Best film director

[Policar]

So you don't think it's valid to draw this type of comparison between John Grisham and Leo Tolstoy, for example? One man writes entertaining books, the other is an artist and genius of the highest order. The two simply should not be compared in the same thread, IMO.

Comparing Spielberg to Shakespeare is pretty far out there, IMO. Has Spielberg ever even written his own material? I think Spielberg is a good and entertaining director, but that is different from being a major artistic genius.

Let's take painting as an example. I think there are a lot of great idea-based artists (Pollock, Warhol) and a lot of great craft-based ones (Caravaggio, Vermeer). Some reconcile concept and craft (Michelangelo, Picasso). As regards literature, some of my favorite writers focus on story, some on formalism, still others focus on digressive philosophy.

The thing is, there's a lot of really trashy conceptual art, pretentious video installations, what have you, but history is quicker to forget bad "high art" than bad "low art" because bad "low art" retains a historical record for its popularity. And I think a lot of elitism stems from that. You can't compare Tolstoy and Grisham, but I doubt, by the same token, that you can say Tolstory is better or worse than Foster Wallace. (This is gray territory for me since I don't read that much anymore, though, and perhaps those are both "high art" writers and therefore can be compared more easily. But Twain and Dickens were popular at their time and are still respected now.)

So I won't stack Close Encounters or Vertigo up against Badlands, but I take offense at anyone who claims Badlands is a better film because it's "higher art." Close Encounters and Vertigo are far more accomplished films formally and in terms of shot choice, but in terms of subject matter, yes, Badlands has more depth (though Vertigo has a lot).

For what it's worth, Spielberg did write Close Encounters and was heavily, heavily involved in shaping the story for Raiders of the Lost Ark. Also, see my post above about micromanagement versus delegation; after all, did Shakespeare perform in all his own plays?

 

[Craig W. Bickerstaff]

Spielberg doesn't write his scripts but that doesn't mean he doesn't collaborate with his writers.

Edit/

Tom I find it a little hypocritical that in the same post that you accused Policar of being insulting you neglected to also call out Jason for thinking anyone who would consider Steven Spielberg the greatest to be someone who knows nothing of cinema history and then go onto imply that it's laughable that we would even consider choosing Spielberg in the first place.

 

[Tom Lowe]

You can't compare Tolstoy and Grisham, but I doubt, by the same token, that you can say Tolstory is better or worse than Foster Wallace. (This is gray territory for me since I don't read that much anymore, though!)

Oh yes I can! Wallace should not even be mentioned in the same breath as Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky.

 

[Joel J. Feigenbaum]

David Lean, without question is up there. If imitation is the greatest form of flattery, I think one could argue that Ridley Scott created looks, atmosphere and film universes that have been greatly imitated over the years on so many films by other film makers that followed. However, when it comes to performances, I'm partial to Sydney Pollock. He has crafted some incredibly memorable performances from his casts.

 

[Policar]

Oh yes I can! Wallace should not even be mentioned in the same breath as Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky.

Haha maybe I chose a bad example... I'm much more into film than literature; you can probably tell.

But I'll still stand up for Spielberg as a great storyteller, a great popular filmmaker, and a true artist and visual innovator...even if his innovations led to some awful films. But then again, there are a lot of terrible Malick rip-offs; against popular opinion, I count Assassination of Jesse James and Into the Wild among them. (Though I won't hold anything against anyone who enjoyed those films; I enjoy many bad action films and Jesse James was beautifully shot.)

 

[Tom Lowe]

But I'll still stand up for Spielberg as a great storyteller, a great popular filmmaker, and a true artist and visual innovator...even if his innovations led to some awful films. But then again, there are a lot of terrible Malick rip-offs; against popular opinion, I count Assassination of Jesse James and Into the Wild among them. (Though I won't hold anything against anyone who enjoyed those films; I enjoy many bad action films and Jesse James was beautifully shot.)

I agree on all counts. I am a big fan of most of Spielberg's films. I also agree with your views on "The Assassination of Jesse James" and "Into the Wild".

 

[Policar]

I agree on all counts. I am a big fan of most of Spielberg's films. I also agree with your views on "The Assassination of Jesse James" and "Into the Wild".

Glad to hear it! And, yes, you are right; my DFW/Tolstoy analogy is terrible. I totally, completely regret writing it because it makes no sense...this means I need to read more.

Sorry to cause a fuss over any of this, I'm just subject to a lot of snobbery in real life so any perceived film snobbery really gets to me. I honestly do consider Spielberg to be a Shakespeare or Chaucer-like figure, though history should, rightfully, find him far less significant to his respective medium. He's a great popular storyteller who draws from a pool of very conventional stories (Shakespeare was the greatest plagiarist), but reshapes them so fully that he reinvents and enriches the language he uses. I just take issue with anyone who outright dismisses someone so brilliant and influential.

 

[Jason Murphy]

Thanks for the defense, Tom, but Policar's response is fair enough, given that I was clearly being provocative. I do apologize if I came off as self-righteous.

A few things to point out here: I never said that Spielberg was a hack (not even close), nor that I didn't like his films. Nor did I say that I disliked Spielberg because he is "too popular." Or anything of the sort. I don't subscribe to the popular/artistic greatness dichotomy. There is nothing wrong with a movie being popular; many great ones are. And in terms of the history of art and writing, some great artists were clearly very popular in their time. But not all; that said, obscurity is neither an inherent mark of greatness or brilliance, nor should it be seen as a mark of failure. Just to get that out of the way.

But anyway, I went out of my way in my original post to reiterate that Spielberg is a talented filmmaker. I thoroughly enjoy watching a good many of Spielberg's films. Jaws, Close Encounters and Raiders are clearly exceptional, and I think AI and Munich are great films. But, as far as I'm concerned, Spielberg has made some of good movies, a number of mediocre movies, and a few bad movies, but nothing that I would stand behind as being an out-and-out masterpiece (though he comes close a few times). And with that track record, I just don't think he's one of the all-time greatest American filmmakers, no matter how talented he is. Not when you have people like Ford, Malick, Wilder, Welles, Hawks, Scorsese, Coppola, Sturges, Kubrick, Cassavetes, Keaton and Chaplin to choose from, any one of which I would argue is a much better American filmmaker than Spielberg.

And to be fair, Policar, you make a number of very good points in your defense of Spielberg. Admittedly, he gets beat up on by some critics more than he deserves, and yes, it's probably often because he's so popular. But to put him on the same level as Shakespeare or Chaucer? Hardly. While all three may have mastered their craft, both Shakespeare and Chaucer had a depth of insight into people that as of yet Spielberg hasn't revealed. Which again is not to say that Spielberg has no such insight, but it's certainly not at the level of Shakespeare or Chaucer. What would Spielberg's Hamlet be? His Lear? There's nothing in his entire body of work that remotely approaches that level.

As to the distinction between "art" and "craft," I don't think there's necessarily a clear cut dividing the two, and in fact, I'm in complete agreement with your comment on the elevation of form to an art. Ironically, every single filmmaker I named in my initial post takes that approach to their filmmaking. Surface level subject matter isn't nearly as important with regards film. Ozu is actually a great example of this; many of his movies have rather interchangeable plots, but it's his direct, incredible sense of framing and staging and the razor sharp rhythm of his cutting that elevates these relatively simple domestic dramas to masterpiece level. Ebert's comment on this is really good, I think: "A movie is not about what it's about, but HOW it's about it." That said, one cannot entirely ignore subject matter, and the greatest movies almost by necessity have both a high level of craft and concept/subject/whatever you want to call it. There are some great movies that overly favor one or the other, but it's rare.

All that said, it's all cinema. Malick and Hitchcock may have a different approach to filmmaking from Simon West and Brett Ratner, but they're all making cinema. It's all the same medium. I get annoyed when people distinguish 'art' cinema from 'popular' or 'non-art' cinema, because it so often makes it easy for people to write one or the other off, which is always a mistake. It's all cinema, whether good or bad. I still believe that Tarkovsky, Brakhage and Dreyer are among the greatest practitioners of the medium (though a list of greats would probably change depending on what mood I'm in, but wouldn't stray too far from the list of filmmakers in my initial post).

And I still stand 100% by my statement that Spielberg isn't among the greatest filmmakers, American or otherwise. But I probably shouldn't have called anyone ignorant; sorry for that.

PS. Incidentally, Policar, I think Playtime is one of the greatest films ever made. I've travelled fairly long distances to see it every time in plays anywhere remotely near me in 70mm. So clearly, some of our tastes are different. Did you see Playtime in 70mm by the way? It doesn't really hold up well on DVD. But you should really give Tati another shot, particularly with Mr. Hulot's Holiday, which is much less formally radical, and much more story-oriented than Playtime is. Also works much better on DVD.

EDIT: And the conversation has moved on while I was posting...

 

[Jason Murphy]

The thing is, there's a lot of really trashy conceptual art, pretentious video installations, what have you, but history is quicker to forget bad "high art" than bad "low art" because bad "low art" retains a historical record for its popularity. And I think a lot of elitism stems from that. You can't compare Tolstoy and Grisham, but I doubt, by the same token, that you can say Tolstory is better or worse than Foster Wallace. (This is gray territory for me since I don't read that much anymore, though, and perhaps those are both "high art" writers and therefore can be compared more easily. But Twain and Dickens were popular at their time and are still respected now.)

So I won't stack Close Encounters or Vertigo up against Badlands, but I take offense at anyone who claims Badlands is a better film because it's "higher art." Close Encounters and Vertigo are far more accomplished films formally and in terms of shot choice, but in terms of subject matter, yes, Badlands has more depth (though Vertigo has a lot).

Amen about bad conceptual art. I agree with you 110%. And quite frankly, most bad video art deserves to die and be quickly forgotten.

That said, there IS some (very little, but some nonetheless) good conceptual art. I tend to think that Warhol is one of the few that made it work. I also think very highly of Warhol's films.

EDIT #1: I realize this will likely be a controversial statement, but if you've seen any of them projected on film, particularly the screen tests, they're really beautiful, and well worth seeking out. Empire or Sleep can safely be skipped by most people, even though I'd encourage anyone with a remote interest in either to try and see them.

Anyway, I think it's safe to say that once you cross a certain threshold of craft mastery, making value judgements between two masters of a certain medium becomes meaningless. But, for lack of a better way to put it, comparing between one of the first-tier masters of a medium and judging them to be better than a second-tier creator is often still useful. And I still think Spielberg, for all his talent, is clearly in the second tier. Ditto DFW, though word for word and phrase for phrase the guy had more talent than almost anyone else out there, and it's really, really sad that he died so young and so clearly before his artistic prime.

Incidentally, not sure who would call Badlands "higher art" than Vertigo; that's crazy talk. Vertigo is clearly a great masterpiece, and as far as I'm concerned, it's pretty damn deep. Obsession, trying to remake someone in your own image of them, etc? Nothing less deep about that than Badlands, for sure.

(And yes, I still prefer them both to Close Encounters, but Close Encounters is also a really excellent film, one I'm not going to knock).

EDIT #2: Not caring so much for Into The Wild I can see, but Assassination of Jesse James? It's clearly extraordinarily indebted to Malick, but it's a pretty great film in it's own right, and hardly a cheap Malick knock-off.

EDIT #3: Not that I'd mind seeing more cheap Malick-knock offs either, mind you, if they look as good as Into The Wild or Assassination of Jesse James...

 

[Tom Lowe]

"Assassination of Jesse James" is by NO means a cheap knockoff, but it does fail to reach even 20% of the brilliance of an actual Malick film, while obviously trying to do so. I enjoyed the film, and the cinematography in parts, but it's definitely not worthy to be considered as a "masterpiece," IMO.

I also agree that "Vertigo" is brilliant, and never degraded it nor compared it to "Badlands." I think Policar may have accidentally thought we were equating Hitch to Spielberg or something. In my opening post on this thread, I did list Hitch among the greats. I would rank him far above Spielberg in that respect.

I'm surprised that no one else have even mentioned Miyazaki.

 

[Jason Murphy]

Hitch is definitely one of the greats, and Andrew Dominik is no Malick. Regardless, I'm really happy that he's working on an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's Cities of the Plain. Seems a good fit.

And as far as Miyazaki goes, meh. We elitists know that it's REALLY all about Mamoru Oshii.

Kidding. Miyazaki's amazing. Saw Ponyo this past weekend and loved it.

 

[Policar]

Amen about bad conceptual art. I agree with you 110%. And quite frankly, most bad video art deserves to die and be quickly forgotten.

That said, there IS some (very little, but some nonetheless) good conceptual art. I tend to think that Warhol is one of the few that made it work. I also think very highly of Warhol's films.

EDIT #1: I realize this will likely be a controversial statement, but if you've seen any of them projected on film, particularly the screen tests, they're really beautiful, and well worth seeking out. Empire or Sleep can safely be skipped by most people, even though I'd encourage anyone with a remote interest in either to try and see them.

Anyway, I think it's safe to say that once you cross a certain threshold of craft mastery, making value judgements between two masters of a certain medium becomes meaningless. But, for lack of a better way to put it, comparing between one of the first-tier masters of a medium and judging them to be better than a second-tier creator is often still useful. And I still think Spielberg, for all his talent, is clearly in the second tier. Ditto DFW, though word for word and phrase for phrase the guy had more talent than almost anyone else out there, and it's really, really sad that he died so young and so clearly before his artistic prime.

Incidentally, not sure who would call Badlands "higher art" than Vertigo; that's crazy talk. Vertigo is clearly a great masterpiece, and as far as I'm concerned, it's pretty damn deep. Obsession, trying to remake someone in your own image of them, etc? Nothing less deep about that than Badlands, for sure.

(And yes, I still prefer them both to Close Encounters, but Close Encounters is also a really excellent film, one I'm not going to knock).

EDIT #2: Not caring so much for Into The Wild I can see, but Assassination of Jesse James? It's clearly extraordinarily indebted to Malick, but it's a pretty great film in it's own right, and hardly a cheap Malick knock-off.

EDIT #3: Not that I'd mind seeing more cheap Malick-knock offs either, mind you, if they look as good as Into The Wild or Assassination of Jesse James...

Heh, I agree with you on 90% of this and the rest boils down to taste. I would never, ever consider Spielberg to be as important (relative to his medium) or talented as Shakespeare, I just think he'll prove to be a similar figure historically (on a much smaller scale) and not just a soon-to-be-forgotten "entertainer." He's someone who tells familiar stories of all genres very well and he's innovated tremendously on conventional film language. This is probably unfair to speculate about, but based on how I understand his films I think he has a less complete mastery of the craft than Hitchcock, for instance, had, but I think intuitively he has a remarkable gut sense of what works--more so than many of the "masters." Just my opinion.

There's a lot I liked about Assassination of Jesse James, both in terms of storytelling and cinematography, but I think it tries too hard to be Malick and ultimately misses the mark in odd ways. It certainly has its merits, but I found it frustrating.

As for Play Time, I saw a DVD when I was beyond sleep deprived, so I owe that movie another chance. I'm sure it would be much better on 70mm, and the concept of a sort of "interactive' movie where you can watch whatever digressive gags you want and it's different every time is really novel and remarkably well-realized--especially given the lack of similar films Tati had to draw from. (I'm not aware of many; there may be some. I will watch M. Hulot.) It's just not my thing; my favorite movies are those where the director really controls and manipulates the audience. If I ever have the chance to see it on film I will, though.

As for Brakhage, I think a lot of his stuff is just great conceptually, but a lot of experimental filmmakers bother me to the extent that their vocabulary is so much more limited and underdeveloped than Classical Hollywood syntax. I won't level this complaint at Ozu as he developed things pretty far and did brilliant things on his own terms, but it's hard for me to watch a Brakhage (or Vertov or something) film and figure out what's going on beyond the simplest visual metaphors and cutting patterns and reacting to it intuitively. Maybe this is my fault as a viewer, but I'm wary of the most experimental and particularly micro-level experimental films. I do like Warhol because most of his films examine one "big" concept in painstaking detail and I mean to seek out more of his work. But now I'm revealing my own biases.

Anyhow, thanks for the level-headed and articulate response; I clearly got worked up over very little and I apologize for that. I still rank Spielberg fairly high and will stand by my opinion of him. But this may be because I have more patience for Classical cinema than I do for other directors' more unique styles. I also think Classical syntax is a more expansive language than its alternatives, and any director who diverges from it should be fluent in it first. Maybe I owe it to myself to check out some more "art cinema," though...

And for what it's worth, I think Malick and Hitchcock are extraordinarily different not because one makes commercial cinema and one makes "art," but in terms of how each approaches the filmmaking process and where each places the audience.

 

[jon erwin]

I'd say Frank Capra

 

[scott william]

Schindler's List, munich, Saving Private Ryan are you telling me these film’s are not serious works of art like The Thin Red Line or Days of Heaven?? Tom??

 

[Tom Lowe]

Schindler's List, munich, Saving Private Ryan are you telling me these film’s are not serious works of art like The Thin Red Line or Days of Heaven?? Tom??

Lol, scott, you are unwise to get me started on SPR vs TTRL! You'll never get me to shut up. That's like asking Cliff Clavin to tell you about the post office. :hand:

Saving Private Ryan is not a serious work of art at all, IMHO. It's a patriotic, by-the-numbers war film, that literally shows a waving American flag at the end. Band of Brothers is far superior in terms of meaning and story. I do love SPR's opening sequence at Omaha Beach, though. It's one of the best action war sequences ever shot. As a combat vet myself, I watched SPR and TTRL when they came out, nearly back to back. SPR felt unreal to me, like some Hollywood contrivance, whereas The Thin Red Line moved me in ways I never knew any film could. It was truly a work of art. The secret about being in a war is that 95% of your time is spent sitting around, waiting, training, prepping, reading, writing letters, thinking of the girl back home... ALWAYS thinking about the girl back home..... pondering the meaning of life, whether you will survive, what it's all about, and so on. It's not about running around chucking grenades and acting heroic. Those moments are but flashes in the pan. The moments of rumination in TTRL struck me as being incredibly true. SPR, on the other hand, struck me as something more akin to product made for mass consumption, complete with Jerry Bruckheimer-style characterizations and a fairly unreal plot about some bridge. Malick didn't even bother with a plot! He was exploring much more important issues, IMO.

Schindler's List is a work of art, indeed. It's Spielberg's most serious picture. Munich is a very good film.

 

[Jason Murphy]

Can't speak for Tom, but I'd say that while they may be serious attempts at works of art, and all have moments of brilliance, none of them are remotely as good or as artistically ambitious as either of Malick's films that you mentioned.

Much of it boils down to the writing and prominent sections of each movie being overwrought. It's not necessarily that they're manipulative, as almost all movies manipulate their audience, it's that they're so blatantly so, often where there is no need to be. Think of the shower scenes or the ending of Schindler "I could have saved one more..." Or the bookends to Saving Private Ryan, not to mention some of the more hamfisted dramatic scenes in the middle of the movie. And Munich, an otherwise excellent film, is almost singlehandedly deep-sixed by the ridiculous sex scene at the end.

There are almost no such major flaws in either Days of Heaven or The Thin Red Line. The New World is more problematic in its structure, which I feel keeps it from being truly great, (Tom will no doubt take me to task for this), but it seems more a victim of its own ambition than anything else (with the possible exception of a few of the more egregious voice-overs).

EDIT: And Tom beats me to it again. I need to post faster.

EDIT #2: As an aside, Tom have you seen Overlord? Amazing and beautiful little WWII film by Stuart Cooper (and shot by John Alcott, Kubrick's DP), much of which is comprised of archival footage from the Imperial War Museum. It's on Criterion and well worth a look.

 

[Jason Murphy]

As for Brakhage, I think a lot of his stuff is just great conceptually, but a lot of experimental filmmakers bother me to the extent that their vocabulary is so much more limited and underdeveloped than Classical Hollywood syntax. I won't level this complaint at Ozu as he developed things pretty far and did brilliant things on his own terms, but it's hard for me to watch a Brakhage (or Vertov or something) film and figure out what's going on beyond the simplest visual metaphors and cutting patterns and reacting to it intuitively. Maybe this is my fault as a viewer, but I'm wary of the most experimental and particularly micro-level experimental films. I do like Warhol because most of his films examine one "big" concept in painstaking detail and I mean to seek out more of his work. But now I'm revealing my own biases.

Anyhow, thanks for the level-headed and articulate response; I clearly got worked up over very little and I apologize for that. I still rank Spielberg fairly high and will stand by my opinion of him. But this may be because I have more patience for Classical cinema than I do for other directors' more unique styles. I also think Classical syntax is a more expansive language than its alternatives, and any director who diverges from it should be fluent in it first. Maybe I owe it to myself to check out some more "art cinema," though...

No worries, I was kind of asking to get flamed with the way I phrased my first post.

As for Brakhage, he's obviously less a director (in the sense that there's little to no direction of actors in his films, staging, etc), but I really do believe that he is one of the single greatest filmmakers of all time. A good number of people think I'm somehow being facetious or contrarian just for the heck of it when I mention Brakhage. I'm not; I'm dead serious. That said, as long as we're revealing our biases (which, let's just face it, we all have), it should come as no surprise that mine are towards the avant-garde and much of what is classified as art cinema.

Brakhage is obviously a much more difficult filmmaker than your average commercial director, but a lot of this is simply that most people aren't used to watching films like his. To go back to the ever-helpful literature analogy, the vast majority of movies are much like your average paperback page turner. People know how to read these sorts of things; they're pretty straight forward, and you can do a lot within that. Brakhage (and a number of other avant-garde filmmakers) is much more akin to dense modernist or lyric poetry. Someone encountering Eliot's "The Waste Land" after a lifetime of reading only Grisham, Harry Potter or Stephen King would probably not have a clue how to begin to tackle it (although of course, there's some cursory overlap with King's Dark Tower series, so maybe that wasn't a great example. But you get what I mean).

The other thing about much of Brakhage is that it really resists easy description. There's not much narrative in the vast majority of the films, and many defy the usually simple act of trying to put words to the images. By far, this is what makes most people give up on Brakhage pretty quickly; it's frustrating to not be able to describe what you have just seen. Also, there's no sound in most of his films (minor detail).

But, and this is huge, Brakhage is working far less on a conceptual level (though that is of course going on) than a formal one. One of the advantages of his form of silent film is that, when watched properly (i.e. in a theater, in silence, without distractions), it really begins to attune the viewer to the very fine visual rhythms his movies have. They're masterpieces of rhythm, light and color. (And they're not all merely formal, either; many deal with situations and emotions that run the gamut of human experience - marriage, sex, man in nature, meditations on death, etc).

Of course, since he made almost 400 films, he definitely made some bad ones, and through the course of his career he underwent a huge number of stylistic changes (Many people know him from Anticipation of the Night or Dog Star Man, two of his early films, which are very different from later ones). I personally think some of his best work was in his late photographic films like 'Visions in Meditation' and 'God of Day...' but I have friends who prefer his earlier films, or his handpainted films (which are really, really gorgeous).

Of course, one problem is that much of the avant-garde is difficult to see (as in, no film prints coming your way), and the ratio of good to bad films within the avant-garde is really no different from that of commercial cinema. Just that bad experimental films drop off the radar much faster than the commercial stuff.

All that to say, it's a different approach to viewing movies. It takes some effort, but I've found it to be very rewarding, and it can definitely enrich your ability to view more conventional movies, as well as many things outside of the cinema as well.

As far as Classical form goes, I agree that it's very expansive, and while I disagree that all filmmakers should be working in that form, pretty much any director would be wise to both understand and internalize it. My only problem with it is when it becomes a convention, and a crutch to enable a filmmaker's own laziness. You know, where you shoot things a certain way because this is way we do them, with little recognition or thought as to why a certain way of shooting is effective, what it evokes in a viewer, etc. Basically using the model without an understanding of it, which of course is everywhere these days. (As you eloquently pointed out in your first reply, Spielberg clearly knows what he's doing, so not talking about him here).

Anyway, that's my pitch on why everyone should care about Brakhage. But it's a tough sell, and most people I've made it to still don't agree with me on it. But you know, these things happen, I guess.

 

[scott william]

Lol, scott, you are unwise to get me started on SPR vs TTRL! You'll never get me to shut up. That's like asking Cliff Clavin to tell you about the post office. :hand:

Saving Private Ryan is not a serious work of art at all, IMHO. It's a patriotic, by-the-numbers war film, that literally shows a waving American flag at the end. Band of Brothers is far superior in terms of meaning and story. I do love SPR's opening sequence at Omaha Beach, though. It's one of the best action war sequences ever shot. As a combat vet myself, I watched SPR and TTRL when they came out, nearly back to back. SPR felt unreal to me, like some Hollywood contrivance, whereas The Thin Red Line moved me in ways I never knew any film could. It was truly a work of art. The secret about being in a war is that 95% of your time is spent sitting around, waiting, training, prepping, reading, writing letters, thinking of the girl back home... ALWAYS thinking about the girl back home..... pondering the meaning of life, whether you will survive, what it's all about, and so on. It's not about running around chucking grenades and acting heroic. Those moments are but flashes in the pan. The moments of rumination in TTRL struck me as being incredibly true. SPR, on the other hand, struck me as something more akin to product made for mass consumption, complete with Jerry Bruckheimer-style characterizations and a fairly unreal plot about some bridge. Malick didn't even bother with a plot! He was exploring much more important issues, IMO.

Schindler's List is a work of art, indeed. It's Spielberg's most serious picture. Munich is a very good film.

Malick and Spielberg have both made inspired films. To say one is a more serious filmmaker than the other is unfair. If you value authenticity and realism as the greatest achievement in filmmaking then your better off comparing Malick to filmmakers like Ken Loach. Malick’s work doesn’t seem as important when it’s compared to directors achieving the same goals.

 

[Tom Lowe]

Malick and Spielberg have both made inspired films. To say one is a more serious filmmaker than the other is unfair.

I think it's fair and reasonable to say that Malick is more serious. Do you think Malick would ever make a POS turkey like 1941?

Malick is more serious. The guy quit a job teaching philosophy at MIT to make films.

 

[Sanjin Jukic]

Terrence Malick is more like an artist and Steven Spielberg is more as a businessman.

Also three are many businessman that "camouflaged" themselves as artists or vice versa many artists became businessman.