“With Hook, he’s at a junction point. And then two years later, he does Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List in the same year. Just the most dominant shit. He has nothing left to prove after that. Hook, he still has stuff to prove. If it went straight from Hook to Schindler, It’d be like, that’s past. I’m not doing that kind of thing anymore. I’ve grown up. Here’s my kind of movie. But the fact that he does Jurassic in the same year, and he’s like, I can still knock this out of the park if I want to. You want me to build a roller coaster? I’ll build a roller coaster.
It’s hard for kids to understand now. But at that time, when you found out Spielberg was directing Jurassic Park, Jurassic Park was such a hit book. Six graders were carrying around Jurassic Park when I was in sixth grade, and everyone was like, how are they going to do the dinosaur? Literally, this is not possible because they’ll never make them look real, and he delivered on that in the most incredible way possible. And the movie still just rips. It’s hard to overstate how much you felt like you were watching the impossible happen in 1992.”
From Blank Check with Griffin & David with Lin-Manuel Miranda
For Schindler’s List, Spielberg really changed his style. There are moments that are unmistakably his, but much of the film shows a new, more aggressive verite approach. The liquidation of the ghetto is a lengthy, amazing showpiece. The sequence in Auschwitz is almost documentary-like in its unobtrusive authority, (though the crisis point of that sequence is a cheat.) The ending at the tomb could be seen as grandstanding or a risky move, but I could not want a more perfect button to the film. It’s one moment where I’m very glad Spielberg went for the big sentiment.
Is this still Ralph Fiennes best work? I don’t think I’ve ever seen him fully inhabit a part. Just watching him stretch shirtless on the balcony in between sniper shots, his handsome features perched upon a surprising amount of gut, speak volumes about his moral corruption. This is a guy who under other conditions could be a great man, but he’s let Nazi politics poison his soul.
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