“When you make a movie called Spielberg,” begins Mike Hale in the New York Times, “and its subject agrees to sit for what turns out to be thirty hours of interviews—and his sisters sit down with you, as do his parents, and half the Hollywood mavericks including Francis Ford Coppola, Brian De Palma, George Lucas and Martin Scorsese—you’d better get it right. No one wants to be the director who screwed up the Steven Spielberg documentary.” Hale talks with Susan Lacy, creator of the PBS series American Masters and the director of this new portrait, who tells him, “If I had spent a lot of time thinking about: ‘How’s Steven going to feel about this? Oh my God, is he going to like this?’ I would have been absolutely frozen.”
“While well over two hours, Lacy’s film zips along,” writes Alan Scherstuhl in the Village Voice, “always onto the next thing, tantalizing with behind-the-scenes footage (watch him guide Drew Barrymore and Henry Thomas through tricky E.T. reaction shots) and too-quick character studies.” Tom Hanks “speaks of Spielberg with the collegial reverence of a Kennedy Honors speech; [Liam] Neeson does so with the respectful distaste you might have for a hard boss who was eventually proven right. Only Dustin Hoffman seems to see the Spielberg that Spielberg purports to be hiding. ‘Steven’s like a guy who works for Steven Spielberg.’ . . . What’s most revealing, here, is [Spielberg’s] self-awareness, the way that he anticipates and acknowledges what we suspect about him just from viewing the films.”
“If exploring Spielberg’s childhood and revisiting his most lauded directorial works are the first two pillars of Spielberg, the third is most definitely a candid assessment of the director’s relationship to his faith,” writes Susannah Edelbaum at WhereToWatch. “In short: it wasn’t always easy. . . . The documentary reveals that it was his marriage to Kate Capshaw (meeting her was like hearing ‘bells ringing,’ he tells the camera) and her conversion that brought Steven back to Judaism. . . . Crediting his second wife with a renewed focus on authenticity in filmmaking, he says he got to a point where ‘truth began to upstage make-believe.’”
Lacy’s told Variety’s Dave McNary that “there was enough material for a six-part series. ‘It was delightful to find out that he really is as nice as I thought he was,’ she added. ‘He never asked for a single change. A lot of artists can’t talk about their own work or they’re reluctant to do so. He talked about film as intelligently as anyone I’ve ever talked to.’”
VIDEO
On the latest Film Comment Podcast (55’21”), Molly Haskell, author of Steven Spielberg: A Life in Films, Michael Koresky, editor of the Reverse Shot book Steven Spielberg: Nostalgia and the Light, and FC digital producer Violet Lucca discuss “Spielberg’s big marquee titles and his less appreciated works.”
Spielberg premieres today at the New York Film Festival and screens once more tomorrow night before HBO presents it on Saturday.
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