Many creative people often follow artistic trajectories similar to three-act/ narrative arc structures so fondly promoted in scriptwriting seminars & (after being dumbed down) prevalent in stereotypical, mainstream Hollywood movies. So it is that many directors nearer the end of their film making lives than their start are often portrayed as being in a creative decline. The careers of three of the great so-called movie brats of the 70s provide interesting & contrasting examples of what later artistic endeavours can look like.
Steven Spielberg is widely revered as a film making genius, one of the few directors alive or dead whose name is known by pretty much all cinema-going audiences. His grip on the popular imagination with movies such as 'Jaws', 'Close Encounters of The Third Kind', 'E.T.', 'Jurassic Park' and the Indiana Jones movies - which between them pretty much defined the blockbuster era - is extraordinary. He has his critics of course, people who accuse him of being overly-sentimental or pandering to cheap populism, criticisms that I personally think have some basis in truth but perhaps ignore the greater marvel of being able to spin a fairytale like 'E.T.' and have as many people emotionally engage with it as they do. He's also long evinced a desire to be taken seriously, starting with 'The Color Purple' (sic) and leading to awards recognition for 'Schindler's List', a film that I think is certainly extraordinary in parts but which is ruined by the, um, overly-sentimental ending. In the first half of the last decade, Spielberg experimented with darker material than previously, leading to the posthumous Kubrick "collaboration" 'A.I.' (one of my favourites) and 'Munich' (a gripping meditation on morality, violence and retribution that's still my favourite Spielberg movie). Since then however he's made a fourth Indiana Jones (which felt like a joyless, almost unwatchable, cheap retread of the iconic original trilogy) and 'The Adventures of Tintin', which is entertaining, forgettable and which owes much of its worth to, well, Indiana Jones. Yesterday, while watching 'War Horse', I found myself looking at my watch every thirty seconds or so in the first quarter of an hour. The first three quarters of an hour - until the first sequence in WW1 - felt interminable and I sat wondering about leaving and maybe coming home and reading the paper. The sequences in the war itself were superb (shades of 'Saving Private Ryan' here) but the interstitial scenes felt completely contrived and lacked any resonance; the film as a whole felt like a Spielberg knock-off made by a jobbing hack (as opposed to the fantastic homage 'Super 8' made by superstar-in-the-making J. J. Abrams). The ending was moving, but - despite being moved - I found it ridiculously treacly. The most curious thing about the movie was its ability to waste extraordinary actors (Liam Cunningham, Eddie Marsan, Benedict Cumberbatch) in what were virtually bit parts, but Spielberg's name is obviously such as a draw that he can understandably work with anyone he likes. I'm not stupid enough to think that Steven Spielberg's not going to make another classic at some point, but his recent run of form does indicate a serious late form decline similar to Woody Allen's and perhaps one to be likewise punctuated with just the odd flash of the old magic.
Born of the crumbling studio system, with an encyclopedic knowledge & love of movie history and cementing his position as one of the first modern American auteur directors, Martin Scorsese exploded into the film world in a big way starting in the '70s with 'Mean Streets', 'Taxi Driver' followed later by 'Raging Bull' and 'Goodfellas'. Has age mellowed him? I don't really doubt it. But whereas many deride 'The Age of Innocence' as a pseudo 'classic', Spielbergian-style shot at Oscar glory, each one of the six times I saw it at the cinema, I watched a gorgeous movie about tribalism that reinvigorated the costume drama while retaining its directors familiar obsessions with people trying to find happiness while trying to conform to society and its expectations. A late, similarly criticised movie was 'The Aviator', which is still my favourite Scorsese picture; it's a beautiful story of ambition, iconoclasm and the price of success - I cried the second time I watched it during the H1 test flight because I'd never seen editing or storytelling anything like it. Scorsese of course did eventually win his Oscar, for 'The Departed', which to my mind was fantastic film making, but relatively minor Scorsese. Do any of these films have the invention, youthful exuberance or vigour of his seminal works from the '70s? No, not really, but what they do have is a craftsmanship that only a filmmaker with experience, wisdom and true mastery of his gift can muster. I personally found 'Hugo' frighteningly dull, but I'm gratified by the warm reception it seems to have received from everyone else who's seen it; Scorsese still has many, many movies on his slate and clearly isn't frightened of adding new tools to his formidable arsenal.
Francis Ford Coppola will of course be forever associated with the Godfather movies and 'Apocalypse Now', possibly the ultimate statement in movie making ambition. The 70s is also his most famous decade, pretty much bookended by those movies, with the Palme D'Or-winning modern classic 'The Conversation' released between Godfathers almost as a light relief, side project and his mentoring of George Lucas resulting in the latter's 'THX-1138' and 'American Graffiti'. The 80s saw Coppola trying unsuccessfully - mainly as a result of the commercial failure of 'One From The Heart' - to wrestle control of his career from studio interference and set up independently, eventually resulting in the where-have-I-heard-that-before 'Tucker: The Man and His Dreams', a biography of a dreamer trying to set up his (car) business in the face of well-funded establishment opposition. The 90s saw Coppola reduced to a director-for-hire on such movies as 'Jack' and 'The Rainmaker', which - while moderately entertaining- is still a John Grisham adaptation. Perhaps inspired by his daughter's burgeoning film career (which in itself seemed to ape the elder Coppola's need to take care to avoid entanglements with major studios) Francis Ford Coppola seems to have reinvented himself as the ultimate independent. Having not seen it, I can't comment on 'Youth Without Youth' but 'Tetro' felt like a film made by a director a third of his age (meant in a good way) and yet was a movie that had artistry, ambition, fearlessness and energy to spare, showing a vitality not seen since 'The Conversation' in 1974. And in his 70s, Coppola seems to have found himself in the middle of a creative renaissance. In some ways, he offers the most positive example of the creative liberation possible for an artist in their later years.
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