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March 22, 2006
Spielberg as historian?
Tim has started initiating me into the exciting realms of "guy flicks". We worked our way through the Godfather trilogy, with interesting discussions on its relationship to Greek tragedies. I couldn't stomach too much more of the gangster genre--Scarface was a little too much for me.
He's also introduced me to the war genre of movies. Right now, we're working through the mini-series Band of Brothers, co-produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. It's a true story of an airnorne unit in WWII, each episode introduced by interviews with surviving veterans from that unit. I get choked up by their stories before the episodes even start. The series is beautifully done. Oftentimes, the color is faded, almost like hand-painted photographs from the same time period. The show uses powerful imagery as well--an Edelweiss bud in the lapel of a dead German soldier, an upright piano in the street of a battle-wrecked village. It's rough going though, it paints a gritty picture of the realities of war (I saw on netflix that it's rated MA, I assume for the gruesome and realistic violence). I've made it through the first three episodes, with seven left to go. Hopefully I can be a brave soldier and make it through all of them.
But it's set me thinking about Spielberg's role as a historian. It seems to me (oh, I hate to admit this since I'm endeavoring to become a historian using words as my medium) that he tells stories through cinema that penetrate people's consciousness more indelibly than stories told merely through words. But then--and I think this is partly why I would categorize him as a serious historian--he connects his movies with story-telling or history-telling by the people who participated in the events he narrates, such as his work with Holocaust memorials after directing Schindler's List, and the interviews with veterans in Band of Brothers, and additionally, on the Band of Brother's website, there's a section for veterans to tell their own stories.
movies | By Tim and Jo | 11:49 PM
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