War of the Worlds was 2/3 of a great movie. For the first hour, hour and fifteen minutes, the film creates a pervasive sense of dread and hopelessness, the gee-whiz special effects always coincident with aw-shit discomfort. By that I mean the razzle-dazzle of the special effects, or even more the precision of Spielberg’s direction, never outweighs a sense of fear, of terror–of awe. That is exactly what an alien invasion film ought to do; there is a sense of inconsequentiality to the choices the characters make, a sense of hopelessness, of the inefficacy of the individual against much larger forces (bug-eyed monsters here, awe-inspiring aliens in Close Encounters, history in Schindler or Private Ryan).
But that version of Spielberg’s humanism–compassion for the small and helpless (which is why he’s so damn good with the child’s point of view)–unfortunately runs up against his other, more conventional rah-rah version of humanism, where can-do spirit and gumption make things work, by jiminy. And War gets stuck when it tries to graft the two together. Continue reading Spielberg