afraid as a kid as he was extensively bullied in school.  Even the filmmaker admits that he never went into therapy precisely because filmmaking was his therapy – he worked out all of his personal demons by making a movie about them.  This explains why he would multitask, editing one film while reading a script for his next. 

In the end, Spielberg remains completely unapologetic about the brazen sentimentality in his films.  If the critics say his movies lack certain artistic qualities and that his work is not intellectual enough, let them.  All he cares about is telling a great story in a compelling fashion.  As a teenager, Spielberg saw “Lawrence Of Arabia” in a theater where it was shown in 70mm; he felt that the film was so majestic, he should abandon his dream of becoming a filmmaker because he would never be able to do anything as good as – much less better than – that movie.  But subsequent viewings of the film turned him around – the motion picture became his greatest inspiration.   

Review

At two and a half hours in length, “Spielberg” is nearly twice as long as most documentaries.  This might be explained by the fact that its subject has a rather long career with an extensive body of work and that he has also had a significant impact on our popular culture internationally, but especially in America.  That might explain it, but it’s no justification.  In terms of informational nutrition, this documentary is filled with nothing but empty calories because there’s not much new or revelatory information in its content; while the director himself is worthy of a documentary, the documentary is not worthy of its length.   

It is your typical documentary, filled with talking heads (including Spielberg himself as well as the cast and crew who’ve worked with him over the years), padded with clips from his films and occasional excerpts from home movies.  If you are a casual movie fan or a casual fan of Spielberg, you might find some of the information interesting but if you have read or seen interviews of him over the years, there’s nothing new here.  On the other hand, only a hardcore Spielberg aficionado or movie buff, then you might find the length less objectionable because it apparently is attempting a deep dive. 

One thing that’s somewhat puzzling about this documentary is the omission of the fact that Spielberg had Jerry Lewis as a filmmaking teacher at The University of Southern California.  Why was Jerry Lewis not interviewed for this film?  Was he asked and he declined?  If so, that would have been interesting to include in the story.  Was he never asked in the first place?  Why was Spielberg not asked about Jerry Lewis in the final form of this documentary?  This was a reasonably well-known fact (among some of the others in the motion picture) and sadly, its absence is the only thing remarkable about this documentary.