Terry Gilliam on The Difference Between Spielberg and Kubrick
i love gilliam and i revere kubrick, but their apparently shared reading of SCHINDLER’S LIST is way off the mark. it’s not a film about success, it’s a film about survival, and that’s not a small distinction. the film doesn’t resolve itself with a happy ending, in fact it hardly has an ending at all, the idea being that in the face of an unprecedented and implacable evil, an act of supreme kindness allowed a people to continue.
this is a tremendously reductive lens through which to view any of Spielberg’s work, let alone the most sincere film of his career, although it would likely be impossible for any filmmaker to achieve such spectacular popularity without engendering such criticism. it’s not much of an argument to suggest that Spielberg is a less confrontational filmmaker than Kubrick, but sometimes - as in Catch Me if You Can, Munich, Close Encounters, and even War Horse, to some degree - an expedient and seemingly tidy resolution is merely a feint, a reminder that a masterfully told story only ever appears to be over.
(via Open Culture)
(h/t @ryangallagher)
