Most people know that this film was originally the brain child of Stanley Kubrick whose directorial style is worlds apart from Steven Spielburg.
This material really required a full fledged film director. The problem is that Spielburg doesn't direct films. He directs spectacles that are filled with gimmicks designed to evoke specific responses from the audience. This film tries desperately not to follow suit, but Spielburg clubbed into a sentimental happy ending in the last 20 minutes thus totally invalidating the over all story. His total lack of subtlety is also quite appalling. If the audience wasn't sure whether or not to feel a certain way, the narration was there to helpfully tell us exactly how we were meant to feel: Sad, angry, laughing, warm and fuzzy and seized with the urge to hug a little child...etc.
Spielburg doesn't trust his audience. That is why he seems to find it necessary to force them to accept his contrived happy endings which are so unbelievably sugary one feels the need to go get an insulin shot after seeing the film.
The fact that people actually think this ringmaster of pyrotechnical sentimentality is a brilliant film maker frankly bothers me because it shows yet again how Hollywood marketing has affected the expectations of people.
This wouldn't bother me SO much were it not for the fact that had this film been handled by Kubrick, it would have been a brilliant work of art instead of a passable film that should have ended twenty minutes before it's idiotic ending. I found the ending frankly insulting to my aesthetic sense.
This material really required a full fledged film director. The problem is that Spielburg doesn't direct films. He directs spectacles that are filled with gimmicks designed to evoke specific responses from the audience. This film tries desperately not to follow suit, but Spielburg clubbed into a sentimental happy ending in the last 20 minutes thus totally invalidating the over all story. His total lack of subtlety is also quite appalling. If the audience wasn't sure whether or not to feel a certain way, the narration was there to helpfully tell us exactly how we were meant to feel: Sad, angry, laughing, warm and fuzzy and seized with the urge to hug a little child...etc.
Spielburg doesn't trust his audience. That is why he seems to find it necessary to force them to accept his contrived happy endings which are so unbelievably sugary one feels the need to go get an insulin shot after seeing the film.
The fact that people actually think this ringmaster of pyrotechnical sentimentality is a brilliant film maker frankly bothers me because it shows yet again how Hollywood marketing has affected the expectations of people.
This wouldn't bother me SO much were it not for the fact that had this film been handled by Kubrick, it would have been a brilliant work of art instead of a passable film that should have ended twenty minutes before it's idiotic ending. I found the ending frankly insulting to my aesthetic sense.