With the 91st pick in the TDOS Cabin by the Lake draft, I select...
Jurassic Park (1993):
Director: Steven Spielberg
Dir. of Photography: Dean Kundey
Writer(s): David Koepp, Michael Crichton
Score: John Williams
Cast: Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough
Genre(s): Science fiction, adventure, thriller, horror
Runtime: 2 hours, 7 minutes
IMDb Entry:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107290/?ref_=nv_sr_1
This is the first truly populist selection on my list, and my second by Steven Spielberg. I’m actually surprised to still find it available this late in the draft. It would seem a shame not to take it, considering it’s importance to my love of film.
Where
Blade Runner informed and clarified my passage into adulthood,
Jurassic Park represents the wonderment of my childhood. It was my very first experience with a film that was crafted with the intent to awe. I was six years old upon its release, and absolutely dinosaur-obsessed, like many boys of that age. And
Jurassic Park worked on me. It felt like it was designed for me. It inspired awe in my six year old eyes and ears, and it still does, whenever I re-watch it. It might very well be the most-watched film in my library, if I had to take a guess. It’s also the film I saw the most during its theatrical run. My father took my brother and I to see it
five times while it was in theaters (as an aside, I wouldn't engage in more than one repeat viewing of a film during its theatrical run again until
Blade Runner 2049 was released over 25 years later).
As with much of Spielberg’s discography,
Jurassic Park contains an undercurrent of trauma that cuts through the fantastical. A throwaway line early in the film clues us into the fact that Lex’s and Tim’s parents are getting divorced, the impact of which isn't truly felt until Lex expresses terror at the prospect of being abandoned by Alan Grant. After the Tyrannosaurus Rex escapes its paddock, Grant squirrels Lex away in a drainage pipe, and before he leaves to rescue her brother, Lex screams at Grant, "He left us! HE LEFT US!!" On initial examination, it appears she's referring to Donald Gennaro, who fled in a cowardly panic when the T-Rex broke free. But it’s hard not to read a greater anxiety over parental abandonment into Lex’s proclamation. Her world is being turned upside-down at home, and it’s being flipped inside-out in the park. Our parents are meant to shield us from harm, and though Lex maintains a strong, confident exterior posture as the tough older sister, she remains a child in need of protection and reassurance. Grant represents that reassurance, and despite his previously-communicated distaste for children, he rises to the occasion: "That’s not what I’m gonna do," he says. It’s one of the strongest moments in the film, and there’s not even a dinosaur on screen!
I could spend paragraphs writing about the impact of
Jurassic Park on the world of special effects. I could prattle on bout how eminently quotable it is. I could ruminate on its place in the speculative fiction canon. I could jabber excitedly about the way it builds tension. But these days, I mostly appreciate
Jurassic Park for its small emotional beats. Hammond waxing nostalgic about his flea circus. The comfort Lex finds in Grant’s fawning over the Triceratops. Ian Malcom's wry laughter on the helicopter. Ellie Sattler's determination upon being reunited with Grant. With Spielberg, so much of our emotional experience is rendered subtext. It often gets overlooked when compared to the spectacle unfolding on-screen. But the pain of loss, the traumas inflicted by that which is outside of our control, is of paramount concern to Spielberg.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind was his attempt to wrestle with the divorce of his own parents, and I think
Jurassic Park revisits that territory to some degree. Though it is surely a science fiction film about the hubris of man in the face of nature, it is also surely about how the wonderment of childhood can be dashed on the rocky shores of parental (and other extra-generational) failings.
PM sent to
@Sluggah .
