Essays

I previously wrote about how Andrei Tarkovsky’s “Mirror” is a example ripe for studying audience response to film, because it is so explicitly about the audience. It is called “Mirror,” and in turn is intended to reflect the viewer’s life back at him. However, Tarkovsky’s ability to inspire a multitude of responses extends beyond “Mirror,” because it is something inherent to his cinematic style; his goal is to capture something real, some “actual fact,” across cinematic time, and to do this many (or most) narrative elements in his films remain without comment, starkly contrasting with the consistent hand-holding natural to, and even expected of, modern Hollywood filmmakers. As such, I would like to use my own response to the film, across the three times and four years that I have seen it, to demonstrate this principle, and how a film can morph and change in the mind of the audience, while still remaining solid, unchanging, and true itself.

November 2021

“No single individual can have enough hatred or love to spread over all mankind,” says the Writer as he constructs his own personal Crown of Thorns, mocking the symbol which itself was originally intended to mock the very individual the Writer is forgetting. 

“When a man is born, he is soft and pliable. When he dies, he is strong and hard. When a tree grows, it is soft and pliable. But when it’s dry and hard, it dies,” says the Stalker. I think of Jadis in the Magician’s Nephew, about whom Aslan says: “Length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery and already she begins to know it. All get what they want; they do not always like it.” And in the Problem of Pain, Lewis nearly repeats himself: “I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside.” 

That’s the scariest thing about STALKER. The Room is not a wishing room, it’s a test of your very soul. So when the camera, when you, are sitting inside the Room, it doesn’t matter what your conscious desires are, it matters who you really are. So no matter how much I tell myself that I don’t want to be a Rebel, there’s that seed of doubt that says deep down I still am. The Writer himself says, “A man writes because he is tormented, because he doubts… And if I know for sure that I’m a genius? Why write then?” Which kind of tells me that this Doubt is necessary in order to leave the Rebellion, to give up self-interest and accept the man whose love was, in fact, spread over all mankind. 

And I think you find that hope in the final scene with the daughter moving the cups. The scene is rather confounding, but my first instinct is to put it in the context of Matthew 17: “If you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move.” Which makes sense in juxtaposition with the themes of doubt.  

All very scattered thoughts and preliminary reactions, but STALKER, just like MIRROR, left me in such a self reflective state, because of both Tarkovsky’s beautiful poetic images and profound depth of ideas. And again, it’s just scratching the surface but both films made me want to curl up in a ball and cry, more so than anything because of how much I DIDN’T understand them. It’s a film to digest over a lifetime.

June 2022

I always feel like I have to physically lie down after watching one of Andrei Tarkovsky’s movies. 

The experience is like swimming to the bottom of the ocean and feeling the weight of the water above you. With Stalker I feel the pull to swim deeper and as I do it feels actually dangerous. I know this might seem pretentious but watching Stalker is unlike most movies in that it feels like you are going on an actual adventure, that you are in just as much if not more danger than the characters that are captured on film. It is one of the most wholly REAL things I have experienced outside of REAL life.

Part of this is just the way Tarkovsky captures the scenario and environment. We are present for every single step taken by the protagonists, walking alongside them. And the content of the shots frequently brings me to tears… “Monkey” riding on her father’s shoulders is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.

Previously a lot of what I noted aligned with the Writer’s sentiments. I feared (fear?) what my heart is truly aligned with, and that this is what makes the Room a terrifying thing. What I did not note is that the Writer uses this as an excuse to reject the hope offered by the Room, and the subsequent despair that this causes the Stalker. I felt the supernatural nature of the Zone along with the Stalker, in a very literal sense, so I became more skeptical about the Writer’s skepticism. It felt like—and I don’t think this is an exaggeration—having God’s hand on my shoulder.

I love how the final scene brings so many pieces into place—“Burning embers of desire” in the final poem reflects back to/connects the Professor’s fire and the nature of the room; the shaking of the table and moving of the glass recalls one of the opening shots of the bedside table shaking from the train, which I think asks the question if this movement can be rationally explained; and then Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” competes with the rattling train, finalizing the Stalker’s statement about how music, without words or tangible connection to our reality, can and will touch our souls. But this is merely putting into words what can only be felt by watching the film, just how describing “Ode to Joy” to someone who’s never heard it doesn’t do anybody any good. 

I said this at the end of my last watch, and I think I will end up saying it again: This is a film to digest over a lifetime.

July 2024

“You certainly are lucky. Now you’ll live to be a hundred!”

“Why not forever?”

Stalker remains a great weight but, as all great movies must, has morphed and changed to be so in a different way. I wanted to watch it again tonight for technical reasons, as prep for a shoot I have tomorrow, so I felt a bit caught between analyzing + assessing it and allowing it to work emotionally. In turn, it was not as physically visceral as I remember it being last time I watched it, yet it still retains all of its heaviness. I noticed how much its power comes from holding you in place for extended periods of time by simply not moving the camera – pans are incredibly rare, and most camera moves are slow dolly ins and outs. The trademark “Tarkovsky floating” actually needs to be imperceptible in order to work, and this also reveals that he is one of the best in history at utilizing motion on the Z-axis. Maybe throw Wes Anderson in there as an honorable mention. Additionally, because the camera is so static, there are times when action will happen off screen that we only hear in sound effects, which is equally rattling – so much of what makes it frightening is the implication of traps and monsters, and then subsequently the cumulative weight of the journey. (Another thing worth noting is the sheer percentage of runtime that I can recall instantly. Part of that is the long average shot length, but there is hardly an image that isn’t cemented in memory.)

Thematically, I never really focused before on how much Stalker calls himself a “louse” and how low he truly is – he cannot do the task without giving up everything. His wife says early on “fine, don’t care about your own self, but at least try and take care of us.” His role requires complete and utter sacrifice. I read something earlier today about how Dostoevsky went through so much misery (death of a child, gulag, gambling) and this is the reason why he could see life so clearly, why his perception of reality was so truthful. Stalker can’t understand why Professor and Writer don’t want happiness, but in the end it’s because they’re elites, it’s because they don’t suffer, because they’re aware how strong their material desires are. Stalker can only see worth in the Zone because he doesn’t have anything else, because he is able to overlook and deny materialism. It’s hard to stress how radical this is in the film landscape – and how biblical it is.

“Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” ‭‭Luke‬ ‭15‬:‭7‬ ‭

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew‬ ‭5‬:‭3‬ ‭‬‬

“For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.” ‭‭Luke‬ ‭19‬:‭10‬ ‭‬‬

“Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will keep it.” ‭‭Luke‬ ‭17‬:‭33‬

“But where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Romans 5:20-21

Etc etc etc. 

“So it lets the good ones pass and kills the bad ones?” Writer says about the Zone, to which Stalker responds, “I don’t know. I think it lets those pass who have lost all hope. Not good or bad, but wretched people.” I think we generally like to think that good people are the ones we prop up – our humanism says that if you’re poor you are good, if you have the right worldview and politics you are good, if you do the right things you are good. But “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.” ‭‭Romans‬ ‭3‬:‭10‬-‭12‬. This also stands in contradiction to modern self-help theology: “Sin” is not just the bad things you do, the tiny infractions against the law – “sin” is who you are down to your core, utter wretchedness, and thus only those who are wretched enough to see it can be saved from it. 

The only thing I can do is pray that my heart will continue to change, that I can believe in my own wretchedness, and that my desires will be further turned to the good.

Looking back on these responses, I find it funny that I was self-aware enough in the moment to point out, each time, that I was going to do what I am doing now – digesting it across a lifetime and finding something new out of it each time. In a great film such as Stalker, it is not so much that the audience member is misreading it the first time and then correctly reading it the second time, but instead reading one surface of it the first time, and then finding another surface the second, and hopefully, by the third, fourth, fifth, and continual viewings, digging under the surface and into the infinite which the film has to offer. Again, this is not possible with every film. Most films are built to be read “correctly”, in which case it is true that the only thing a second viewing would be good for is a correcting of an incorrect misunderstanding, or otherwise for a pleasant, relaxing, and familiar noise. (An essay could be written on the returning to these types of film and how it is similar to the ritual of television.) Through the lens of a response across time, Stalker is clearly a different beast, the type of film that, as should be the case more often, is an infinite ocean to swim in.

The thesis of the seventh entry of Tom Cruise’s long running Mission: Impossible series can essentially be boiled down to: “A.I. is the Antichrist fr”

…which is such a hilariously absurd and epic literal premise that it leads to so many great bits. Making the new female character “Grace” is as obvious and awesome as naming the last one “Ilsa” just because they went to Casablanca. The literal key to the thing being a Cross is just cool and tips you off from the start where we’re going: Gabriel is called a “dark messiah” who wants to save the whole world by bringing death to everyone on it, and then is betrayed by his Judas in the Pom Klementieff character. It will be interesting to see where they take this idea in Part 2. (In my opinion, this works much better as a Part 1 than the earlier 2023 release Across the Spider-Verse did.)

It also strongly recalls That Hideous Strength, the third entry in C.S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy. In both stories, there are two secret organizations, one of which is run by an evil, unseen force that threatens to redefine the concept of good and evil and convenes with science to do so. “The Entity” is the rogue Oyeresu that Gabriel sublimates himself to; like the devil Oyarsa, it is a cold force that encourages “objectivity” but only serves to confuse and corrupt, to make right and wrong increasingly difficult to discern. 

Ethan Hunt is a figure alike to Ransom, as he guides Grace to a “choice” to join the IMF as Ransom guides Jane to become a Christian – even the language used in Dead Reckoning is suspiciously Christian: “At one time or another, each of us was in a similar situation to yours. And each of us was offered the choice. To come with us. And be a ghost.” In other words, to die, to let your past self fall away. When Grace asks when she will get this old life back, they tell her “What life?” What part of your old life was worth holding on to? Earlier the Cary Elwes character says, “What the hell kind of outfit gets to choose what orders to accept?” which sounds exactly like something Lewis would write a character like that to say lol. Comrade Yui notes in his review that it is only a choice like this that the Entity cannot predict – only a significant character change such as one Grace undergoes can the Enemy who preys on the death of the Good be defeated by; in other words, they must be saved by Grace.

Aside from plot similarities, like Lewis’s writing in the Space Trilogy, Dead Reckoning uses its genre elements to highlight the ills of our modern world, how easily we commune with devils without thinking and how important retaining “good” is regardless of the outcome; it has that uncanny ability, like Lewis had, to get to the heart of an issue and state it plainly and clearly without being didactic or exasperating. M:I’s right and wrong is not empty do-gooder humanism, but a real battle for the lives (read: souls) of all those involved. Or maybe the comparison is only because I would love to see Part 2 end with a bear mauling Gabriel.

Either way, this is not new ground for the Mission: Impossible series – this is the direction that McQuarrie and Cruise have been moving in ever since the former took directing control of the franchise. The sixth entry, Fallout, is a very morally conscious film, and is constructed as a series of tests for Cruise’s Hunt where he must choose between saving one life or risk compromising the mission. Hunt, then, essentially becomes a mythic figure, a man who can always make the right moral decision and still end up completing the mission and saving the world. This is a more complicated and more interesting type of story than the M:I films used to be, because it elevates them from the materialistic, exaggerated spy action genre in the line of Bond and Fast Furious to the genuine mythology making of Star Wars and Pirates of the Caribbean, while remaining set in a world recognizable as our own. 

As we move through life, we tend to put on different faces to solve different problems. You’re polite to the waiter even though he brought your fries out cold to uphold social norms, you suck up to your boss because you want a promotion, you act coldly to your friends for fear of rejection: we become different people because this is the best way to survive. This concept of multi-facedness, this common, tragic error of self-preservation at the deprivation of a self, is demonstrated and elaborated on in David Lynch’s modern classic, Mulholland Drive.

We follow Betty Elms, a young woman who moves to L.A. and experiences the dark side of Hollywood. The whole idea behind Hollywood is to pull in a group of people from across the globe and force them to compete to be one person; production companies look at hundreds of actresses and decide who is best for a single role. “It’s not a competition,” the director says, but the men behind the glass say otherwise. “This is the girl.” Hence, they take people auditioning for a part and flatten them into a single entity. The “role,” the “character,” becomes all-encompassing, and has more of an identity than any of the single actresses asking to play her. On top of individual actresses sublimating their identity to the part, these actresses must sublimate their identity to a competitive alter ego, a different being entirely who must win, consume, and destroy at all costs. “I wanted the lead part so bad… [that it drove me to misery and despair.]” Because the “character” is the only one with an identity, the actress must become the character in order to have any identity herself. And because the competition to be this character is so monstrous, the actress must do anything and everything in order to win this competition.

This is best seen in the two script reading scenes, where Betty reads the scene two entirely different ways. When with Rita, the scene at first seems real, like Betty is genuinely threatening her, before it turns playful and ridiculous. With the film producers, it at first seems fake, a mere audition that Betty is playing over-dramatic, before it turns frighteningly real when the male actor’s sexual aggression is happening right there in full reality. Betty drops her nice-girl one-dimensional sheen for the first time and submits to the advance, with the goal of winning the part, and, ironically, in doing so, becomes more interesting to us. Betty’s identity is split, sublimated to whatever the current situation calls for, however the words of the script can be shifted to the emotional context around it. She is an “actress” in a deeper sense of the word, where “acting” a part is the only thing she can do, where “acting” each scene as it’s asked is her only character trait. This lends double meaning to the director’s line, “Don’t play it for real until it gets real,” during the audition. It is not until it “gets real” that Betty is able to “play it for real,” meaning that it is not until then that she is allowed to have a real identity.

These layers of identity become so confused and cloudy that any “true” identity the individual actress once had is lost entirely. When it is revealed that Betty Elms is a dream being dreamt by another woman named Diane, all the ways Betty’s identity has been constructed become clear. My theory that Rita is the subject whom Diane enters the dream through slightly complicates matters. I’m almost positive that the Winkie’s Diner scene with the monster jump scare is a third dream level/world. Directly before and after it we see Rita go to sleep and wake up. This could signal that the monster lies within Rita; at the end, both Rita and the Monster’s association with the blue box could support this. I can’t get over how the dominant reading of the “reality” world is so much more dreamy and surreal and nonlinear than the “dream” world. It’s like reality is where the Monster truly exists, and only in the Dream it shows its face to people. Additionally, if you take the logic that every time Rita goes to sleep (which is a lot!) the following scene is another dream, she sleeps right before the first “This is the girl” scene. And when she wakes up, Rita says, “I thought sleeping would help. I thought it would help me remember who I am.” While she is sleeping is the first time that we see the name “Camilla Rhodes.”

So much of this is about who controls stories— Betty’s career is at the whims of the men behind the curtain, Club Silencio shows us the band doesn’t truly control the music, the meaning of Betty’s audition scene is controlled by those she’s doing it with, Rita’s entire reality is controlled by Betty and Betty’s entire reality is controlled by Diane. The entire conceit of Hollywood is choosing who gets to tell other people’s stories, and it’s only those who are the most self-obsessed that would believe they have the right/ability to do this. Being the one who’s going to make it above everyone else, who’s going to win the Jitterbug contest. Ultimately Diane, if she is the Dreamer, is the one who controls which story we’re seeing in the dream, and the person she chooses as our entry point is Rita/Camilla. You forget how the Dream really isn’t Betty’s story, she has equal screen time with Adam and Rita. Even as Dreamer she loses control and the whole thing becomes dark and painful. It can’t escape the Vice grip reality has.

When she arrives in L.A., Betty is playing the role of a wide-eyed innocent. This is the role, the mask that Diane has created from an amalgamation of her past experience and the collective experience of all new actresses–Betty is not just a dream, she is a collection of dreams, she is all of the hope and disappointment coming from the Dream Factory. But even once this truth is revealed and the layers of identity are sorted out, we see that Diane has actually lost her identity, too. Betty is a false creation of Diane’s, and Diane is a slave to the destruction and jealousy of the real world. My theory comes into play because Betty is also creating Rita, the girl she “randomly” finds in her aunt’s apartment, guiding her through her memory loss and shaping her identity around her; Betty is not the one living inside the dream but instead a black hole in the dream through whom everyone is filtered. Another reason Rita makes sense as the dreamer’s point of view is because we see her sleep several times throughout the beginning, and it is after this that the other major players of Adam, the monster, the Castigliane brothers, and the assassin are introduced. I think that Rita is dreaming up all of these situations, and then they are looping back and being re-realized into Diane’s dream, the one Rita is already a part of. This is consistent with Diane as well, where she dreams the old people at the airport and then they loop back to haunt her in her reality. And the Winkie’s diner scene, where the guy says that he saw the monster in a dream, and then the thing he needed to escape is manifested right in front of him. The dreams that you subjugate yourself to become your reality, the identity that you chose to put on is not unreal simply by calling it a mask.

In my life I like to think that I’m generally adept at seeing the nuance in situations and relationships. I don’t like to see the “narrativized” version of things, because we “narrativize” things in order to rationalize them, in order to give ourselves peace, not in order to see the truth. Even the “good” narratives are usually just bullshit be-your-best-you self-help nonsense, which is just as much a bullshit narrative built on flimsy evidence as blaming other people for all your problems. The “true” narrative is not narrativized. “Truth” is all the complexity of existence, and it’s not something that we as individuals can wrap our heads around, and that’s okay because most of the time it doesn’t have anything to do with you. (“Narrativizing” is of course at some level necessary, because of how complex the world is, but that is a slightly longer discussion.) “Narrativizing” things most of the time is just another way of writing a story that revolves around you, it is the epitome of self-centered thinking.

This is exactly what is happening in Mulholland Drive. First and foremost, this is what Diane is doing with Betty: She is attempting to create a “narrative” to make sense of her broken world, to cast the blame on other people and rationalize why she has become the selfish, jealous monster that she is. By dreaming Betty’s world, she is retreating into a “narrativized” version of her life. She is telling herself a story that has flattened the truth of reality. But furthermore, this is also what Hollywood does. The Dream Factory chews up real people’s stories and hopes and ambitions and simplifies and narrativizes them for mass entertainment consumption. It can’t tell the truth because it’s not allowed to be real– “don’t play it for real until it gets real” — Hollywood, a diseased and empty corpse, is the entity that gets to choose which actress gets to reinterpret another person’s story, and only those who are self-obsessed would believe they have the right or ability to do so, to make it above everyone else, to win the Jitterbug contest. And Rita herself doesn’t even get her name from the dreamer– she gets it from a movie poster. She gets it from Rita Hayworth. Her character is directly shaped by the noir, by Hollywood.

“C’mon, it’ll be just like in the movies. We’ll pretend to be someone else.”

 

The first time I saw “First Reformed” was my first semester of college. I didn’t care for it much then, because then I could scarcely understand what Schrader was doing with the character of Toller. I don’t know if I do now, but the fact that I “get it” more shows me how much I’ve grown and changed over the past 4 years, in discernment, in anxiety, in self awareness, in thinking and over-thinking…

From a filmmaking standpoint alone, Schrader is pulling from and expanding upon Bergman and Winter Light. (Or the floating scene which recalls one of Tarkovsky’s repeated images.) Schrader’s approach leads us to gaze at a frame and take in what’s there, but in a world as ascetic as this one, much of the background becomes literal words, because nothing else is there to occupy the space. And this is apart from Toller’s diary entries: “Come Unto Me.” “Private Residence.” “Staff Member.” “Will God forgive us.” “Thomas Merton: A Life in Letters.” “I come that they may have life, and have it in abundance.”

Or, you might say, “in bulk.”‬‬

“BALQ Industries” is one of a few darkly comic things here, but it’s not the same as in Phantom Thread or Tár where a rewatch and rereading turns a moment downright hilarious, but where neither laughing nor crying seems like the appropriate response. The way we’ll hold on the exhaust pipe of a massive black SUV as it propagates fumes. Or lyrics to the Neil Young protest song which waffles between poignant and absurd, as Mary struggles to shake Michael’s ashes out of the bag. In the same scene, Toller says one of the most profound statements of the film to me: “Michael loved the world. Maybe he loved it too much.” (Most likely pointing to ‭‭1 John‬ ‭2‬:‭15: “Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”)

When Toller challenges Joel “we should pollute so God can restore? We should sin so God can forgive?” it’s almost another joke, because this is pretty explicitly bad theology: “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?” ‭‭Romans‬ ‭6‬:‭1‬-‭2‬ ‭KJV And I think Joel would respond “we shouldn’t sin, but we have to pollute.” But it’s only because that’s what the Bulk Money would say.

Also interesting how Toller quotes “By thy words, you shall be justified, and by thy words, you shall be condemned” but directly AFTER this it is by staring at picture after picture of ecological destruction that he becomes convinced he needs to do something about it. And these images are then essentially repeated underneath Toller and Mary flying through space. The conflict of the film lies in the opposition between “truth” and “beauty,” between logos and pathos, between humanity and nature, between the physical and the spiritual. The Abundant Life church is ironically as or more austere than First Reformed; it’s a generic mega church, populated by flat Text and pictures of its pastor. Toller’s ex-wife Esther is the choir director here, and she’s the very definition of uptight Christian lady. She’s Angela from the Office, down to their love of the color grey. Toller is constantly exploring spiritually and philosophically but is leaving his physical body to rot… but ironically, Toller’s body itself is a stand-in for the Earth left to die. Every time he coughs I think of chimneys spouting Smog. The very Principle Toller is torturing himself for is an intensely Physical thing.

The ending remains confounding, but it’s assuredly more moving to me. Each step Toller takes—spilling the drink, taking off the jacket, stepping outside himself—is prompted by Mary. He doesn’t want her to come to the Anniversary of the First Reformed because it’s her physical presence that forces outside his own head, outside his own words. Toller draws direct attention to the Biblical meaning of his son’s name, Joseph (could this be a red herring though? Should we be looking at Joseph the Husband of Mary and NOT who Toller thinks he’s named after, which is Joseph the son of Jacob?) And we can do the same with Mary… she comes complete with (later revealed to be male) pregnancy. Which is also, in a way, after Michael’s suicide, “fatherless.” But Michael, unable to see the gift of his own son, doesn’t allow himself to be saved by beauty of life right in front of him. It’s Mary’s beauty (in stark contrast to Esther) that commands the stage; as she kisses and holds Toller, we don’t actually see this but it looks to me as though she’s unwrapping the barbed wire from his body. Like she’s telling him “you’re not the Christ, it’s not your job to suffer.” 

 

The Fabelmans. This is my “he just like me fr 😭” It’s hard to overestimate something so intimate, light-hearted, and perceptive that is not just about Spielberg’s childhood but is damn near an origin story for modern cinema as we know it. His era, the one he grew up in, is the first time consumers had relatively easy access to movie cameras, and since then each generation, including myself, has taken after Spielberg as the model for picking up a camera and shooting a movie. We are the ones influenced by his films but also by the way he got to make them in the first place. He’s the original kid with a camera. In turn he’s examining “the way he made them,” the inherent power and danger of the moving image, showing its real life consequences and how most of the time the cinema image is so potent that it reaches beyond the grasp of its author’s intention. 

This is particularly effective (and moving) in the film’s more reflexive moments when he intercuts Sammy’s footage with his own or Sammy says, “I would never make the movie you’re all watching right now.” He’s giving us the magnetic attraction he had to film, the regret and pain that it caused, and how the Spielberg we know was born all at once. The act of making films is intimately connected with the dramas of family and coming of age.

It’s interesting to me how Spielberg is reflecting on this 54 years into his career but I myself have already made several movies about this. I’m not saying this as a pat on the back, in fact quite the opposite. I don’t like or even think I should be making movies about how making movies has drastically shifted the way I think and live, it’s just what happened. It shows the postmodern state we (I) live in where our generation is basically skipping all the stages everyone previously had to go through because of the ability to make movies, the easiness and cheapness of an iPhone compared to an 8mm camera, the amount of film history and new media so readily available right next to each other… we have nothing to do but collapse back in ourselves. I’m jealous of Spielberg’s story and the opportunities he’s had— but another thing he is saying here is that you have to look at yourself and your story and know “This is not the end.”

Not to mention all of the little ways Spielberg plants real life elements and suggests how they worked their way into his films, and henceforth our cultural consciousness. We’re watching origin stories for E.T., Saving Private Ryan, Jaws, The Last Crusade, on and on. I suppose this points back to my idea about “folding back in itself” because I literally just made a video about this exact thing, talking about how when I am shooting something on my phone sure I want it to function by itself, but I also know that the primary purpose is the discovery of what you like and what makes you feel… By just living life your eye is drawn to certain things, and whether or not you as a filmmaker are aware of it those images, if they’re potent, when put into a feature film, grow out of their original context and gain a life of their own. The only difference is now we are increasingly aware of this phenomenon. 

With Spielberg, he’s given us his story with all of these ideas about filmmaking, which is what I’m drawn to, but his portraits of those around him and the various memory set pieces are still sweetly nostalgic and sturdily constructed as ever. So when people say about this film and Spielberg’s story “This is the divorce that raised an entire generation of kids” there’s probably a lot of truth to it, but there’s hundreds of other real life stories which informed hundreds of other artists to in turn capture the imaginations and feed the souls of millions. It’s a rabbit hole you can get lost in, but Steven Spielberg, of course, delves in with grace and humility and wonder. I love the movies.