My little filmmaker often wants to see a movie to celebrate his last day of school. This year we had the pleasure of seeing Disclosure Day and, after leaving the movie in the silence that follows something that really touches you, I felt compelled to re-watch Close Encounters of the Third Kind and think through some of the things Steven Spielberg is wrestling with and what he wants to tell us. There will be no spoilers here, just me on a journey to understand the humanity and art behind all of it.

Spielberg as Filmmaker

I am a fan of Spielberg’s, but not a super fan. Unlike my ten-year-old son, I cannot name off a list of his credits without having IMDB actually in front of me, but I’ve watched (and enjoyed) most of the things he’s made. More importantly (and selfishly) his vision for the world was omnipresent in my childhood. E.T. the Extraterrestrial was probably my first exposure to his work and we still watched and re-watched Indiana Jones films on VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray (sometimes streaming if no one wants to go find the Blu-ray). Close Encounters was made the year before I was born, but you couldn’t grow up in the 80s and not see it somewhere. His work was so ubiquitous I didn’t even think about the craft behind it until watching The Fabelmans last year (and having my son watch the first half so he could see what he might be in for in the future).

Because there is art in all of this, and it’s no accident he captured our hearts, minds and screens. I think I sensed this with films like Empire of the Sun (which my son hasn’t watched, but there are days I can whistle “Suo Gan” and place myself directly inside certain scenes—hey, is Spielberg the genesis of my obsession with World War II?). Together with Saving Private Ryan and Schindler’s List, these are the films where I start to see the work behind the movie (in a good way) and not just be (only) swept away by the story.

Parallels between Close Encounters and Disclosure Day

I’m not educated enough in the language of film to really break it down (this isn’t the medium where I want to go too far behind the curtain, at least until my son takes me there), but there are strong threads that link Close Encounters with Disclosure Day, ways of framing a view, finding and tuning an emotional pitch (overwhelming us only to pull back hard and let us linger in a single moment).

Last night we were all in awe of the things Spielberg does with practical effects in Close Encounters. I wanted like hell to remember all the images in the montage reveal in Disclosure Day to see if any of those moments made it. Both films can definitely exist in the same universe. And there are crossovers in multilingual communication, people who are compelled or called (and their unbelieving partners), faith in general, the general shape of aliens, trains, tyrannical restraint (one government, one not, which is interesting in itself) and, of course, road trips!

And then there’s the kids. I won’t talk about the parallels here, but IYKYK and if you don’t, go watch Disclosure Day.

The Boy Inside Spielberg

Many have written about the way Spielberg centers a child’s view, and it works, that re-experiencing of the world. For me, it’s also part of the magic of parenthood, because you get to see things fresh and hard and unfiltered and to remember how something small (or big) can shape you forever in ways you may not later remember. Like how the mania Richard Dreyfuss displays in Close Encounters echoes Michelle Williams’ in The Fablemans.

What touched me deeply in The Fablemans was the way the boy was traumatized by the train crash in The Greatest Show on Earth and went home to act it out over and over until he was (mostly) in control of this. I’d love to do a deep dive on trains in Spielberg movies soon, but last night I definitely noticed when Richard Dreyfuss was playing with a toy train in his living room. And that he’s stopped in front of train tracks during a pivotal scene. In Disclosure Day, there is a train scene as well, and I squeezed my husband’s hand so tight as we watched that scene because I could feel myself inside the experience of that little boy still tugging and and playing with the thing that scared him so much, that he knew could scare us too. I dare say this one was the pinnacle of that. I don’t know if I (or my husband’s hand) could handle another. It was awe-inspiring and also I ached for him.

The Artist with Something to Say

It’s that empathetic conveyance that really makes Spielberg an artist. His ability to be in touch with the humanity in himself and to reach out and demand (or beg) us to be in touch with our own. It’s something I experienced when I was pregnant and in the months post-partum—the ability to see all humans for their basic humanity—it was inspiring, empowering, and overwhelming but it changed me in the best of ways. Empathy is gently the subject of Close Encounters and more explicitly (along with faith) in Disclosure Day. And I get it. It’s also what gives me hope, because we need connection right now. With each other, with our own humanity. We need to listen.

My son has a Disclosure Day poster ready to hang on his wall. He hasn’t seen Empire of the Sun yet, but I don’t think he’ll get through the summer without watching it. We’ve been trying to protect his tender heart until he might be ready. Because I hope his heart stays tender in some ways for his whole life, despite how hard this can sometimes be. It worked for Spielberg.

“Darling, something is cracking.” – Maggie Gyllenhaal, The Bride

It’s easy to argue, watching the news over the last decade, that something needs to crack. We’re raising the right questions about racism, misogyny, and broken class structures, but as much hope as those questions give me, the thwarting of progress at every turn simply increases my rage. Somehow I didn’t realize how very angry I was until I watched The Bride with my husband this week on an all-too-rare date night. This review will contain spoilers, but I hope you will read it anyway, because there is no way anything I write will capture the strange energy of actually watching the film.

Who We Belong To

I didn’t think much about ownership and power structures in the films opening scenes as Ida becomes possessed by the ghost of Mary Shelley and starts acting out against her dinner companions (and general decorum) as Jessie Buckley does an extraordinary job of inhabiting three separate characters at once.

But the moment Ida is on the table waiting to be reanimated by Frank and Dr. Euphronius I found myself asking, “What fucking right do you have?” Because they didn’t. Just as Dr. Frankenstein didn’t have the right to make Frank.

One of the most successful parts of the movie is how Frank’s relationship to The Bride evolves from possession to admiration. Christian Bale does a beautiful job in this, portraying a character who is heartless and deeply pained at the same time, and he was able to inhabit a reverence of The Bride as she learned to inhabit herself that is aspirational. Frank loves The Bride as she is and as she will continue to grow.

Because of all of this, I was actually not in love with the scene where she proclaims herself “The Bride,” for the reason that a bride is always in relation to something else, a husband or wife. This insane, wild, powerful, uncontrollable character still defined herself in relation to another. Which is different than being in relationship with another. It felt limiting and the last thing I wanted to see was this character putting limits on herself. I mean, did she hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it?

Bartleby and the Art of Passive Resistance

I remember when Melville House reprinted Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener as part of their novella series. I hadn’t read the story before and I was so enchanted with the power that planting your feet in one place can hold that I bought the “I would prefer not to” tote bag and carried it around for years (until I realized it wasn’t a great look at work).

So I was delighted when The Bride started to quote Bartleby. At first it was a lark, but after the film was over, I realized how that passive resistance is sometimes the first power we feel like we can really hold. And, like a rooted tree, it is strong. It’s no longer my favorite kind of resistance (we have to actively make the change we want to see), but it’s not The Bride’s either, it’s merely an opening into the power she can begin to wield.

As good as this metaphor is, I couldn’t quite get over the wonder over whether the Bartleby timeline was right. Which worried my mind during the movie when I wanted to be fully in the fictional dream. Having looked it up today, I was right that Bartleby came out after Shelley died. But in a story like this, who knows, the ghost of Mary has probably been reading all the best books.

Things I didn’t Quite Get (This Watch)

Speaking of Mary Shelley, the interjections by her ghost did not always work for me. I was open to it at first and understood how her intrusion was shaping the actions and fate of Ida, but there were too many to start and it was a relief in the middle when they faded. There is a lot going on in this film (more on that in a moment) and Gyllenhaal artfully uses repetition to underscore a lot of her major points, so I am excited to see how the layers meld on rewatch.

And while the mob boss storyline helps with the pacing and gives some anchors for the plot, it felt like more than the movie needed. To lift it out would have required some deep reworking, but I would have loved to see what the film was like without this drag.

The Raw Power of Not Giving A Fuck

The Bride is loud, in every aspect off the word. The imagery is brash (often employing strange camera angles to further unsettle the audience), the music and plot are frenzied, and the acting is deliciously uncontained. I loved every bit of the raw feeling that imparts on the film. Of course it is not actually raw, it takes a great deal of work to put this many big things into a film and have them all (mostly) fit artfully. I wasn’t 100% there for how the movie came together, but I was 98% there and I can’t wait to see what Gyllenhaal does next.

Most of all, The Bride is a creature of impulse, and she is wild in her pursuits and her rage. While I don’t see myself painting my face black and going on a rampage, I sympathized with the women in the film who did, because we have held ourselves back too long.

I remember being told in the eighth grade by a creative writing teacher that I was a “very angry young woman,” and I wonder now why I let that be a rebuke. I was filled with all the surging emotions of a teenager and also reeling from years of fear and resentment around my mother’s illness. My teacher’s comments only made me more angry, but I also felt like I had to turn that anger inward, because I couldn’t make it go away, but I could hide it. This rage is what ultimately gave birth to my next book, Naked Driving to the Witches’ Graveyard, a project I can only dream of Gyllenhaal translating to the screen.

I am lucky in having the kind of husband who will ask me out on a Tuesday (arranging for the child care himself) to see a movie he knows I desperately want to see but that he really is not that interested in. Maybe next time I’ll be the kind of woman who asks him. Or a group of girlfriends. Maybe it’s time we all stood up and ran after the world we want to see.