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30 SOUTH PHILLY REVIEW I October 13, 2011
More than moviemakers
Movies
These eight directors have dedicated their careers to delivering powerful messages from behind the camera. R. Kurt Osenlund Movie Reviewer
P
eople often talk about how they turn to movies to escape, and that’s certainly part of the thrill of cinema, but its greater function is to shape the way we look at the world, and the greatest filmmakers have the ability to shape the world itself. Here are eight inimitable maestros who, through their work, have managed to do just that.
Steven Spielberg
It’s impossible to not be wowed by Spielberg’s filmography. Responsible for providing audiences with a library of mainstream classics (“Jaws,” “Close Encounters,” “E.T.,” “Jurassic Park,” and on they go), Spielberg is a titan of contemporary popular cinema. On the flip side, though, he is also a brilliant maker of issue films. He has Steven crafted accessible — Spielberg albeit divisive — movies on historical struggles of blacks (“The Color Purple,” “Amistad”), riveting meditations on war (“Saving Private Ryan”), and most memorably, vital expressions of Jewish experience. In addition to driving the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, and directing the Oscarnominated “Munich,” he delivered one of the definitive films on the Holocaust with “Schindler’s List,” helping to ensure that the unspeakable is never forgotten.
Michael Moore
You may hate his methods and extremist tendencies, but documentarian Moore is a patriot with a camera, willing to turn any stone and push any button to get the answers he seeks. To be sure, the final cuts of his films are the results of much subjective editing, with the truth shaped and molded to his leftist specifications, but there Michael is always a noble goal Moore that gleams through the
provocation, a largely nonpartisan justice begging to be served. Be it hounding former NRA head Charlton Heston about gun laws in “Bowling for Columbine,” or exploring the particulars of post-9/11 theories in the unmissable “Fahrenheit 9/11,” Moore has a sure talent for prying eyes open as he pries into lives, hitting the streets as a (very loud) voice of the people.
Gus Van Sant
Ang Lee may have ushered gay romance into the multiplexes with “Brokeback Mountain,” but if there’s one filmmaker who’s made substantial strides in the representation of homosexuals on screen, surely it’s Van Sant, who broke through in 1985 with “Mala Noche,” then became one of the leading figures of the New Queer Cinema movement. Openly Gus Van Sant gay himself, Van Sant hasn’t strictly adhered to telling gay stories (you’ve seen him in fighting form with such hetero titles as “Good Will Hunting” and “To Die For”), but he’s helmed multiple films that are sacred to the LGBT community, namely 2008’s “Milk” and, certainly, 1991’s “My Own Private Idaho,” a seminal movie for many sexually struggling Millenials, and the best evidence of Van Sant’s poetic gifts.
Jafar Panahi
Perhaps the most important Iranian filmmaker, Panahi became a mainstay on the international festival circuit after his 1995 debut, “White Balloon” won the Camera d’Or at the Canne Film Festival. But in 2010, amid the aftermath of the infamous killing of martyr Neda Agha-Soltan, Panahi was arrested on unspecified charges, sentenced to six years Jafar Panahi in jail and forbidden to make films for two decades. He has since released inspiring letters to an ardently supportive film community, and this year’s Cannes fest featured his latest work, “This Is Not a Film,”
a compilation of documentary footage he shot before going to prison. Panahi is an unfortunate symbol for the importance of expression and the freedom to tell stories, an his undaunted outlook is a testament to the power of creative drive.
Spike Lee
Forget Tyler Perry. For more than 25 years, Lee has been the most important voice in modern black cinema, tackling race relations like no other filmmaker before or since. His 1989 masterpiece, “Do the Right Thing,” is one of a handful of indispensable movies on the topic, and subsequent films like “Bamboozled” saw Spike Lee their flaws eclipsed by a searing analysis of the ways that cultures clash in American society. A provocateur, Lee has gotten flack for his comments off screen, but nevertheless, what he says with his work is almost always worth hearing.
Paul Greengrass
Five years after 9/11, many complained it was too soon to furl out responses to the tragedy on the big screen. In the case of Oliver Stone’s “World Trade Center,” which sugared the tale of the most fateful day of our time like it was just another tentpole throwaway, they were certainly right. But when Paul it came to Greengrass’s Greengrass “United 93,” which captured the breadth of the day’s panic but narrowed its focus to those on board the doomed flight that crashed in Pennsylvania, they were presented with proof that every sensitive subject just needs the right artist to interpret it. Scary,
fair and, above all, heroic, “United 93” was the topical film the nation didn’t even know it needed.
Kathryn Bigelow
Long known for crafting adrenalinefueled action movies as deftly as any man, Bigelow, director of “Point Break,” scored a double feat in 2009 with the release of “The Hurt Locker,” which emerged as the finest film to be created about the Iraq War and made her the first-ever female recipient of the Kathryn Best Director Academy Bigelow Award. Not one to rest her laurels (or limit her challenges), the 59-year-old game-changer is now back in the fray, following her breakage of the glass ceiling with a buzzworthy, controversial war drama about Osama bin Laden.
Jean-Luc Godard
One of the most influential directors of all time, French New Wave visionary Jean-Luc Godard changed the world of motion pictures in 1960, when he released “Breathless,” an unapologetically youth-driven anti-establishment film that ignited the creation of American landmarks like “Bonnie and Clyde,” Jean-Luc and the acting careers of Godard Jean-Paul Belmondo emulators like Warren Beatty and Jack Nicholson. Along with colleague Françlarge part, we have him to thank for the rich and original stories told by the other filmmakers in this list. SPR Comment and see the trailers for this week’s movies at www.southphillyreview.com/arts-andentertainment/movies.