What is art and cinema if not the stories we tell ourselves to survive? You don’t need me to tell you that Spielberg is a genius, a master of motion. But in here he reveals something even more radical: his own story. Certain parts of this film felt far too private, as if I was invading a part of Spielberg’s memory, but instead it’s handed over to me like a gift. What a witness to privilege. Also somehow simultaneously Spielberg’s cruelest and funniest film in recent memory. What if I told you this was Spielberg’s best film?
We make up our own magic, and our own tragedy too. And then we make art and cinema to amplify them and remind us they’re real. Spielberg could easily be resting on his laurels making large-scale blockbuster adventures, but instead he turns the camera on himself, and in doing so reveals something far more extraordinary than any terrestrial: the damage we do unto one another, and what we do in the aftermaths to keep living.
