The Ten Commandments was well-received by the Academy, and literally could not get less subtle in sheer damn straightforward plainspokenness.
“A city is made of brick, Pharaoh. The strong make many. The weak make few. The dead make none.”
“The city that he builds shall bear my name, the woman that he loves shall bear my child. So let it be written, so it shall be done.”
“God of our fathers, who has appointed an end to the bondage of Israel, blessed am I among all mothers in the land, for my eyes have beheld Thy deliverer.”
“Thus saith the Lord, God of Israel – Let my people go!”
“Moses has words. Pharaoh has spears!”
“The Lord of Hosts will do battle for us; behold His mighty hand!”
“HIS GOD . . . IS GOD.”
“It is better to die in battle with a God, than to live in shame!”
“Those who shall not live by the law, shall die by the law!”
I’d say that Oliver Stone is rapidly converging on a “least subtle” distinction. I agree with **Nixon **but let’s also not forget W, which was his and Stanley Weiser’s personal depiction of George W. Bush.
I haven’t seen many documentaries mentioned here, but I’m sure that we can all think of politically-motivated and activist ones that aren’t particularly subtle.
B&W was used to soften the brutality and relentless violence..to protect the audience from the full reality of the experience.
SS also didnt make the Nazis out to be cartoon characters. He portrayed them as amoral banal men like they mostly really were. Not all the Jews were heroic.
IRL there was nothing subtle about the Holocaust; it was industrial style mass murder that killed millions. SS did an excellent job if bringing as much humanity as possible into the Holocaust.
Yep - it’s actually his journal he had been writing in.
I just saw it on MGMHD the other night, and boy, does he lay it on. Incredible that it got Best Picture AND Best Director, beating…you know what? You don’t want to know.
One last thing. The youngest of the Schindler Jews died recently; he had been a teacher in SoCal. He criticized Spielberg for portraying OS as being too morally ambiguous and for not showing much of his kindness and the risks he took in protecting his Jews.
Spielberg had it in for the Japanese over the raids on Shanghai as well. It’s not only the basis of his film Empire of the Sun (set in the 1940s), but in the second Indiana Jones film (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom) it’s stated that Indy found Short Round in Shanghai after Japanese attacks in 1932. And I suspect the dealing over the remains of the First Emperor of the Manchu Dynasty that drives that opening section might be tied up in some way with legitimizing the Japanese control of Munchukuo, which they had been trying to control for decades and actually invaded in 1931, seven years before the film.
I love that march. Did you know that Spielberg actually dusted off his clarinet and played on that soundtrack recording. He felt the march was a little too perfect. So played in the clarinet section.
Empire of the Sun is based on the novel of the same name by J.G. Ballard. It’s a biographical novel. J.G. Ballard was a British kid living there and was captured by the Japanese.
Stevie wants it that way, too. I want my admission money back.