Word: spielbergisms
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...professional cynic emerged from a Manhattan screening of the film last week and confidently announced, "$350 million." But the gleam of moisture in his eye said something else, something everyone else will soon be able to discover: that E. T. is a miracle movie, and one that confirms Spielberg as a master storyteller of his medium...
...warning against trying to build a mobile modern life over the . unquiet graves of the past. The picture can also be seen as a sly comedy supporting the proposition that violence on TV-or, more precisely, in it-can have a dire influence on children who watch it. (Spielberg calls Poltergeist "my revenge on TV.") Whichever, when the demons escape the TV set, careering around the room like puffs from a deranged steam engine, the little girl turns to her parents and blithely announces: "They're here!" Right inside the mind of a sensitive child...
...biographies of Ronald Reagan and furrows his brow to watch his hairline recede. Mom (Jobeth Williams), early 30s, keeps house, sings TV beer jingles and tucks in her son under a Star Wars bedspread. If this seems the derisory stuff of sitcoms, it is not. "I never mock suburbia," Spielberg declares. "My life comes from there." He likes these people and communicates that affection. Faced with balky children or a restless preternatural presence, the parents demonstrate their go-with-the-flow resilience. And when things get climactically hairy, these people can be roused to fear and anger, can summon reserves...
...Spielberg's heroes, whom he sees as extraordinary, are children. At the emotional center of each new film is a trio of siblings: a teenager, a nine-or ten-year-old boy, a fair-haired preschool girl. To the awful pull of the forlorn or malevolent spirits residing inside the Poltergeist house, each child is differently attuned. The teen-age girl is too involved with growing up to take much notice; the boy, Robbie (Oliver Robins), can be reached only on the frequency of fear; but the five-year-old, Carol Anne (Heather O'Rourke), is unaware...
...Spielberg world, there is a reason for this. Children, creatures of innocence and intuition, evolve a fantasy life-their real life-that personalizes everything around them. Machines become toys, toys are animated into pets, pets turn into near-human friends, and all play crucial roles as the saints and dragons of a child's deepest dreams. In Poltergeist, Carol Anne talks to "the TV people," and they talk back; they even play with her, to malefic effect. But Spielberg, as he demonstrated in Close Encounters, is no kidnaper. What he takes from the audience-in thrills, anxiety, even children...