Ryan McNeil
Yesterday, Critic Wire sparked yet another lively debate all over the internet when they posted responses to their weekly poll question. This time around the question centred on critics’ least favorite films by their favorite directors. This spawned an amusing – if occasionally frustrating – back & forth between Corey Atad and myself about the works of Steven Spielberg.
Without rehashing a 45 minute Twitter fight, it came down to a difference of opinion on what makes an entry into a director’s filmography their “worst”. For Corey, he cited INDIANA JONES & THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL. He called it an example of Spielberg “going through the motions”. For me, the answer is 1941. I called it Spielberg at his most “Uncreative and unentertaining”. You can argue amongst yourselves who is right, but that’s not really the point I’m trying to make.
What interests me with this question – and with the wide array of answers I was reading through the day – is what film fans want from their favorite directors. The ideal scenario would be for us as filmgoers to check our expectations at the door, but that just never happens. Whether we’re sitting down to watch a film by Joss Whedon, David Fincher, or Sophia Coppola, the fact of the matter is that we walk in with a bar set in place, and we challenge the filmmaker to clear it. This isn’t the case every time mind you – I doubt Adam McKay has to live up to his name – but it happens often enough to merit discussion.
The way I approach it, I have two easily achievable bits of criteria. First and foremost, I want to be entertained. I’m not fussy about whether that entertainment is highbrow or lowbrow, I just want to escape for two hours. If the newest Michael Mann film can keep my attention for two hours or so, in the process making me forget about tasks waiting for me at the office or chores waiting around the house, I call it a win. How the film stacks up to HEAT (still my favorite of his films) is irrelevant. Secondly, I want it to demonstrate what the director does best. If Baz Luhrman wanted to make lavish productions for the rest of his career, I’d be alright with that – nobody does ’em like he does.
But then there’s my younger brother’s approach. Like many others, he wants directors to refrain from sitting still. He asks if we really need another twisted melodrama from Almodovar, or if we really need another grisly crime story from David Fincher. I don’t see it that way, but all the same little bro isn’t exactly wrong either. This can lead to walking away from a film with a feeling of discontent. The movie wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t anything great either. It just “was”…and films that just “were” can fester into missteps over time.
Should these offerings – these morsels of familiarity be considered amongst a directors worst? I vote “nay”, but can understand the other side.
I still believe in the auteurist theory – though I also believe many former auteurs are now often just hired guns – and with that I believe in perspective and context.I think that while a director’s “worst” is obviously subjective, that it is also a moving target and should be reassessed every few years once a film has been allowed to settle. I believe we can unfairly demonize and blindly canonize titles, making the waters that much muddier. Revisiting both the films we love and the films we dislike can lead to fresh perspective – both for better and for worse. We might see the seeds of a new direction the director chose to take, or we might see the cracks in what we once considered a master work.
Still the question will remain – what makes for a “miss”? Is it simply a film that seems inept, or is it a film that isn’t what we wanted it to be?
I think a film does have to reach a minimum level of quality, but beyond that it has to reach for originality – and missing that is where it enters the worst category. Personally I though Crystal Skull reached for an original story, but missed the mark on good film making (haven’t seen 1941 so I can’t weigh in there). Raimi’s Spider-Man did both well, but failed on both with Oz.
Interesting topic, Ryan. Spielberg is a great example where the answers are probably all over the map. The two you mention are up there, and I’m sure The Terminal would make some appearances. The weird thing is that I can see some people listing something like Munich or even Lincoln. While I don’t agree with those picks, I know that people will put a director in a certain box. For Spielberg, some viewers don’t like it when he goes beyond making straight-up entertaining films. Another good example is Scorsese, who has made his name with a certain type of movie but does change it up. The reactions to movies like Kundun and The Age of Innocence can vary sharply depending on what the person expects from the director at the start.
For me, what merits as a failure is if the director could do so much with the film and doesn’t do that. I sort of felt this way with A Very Long Engagement. It’s good but I felt underwhelmed by it.
I’d like to clarify my position on Spielberg. I don’t think any of his films are bad beyond redemption. Even his misfires contain elements that prove his brilliance as a director. When I comes down to deciding which is his “worst” film I tend towards an auteurist mindset. The script almost becomes irrelevant insofar as its success or lack thereof, and in a way the quality of the film as a piece of straight entertainment falls by the wayside.
Crystal Skull is perhaps a more watchable film than 1941, but only in that I find it almost across the board mediocre. It kind of just does what it does without any heart or serious excitement. 1941 is a more difficult movie to take. It’s louder and wackier and can be a whole lot more annoying. But when it comes to films like these, where I barely want to watch them at all, I fall back on the qualities of the direction I find intriguing. That’s what provides the entertainment.
In the respect, 1941 is much more fascinating to me. It’s an interesting failure. There is so much directorial genius in it, but Spielberg was at a point in his career where he didn’t know how to modulate his impulses. He was given too much freedom to make a film he fundamentally didn’t know how to make. The Ferris wheel sequence is a perfect example. So brilliantly made and creatively conceived, but to what end? It’s noisy and offensive. I take a kind of pleasure in breaking that down. It becomes less a matter of enjoying the film as it is enjoying deconstructing the failure of a director I admire.
Compare this to Crystal Skull, which is a much better modulated picture, but also much less creatively brash. Spielberg knew how to achieve what he wanted, but there’s no sign of him pushing himself in any way. Even the biggest action set piece looks like it was a stroll in the park due to the overuse of green screen and computer backdrops. The only sequences that show any great directorial investment are the oft-maligned Nuke the Fridge scene and the brawl in the cafe and subsequent motorcycle chase. Nuking the fridge is a bold piece of silliness and I enjoy it for that. The motorcycle chase is Spielberg dealing in a practical action set piece and having fun doing it, though even then it’s not a pox on the similar sequences in the previous Indy films.
So what it comes down to for me is that Crystal Skull and 1941 are equally failures, but they are failures in different ways. Crystal Skull’s failure makes it more palatable, but also more boring as an artistic expression. 1941 is the kind of catastrophe I love. There’s so much uncontained genius in it, and it’s all pointed in the wrong directions. I’ll always take the interesting failure over the boring one, and for that reason alone 1941 stands above Crystal Skull for me.
You raise good points (as does Shane) which is why I don’t disagree with either of you.
The ultimate point is that “failure” is subjective. right?
Out of curiosity though, what’s Skull’s “biggest action sequence”?
The jungle chase.
And comparing it to the truck chase in Raiders, the minecar chase in Temple of Doom, and the tank chase in Last Crusade.
Like you I am looking for a good and entertaining film, regardless of genre, style or similarity to the directors other work. For example Hugo wasn’t what I expected form Martin Scorsese but it was a great film. (I should know by now to expect the unexpected from the man who made: Kundun, The Age of Innocence, The Last Temptation of Christ, After Hours, The King of Comedy, New York, New York, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore). The flipside to that, War Horse contained all the elements I would expect from Steven Spielberg but I found the execution dull and tedious. Sorry, I know you like this movie!
Going off at a tangent as I tend to do: A thought on the auteurist theory. Are former auteurs, former auteurs because they became hired guns or because they lost their, flair and ran out of good ideas? Their lack of further invention coupled with what set them apart becoming the norm makes them look like they have sold out. Who is the true auteur? The one who has total creative control over his masterpiece (Welles/ Tarantino) or the one who does I within the confines of genre and the studio system (Wilder/ Hitchcock)?
If “going through the motions” is a problem, then Always is the correct answer here. I can blame a studio for Crystal Skull (which is a horrible, horrible movie) and I can point to misguided energy for 1941… but Always is just bad all the way around. I think it’s Spielberg’s worst.