Director: Steven Spielberg
Writers: Michael Crichton, David Koepp
Cast: Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, Samuel L. Jackson, Bob Peck, Martin Ferrero, Joseph Mazzello, Ariana Richards, Wayne Knight
Runtime: 127 mins.
1993
Other reviews in this series:
The Lost World
Jurassic Park III
Jurassic World
I must admit upfront, it would be impossible for me to craft anything close to an objective review of Jurassic Park. Released in 1993 (my birth year), this is on the short list of films that have been omnipresent in my life, having grown up with an older brother who worshiped Crichton and Spielberg both. I must have seen it dozens of times, and when a piece of art saturates your childhood, you can't help but sink into every piece of dialogue and camera shot as if it represents how the movie inevitably must be.
All that is to say, I love Jurassic Park with all my heart, but I have a poor idea of exactly how proficient the movie is. Part of that is me, but stepping back to take a look at the film's history makes one realize just how much of that has to do with Spielberg's artistry, both within and without of the film itself.
When we critique a film semiotically, we try to approach a film on its own terms. Semiotics in film just means that our interpretations and arguments need to rest on anything and everything that is within the text of the film--no authorial intent, no critical reception, no fan theories. If it's presented onscreen, we need to take it into account; if it's not, we can't. It's a rigorous way to approach a film, and arguably does the film the most justice of any approach, for better or for worse.
Jurassic Park throws a wrench into the works, as it is one of the first and largest meta-promotionalized films of all time. The movie presents the park as the vision of John Hammond (a Spielberg proxy) who wants to thrill and delight the masses. He wants his park to dominate the cultural consciousness. After everything goes to hell, a scene with Hammond eating ice cream in isolation starts by panning over a wall of merchandise. T-shirts, lunchboxes, pajamas (an identical pair of PJs to the ones I wore as a child...)--these items advertise the park in the world of the movie, but they also advertise the movie in our own world. It's a cross-universe brand.
The advertising potential was so great, in fact, that instead of Universal petitioning McDonald's to include dinosaur merchandise in its Happy Meals, McDonald's was one of the many companies to supplicate themselves to Universal, begging for the opportunity to release a Dino-sized Kids Meal. When McDonald's comes calling, you know you've hit the zeitgeist in a big way.
So says Spielberg at this point in his career: "I feel I have a responsibility, and I want to go back and forth from entertainment to socially conscious movies." With Jurassic Park (whose post-production overlapped with Spielberg's next project, Schindler's List), our most influential American film director does just that; the film manages to be a commentary about the destructive impulse to offer entertainment at all costs, and at the exclusion of all else. It makes that argument by being itself a massively entertaining blockbuster.
Jurassic Park functions as one of the most dazzling self-fulfilling prophecies in film, and that is never more apparent than when considering its special effects. In the way that the film is about the dangers of selling a spectacle without giving that spectacle proper respect, Jurassic Park offers itself up as a watershed moment in effects done right. Even today, a full twenty-two years after its release, the effects aren't entirely unconvincing. They have aged well. Sure, the initial CGI landscape of brachiosaurs looks a bit cartoonish, but the masterful T-Rex attack sequence is a seamless blend of CGI, animatronics, and puppets. That T-Rex doesn't feel floaty or inconsequential. It is there. And by the end, when a pair of raptors are prowling through the kitchen in search of their prey, you can't help but accept the creatures (or as Spielberg preferred to call them, animals) onscreen. How can this be, when the cutting edge effects in contemporary movies hardly have a chance to make it to Blu-ray before they look dated and unflattering?
Jurassic Park's use of computer generated imagery is an exemplar of a phenomenon that Crichton pays much lip service to in the novel: paradigm shifts. The filmmakers started production thinking they would be using stop motion and go motion to create the dinosaur shots that couldn't be captured with animatronics. However, Spielberg decided to consult with a company called Industrial Light & Magic on a particular scene that involved a flocking herd of gallimimus. ILM had been on the scene for a while, but their up and coming computer imagery technology was what Spielberg sought for the herd. The idea was that computers are good at replicating things, so it might be a tool decently suited to creating the dino group shot Spielberg wanted. Not only did this test footage go over well, but the story is that a second demonstration was created without anyone's knowledge or permission--a demonstration of the running skeleton of a T-Rex. Between these two demonstrations, Spielberg sensed the future. He committed to far more CGI than initially thought plausible, and ILM (heretofore only known for creating the comparatively simpler water and chrome effects from The Abyss and Terminator 2) became the industry's new hot commodity. Not that it wouldn't have happened in some form or another anyway, but in our universe Jurassic Park would be the film that forever changed how we think of blockbuster movie visuals. Indeed, until this movie, CGI was so off the map that the promotional trailers didn't feature any CGI shots, or even mention that CGI was involved--both to let the dinosaurs be a surprise in the theater, and because CGI was disrespected and distrusted by the masses. Imagine that.
Even now, Jurassic Park remains one of the most artful uses of CGI. The graphics are subtle, far from the gratuity we're used to. Everything is tempered with Spielberg's signature coyness, and balanced with an incredible life-sized animatronic T-Rex (and people in raptor suits and stuff). It's no small wonder that Hollywood learned all the wrong lessons from the movie's record breaking box office numbers and went on to overexpose the very spectacle that Spielberg cherishes so dearly.
Other than that brilliant spectacle, though, does the movie have any meat on its bones? I have no issues with the structure of the plot. The movie takes its time setting up the pieces, which isn't a problem as they all pay off later on. The pacing becomes sublime the moment the park's security system shuts down. I don't even mind the somewhat nonsensical deus rex machina at the end. I can't begrudge the movie that earth-shattering final roar.
What about the characters? It's hard for me to say. I grew up with them, after all. In my mind they are the paragon of popcorn entertainment, and far better than the buff-white-guy faceless protagonists we are accustomed to now. If you go back to 1993 reviews of the film, however, a lot of the write-ups (including Roger Ebert's) will praise the effects work and sense of wonder before proceeding to take potshots at the flat, cookie-cutter characters. If I don't see that, is it on me? Even if Hammond's team is better than much of the dreck we are used to putting up with in popular cinema?
The only character with a fully-realized arc is protagonist Alan Grant (Sam Neill). He acts as an audience surrogate with his near-religious awe at the sight of these animals, and his wish for there to be no children in the movie (the kids (Joseph Mazzello, Ariana Richards) aren't great, but they're far less grating than they could be). He is forced into taking care of these kids by catastrophic unforeseen circumstances, and by the end of the movie he has cottoned to their presence. This arc is more than just a curmudgeonly digger learning to open his heart to the wee folk. When Grant is sitting in a tree with Lex and Tim under his arms and he drops his prized raptor claw to the jungle floor, we realize that his arc is really about abandoning his obsession with the long dead in favor of love for the living people in his life. Neill plays the entire arc with pathos, humor, and tenderness; he hits all the right emotional beats without making any of them saccharine. If the dinosaurs are the face of the movie, Alan Grant is the heart.
Several of the side characters have basic arcs too. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) in particular puts in an ingratiatingly charismatic performance as the guy who comes along to say "I told you so," but then learns that being right all the time is not the most desirable thing in the world. His bright-eyed mischief twists into trauma and foreboding. So it is with John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), who Spielberg goes easy on (the character gets eaten by Compys in the book), but whose ice cream eating scene mentioned above is quietly heartbreaking. Ellie Satler (Laura Dern) has an arc that consists of... ah... being happy about Alan Grant's arc. She really isn't as dynamic as the rest of the characters, but she is a capable, consistent presence from the get-go, and she fires off some great lines about "sexism in survival situations" to the archaic Hammond. She also plays her "big pile of shit" scene with fantastic nonchalance.
Then there are the characters who are not given arcs, and are instead asked to be those most noble of sacrifices: dinosaur fodder. Robert Muldoon (Bob Peck) and Ray Arnold (Samuel L. Jackson) are particular fan favorites, spinning iconic characters out of very little material. Muldoon's droll declaration of "No. We can't [make it]. We're being hunted." manages to be both soothing and terrifying at the same time, and you can't ask for a better button to your character's life than the famous epithet, "Clever girl." Samuel L. Jackson's chain smoker has a more difficult job, as he functions mostly as a walking exposition dump, but Jackson somehow manages to deliver this charismatically. I even found one old review in which the only name listed under "Cast" was Jackson's.
Then there's Dennis Nedry (Wayne Knight), the character that is so disrespected by everybody, the filmmakers included, that when he slips and falls down a rocky waterfall, you can hear a banana-peel-slipping slide whistle in the background. If there is a weak character among them, this is it; the film mercilessly portrays Nedry as an incompetent beta male caricature. That being said, I can't help but love the guy. His sweaty bumbling monologue about going to the snack machine is so obviously a lie that he only gets away because nobody takes him seriously, and his hurried desperation-fueled interaction with the Dilophosaurus is the funniest thing in the movie that does not come out of Ian Malcolm's mouth.
None of this is Oscar-worthy character work, but you know an action thriller has done an admirable job when you care about and remember the names of all the characters. I certainly can't remember anyone's name from the sequels. Anyone at all. And I just watched one last night.
John Williams delivers yet another iconic score. Not one of his best, surely, but it busts you over the head with wonder exactly like it's supposed to. My favorite part is the ominous drum and choral bit that plays over the opening credits. It feels ancient and menacing, like something out of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Almost as menacing as the cutting out of the score during the white-knuckle T-Rex attack. Whoever made that decision knew that no matter how good your score is, sometimes the absence of music is far more effective than any sort of presence.
I would be remiss if I ended this review without mentioning the aspect of the film that most held my attention this viewing: Dean Cundey's cinematography. This guy managed to make a static shot of a plastic cup of water one of the more iconic moments in modern film. Then he tops that very shot later in the film:
http://38.media.tumblr.com/6f165ea9920b22b388a33186b676ce52/tumblr_mk541hCcH81rher6bo1_400.gif
That's not all though. The shots that captured my attention were Cundey's tracking shots. Again and again and again we get lengthy takes that track over the scenery, or from character to character, as lines are being delivered or as the soundtrack sets the tone. Again, I return to the aforementioned tracking shot over colorful merchandise that lands on a morose old man eating ice cream. Or a shot where a raptor's tail knocks some pots and pans onto Tim, who has to scramble to safety as the raptors investigate the noise in the background. The former shot expands the mise en scene and sets the mournful tone, whereas the latter shot ramps up the tension. Spielberg and Cundey take time with their shots, letting them breathe, allowing them to set up for maximum impact. I try to imagine a shot with all these moving parts and set-ups and payoffs in something like a Transformers movie, and I simply cannot.
It's not just the tracking shots either. Spielberg knows how to pick up the pace and set the rhythm when necessary. One skillful escalation in particular caught my attention. As Dennis Nedry is putting his plan into action, he is waiting outside a locked glass door for the security camera to shut down. He watches his stopwatch, suspense building... finally the security camera clicks off and the door pops open. Cut to a close-up of Ray Arnold's hand flicking open a lighter, snapping a flame into existence, and raising the light towards an unlit cigarette that peeks into frame. In the moment before the flame touches the cigarette, his computer terminal begins beeping, and the camera swings over to observe a graphic of the security fences deactivating. "Ohhhh what the hell, what the hell, what the hell," Arnold intones.
It took a lot of words to describe that sequence of shots, but they play out over the course of a few seconds. Boom boom boom boom boom, clear cause and effect punctuated at every step by tangible sounds and visuals. I've seen this movie countless times, and that five second stretch still manages to ratchet up my anxiety. It's in the little details, like that unlit cigarette hanging from Arnold's mouth as he explains the situation. Cutting to the act of lighting interrupted places such great significance on the idea that this chain smoker is so distracted and concerned by the new development that he doesn't even think to finish lighting his cigarette until halfway through the scene.
I started this review by talking about the big stuff, and ended with the little stuff, which is maybe as it should be--it demonstrates that Jurassic Park is quality all the way down. Spectacular and slightly less than perfect, this movie is a worthy entry in the filmography of a man who has done more to change the landscape of Hollywood than any other in the past fifty years.
4.5 / 5 BLOBS
No comments:
Post a Comment