Written by Spielberg and Tony Kushner. This is also John Williams’ final score.
I hope this movie wraps in on itself and the wunderkind filmmaker caps his career by making a thinly veiled autobiography called “The Spielbergs”, and the recursive spiral continues for another twenty hours.
A former-student/cinematographer/friend/colleague of mine recently saw this film at the Toronto film festival. Here are his impressions:
This sounds like my cup of tea.
Infamy is bad, right?
Heh, yeah, I think he meant the last shot is great/memorable.
This movie is quite wonderful! A subtle, personal scrapbook of memories framed as a family/marriage story but it wrestles with themes of the power and pull of Art on the artist and the audience. And, yeah, the last shot is terrific.
It’s pretty common to see directors starting out with a small, intimate, personal film that launches their career and leads to big budget features. So it’s neat that Spielberg reversed that traditional path and instead arrived at this kind of film very late in his career and got to tell it on such a lavish scale. Tony Kushner said that Spielberg would have made the film sooner but he needed his parents to die first and they lived to be 97 and 103!
I’m going out on a limb here, but I think this Spielberg guy might be one of the all-time great storytellers. I came out of this film feeling grateful for his body of work and that I was born at the right time to enjoy his movies my whole life.
Just saw this for a second time. Loved it all over again. I’m surprised it’s so quiet in here!
It’s playing near me, but in very weird time slots, like 11am only at one theater, 10am and Noon at another theater, etc.
To me it feels like a streaming movie and not requiring a big screen. Perhaps discussion will pick up once we can watch it at home?
EDIT: Ah, its already on streaming to rent? Hmm… Guess the interest in it just isn’t high enough for most people. I’m also a bit weary, since an autobiographical film in the post WW era doesn’t seem all that gripping and perhaps a bit self indulgent?
Right now it is a $20 rental vs $3 for Top Gun Maverick. It doesn’t feel like a movie that needs a big screen. Right now my movie/TV series backlog is almost as long as my game backlog.
Because it’s Spielberg i’ll pay $5 instead of waiting for it to be free on some streaming service but that’s my limit.
It’s playing near us, but dubbed into Spanish. Guess I’ll be waiting for streaming.
Based on what little I know about it, I can heartily recommend two other movies with similar themes - Barry Levinson’s Avalon and Paul Mazursky’s Next Stop, Greenwich Village (up on Youtube)
Isn’t Kenneth Branaghs Belfast also in the same vein?
I was referring specifically to the Jewish/American experience. So in that sense, no :)
ah… Right :)
I was the only patron at a matinee showing today, and I would 100% recommend seeing this in the theater. Beautifully shot - and seeing it on the big screen definitely enhanced the experience.
A very big small film that touches on the demons that haunt everyone in the heart - even the bully that he hates. Basically revisiting his past, with an empathy for everyone involved in his life he couldn’t muster at the time.
French critics really loved this movie.
Someone let me me know if they don’t like this so we can sneak off to another thread somewhere and commiserate.
Did nothing for me. Just another film proving how much Hollywood loves Hollywood. Well made and well shot and well acted but I forgot I even saw this it was just so blah. Meh.
I loved this, it became my third or fourth favorite Spielberg film. Like Empire of the Sun (which is my favorite), having a great dramatic writer on the script helps Spielberg make the most of his gift for visual storytelling.