Spielberg Dissection

Steven Spielberg is arguably one of the finest directors of our time. I am going to compare two of his classics, Lincoln and Hook.

           

            To begin, let me tell you a story. A young boy is growing up on the outskirts of Phoenix, Arizona. He is an outsider: Jewish, bad in school, bad at sports. As he grows up, his parents get divorced, and in his mind, the boy always blamed it on his father. The boy is Steven Spielberg, and it is his troubled relationship with his father that connects the two movies above.

            Both Lincoln and Hook capture the trials and triumphs of larger-than-life father figures. In Lincoln, we see a man fighting for the passage of the 13^th amendment, fighting to keep his wife happy, fighting to understand the death of his son Tad. Hook shows us a grown-up Peter Pan who must return to Never-never-land to save his children from Captain Hook. In each of these movies, the father succeeds, though not without being tested first.

            Through these movies we can see that Spielberg has forgiven his father for the divorce that plagued his formative years. (Spielberg learned later in his life that if anyone could be blamed for the separation, it was his mother.) This is one example of how we can learn about directors through their movies.