RogerBW's Blog

1993 science fiction, dir. Steven Spielberg, Sam Neill, Laura Dern: IMDb / allmovie. How dare they do science!

At the core, this is a very Michael Crichton story. Science is Bad because they didn't ask Michael Crichton (other arbiters of morality may be available) whether something was a good idea before doing it. Also chaos theory blah blah. But there is a thick layer of Spielberg over the top to make the polemic palatable.

This was the film Spielberg was editing while he was shooting Schindler's List; the studio demanded he do something commercial as the price of making the serious film. He later said he'd used "every ounce of intuition on Schindler's List and every ounce of craft on Jurassic Park", and I'd agree that this is a very craft film; every image and sound (oh hello again John Williams) has been carefully set up to produce exactly this emotional response at that instant.

I find that over the years I have been sensitised to this sort of thing, and when I feel it being done to me, I resent it. So when we're introduced to Grant at his dig site, almost the first thing we learn about him is that he Doesn't Like Children; and my immediate response was "oh, right, that's going to be cured". Ellie is Caring and Motherly. Moppets gonna moppet.

But really the Spielberg gets thinnest when Ian Malcolm is on screen. Jeff Goldblum does a game job, but his character is a walking author's message whose job is to be right (but ignored). "You read what others had done, and you took the next step." Yes, that's how science works, you don't actually have to start with putting rocks on other rocks every time you do something. It's a bad idea to bring dinosaurs back because "Nature selected them for extinction"? What sort of pseudo-religious thinking is this?

Though of course I'm biased because like many people I've met the white man who has social capital by virtue of also being good at something that makes money, so that he can express contempt for social skills and get away with thinking of nobody but himself. We've got too many of these people in real life as well as in books and films.

"They're just animals. They're herbivores." Ever met an angry bull?

But ignore the cardboard characters and the preaching, and the effects are great. Not accurate even by the standards of the day; as usual, accuracy was sacrificed for something the boss thought would look better. But we do at least get fast-moving dinosairs rather than ponderous lumps, and each species' introduction (Spielberg's craft, Spielberg's craft) is arranged to set up the audience to be awed, terrified, sympathetic, etc. as the film demands.

I didn't like this film, but I have to admit it's superbly made. I have a black and clinkered heart, and I wasn't moved the way I was meant to be; given how much people raved over this at the time I had expected a whole lot more. There isn't even a post-credits sting.

I talk about this film further on Ribbon of Memes.