Spielberg puts feeling into spectacle with an almost religious zest. Like Cecil B. DeMille, he knows how to craft an entertainment. For DeMille, though, entertainment won out. He loved to be crass, was honest about it. He never really sported a higher agenda, I’d say — and if he not so secretly did, bread and circus was still the order of the day.
Spielberg kinda f*cked up.
Now, I love Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). It makes fun of movie fun and may be the man’s best, most balanced cartoon. The follow-up, The Temple of Doom (1984), is a true Looney Toon, not stopping for a moment; but while it’s arguably a darker film, it feels more shrill and like he and George Lucas assembled it from leftover parts (and they did). (Leaner and meaner, Duel [1971], may be the best bit of pure cinema Spielberg did. Or perhaps that was Jaws [1975].) But after Temple went sour for a lot of people, he tried to “say” something. It was inevitable. He grew up. In doing so, he equated art with seriousness, and only the remarkable Schindler’s List (1993) can be said to work that way. The gravity of the subject is too personal.
The moral of the story? When corn is cold, it don’t pop.