Spielberg is a documentary by Susan Lacy available on HBO and its streaming platforms. It’s presents and pays respect to an enormous body of work by the most commercially successful and recognizable director of the last 50 years. From inventing the summer blockbuster with Jaws, or launching franchises that are still ongoing like Indiana Jones or Jurassic Park, or crafting masterpieces like Schindler’s List, Steven Spielberg’s contributions to cinema have been, in a word, unmatched.
Lacy approaches Spielberg and his body of work in a particular way. Its approach is warm, but not worshipful. It engages critically, but through the words and perspectives of the people who love Spielberg the most, or Spielberg himself. It’s like a cinematic memoir of a filmmaker who is honest about his shortcomings and has the benefit of hindsight. The documentary begins with a chronological approach, showing Spielberg growing as a filmmaker. Just when it feels like the chronological approach is growing cumbersome, the film smartly pivots to a thematic approach, putting films together by genre and highlighting how Spielberg approaches movies that are political, science fiction, or fantasy. It began to highlight the ways that events in Spielberg’s life mirrored the themes that emerged in his films.
Because he has been making films for so long, it is possible to go even deeper, and this film does that, asking not only about themes that encompass all of his works, but about the changes over time in Spielberg’s vision, imagination, and creativity. What causes these changes? What stays the same? Ultimately, this documentary is an exploration about how an artist can use a medium and propel it forward while simultaneously evolving himself. As Jaws redefined the blockbuster and Jurassic Park showed what was possible with computer effects, Spielberg came to terms with his parents divorce through E.T., and to his Jewish heritage with Schindler’s List. What makes those films so resonant is his own evolution as a person, which is simultaneously deeply personal and universally resonant.
What emerges finally about Spielberg’s entire body of work is that they are all about people and things that are separated that are ultimately brought back together. With few exceptions, each of Spielberg’s films are about families or relationships that are incomplete, or have been broken and need to be reconciles; whether that family is a literal family like in E.T., a whole nation as in Lincoln, or both in Saving Private Ryan.
As Christians, we can certainly relate to the need for reconciliation between people, families, churches, nations, and everything in between. God’s mission in Christ was one of reconciliation, and the world yearns for it. We profess that we are made to be in community and that sin causes brokenness. It matches this sensibility, then, that film’s most prolific story-teller in the last 50 years would be constantly telling stories about reconciliation, and that people would be streaming to see it. Spielberg invites us to see these themes emerge and move one man through his own journey of reconciliation to self and to his family. It encouraged me to engage more in story-telling as an act of reconciliation.
