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E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial at 40 – a deep meditation on loneliness, and Spielberg’s most exhilarating film

<p>40 years ago this month saw the release of Steven Spielberg’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083866/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial</a> – a film about a stranded alien, the boy called Elliott who discovers it and a bond of friendship that remains as magical and heartbreaking as it did back in 1982.</p> <p>We think of Spielberg movies today as thrilling roller-coaster rides, full of sharks, dinosaurs and swashbuckling archaeologists. Yet for me, E.T. remains Spielberg’s most exhilarating work: a deep meditation on loneliness, friendship and growing up in small-town America.</p> <p>Aided by John Williams’s Oscar-winning score and Henry Thomas and Drew Barrymore’s touching performances, E.T. feels both of its time and for all time. As Spielberg <a href="https://www.contactmusic.com/pages/et2x21x03x02" target="_blank" rel="noopener">once said</a>:</p> <p>I think that E.T. is for the people we are, the people we have been and the people we want to be again.</p> <h2>A child in need of a friend</h2> <p>After the breathless trio of Jaws (1975), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Spielberg wanted to make a more intimate film about his isolated childhood in suburban Arizona <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/steven-spielberg-et-divorce-parents-anniversary-b2063879.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">as he came to terms</a> with the divorce of his parents.</p> <p>At the same time, he had commissioned a script about a suburban family terrorised by a group of aliens with one befriending the family’s son. The DNA of both stories would make their way into this film.</p> <p>Like Spielberg, Elliott is a loner. He’s not playing sport, or going out with girls or getting into trouble. He is introverted and thoughtful. And in need of company.</p> <p>One of Spielberg’s great underrated talents is his direction of children. Many of his films feature young children at their centre – think The BFG (2016), A.I. (2001) and War Horse (2011).</p> <p>In E.T., Henry Thomas and Drew Barrymore as brother and sister Elliott and Gertie bring credibility and pathos to their roles, fitting seamlessly into the southern Californian ‘burb culture recreated so fondly by the director.</p> <p>Spielberg’s grasp of childlike wonder is everywhere: notice how he shoots from the children’s eye level and shows adults only from the waist down.</p> <p>For the first time in his career, Spielberg rejected storyboards and <a href="https://ascmag.com/articles/spielberg-et-the-extraterrestrial" target="_blank" rel="noopener">shot scenes chronologically</a>, allowing Thomas and Barrymore time and space to improvise. The domestic and school scenes (hiding E.T. from the mother, tempting it into the house with Reese’s Pieces, freeing frogs destined for dissection) all feel more real because of this.</p> <h2>And what of our alien?</h2> <p>Before E.T., Hollywood saw aliens as hostile critters intent on planetary carnage. The recent extra-terrestrials in Alien (1979) and The Thing (1982) had caused havoc and trauma.</p> <p>E.T. is different: partly modelled on the facial features of Albert Einstein, it is inquisitive, thoughtful, funny. In the delightful Halloween scene, Elliott throws a white sheet over it as a disguise, and E.T. suddenly spots a child dressed up as Yoda, excitedly repeating “Home! Home!”.</p> <p>From this moment, Hollywood realised the marketing potential of “cute aliens”; whether Ewoks, Grogu or Toy Story’s “Little Green Men”. It is small wonder that Variety <a href="https://variety.com/1982/film/reviews/e-t-the-extra-terrestrial-1200425287/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">praised</a> E.T. as the “best Disney film Disney never made”.</p> <p>The alien plays another role too: it fills the void of the absent father.</p> <p>Paternal lack and the strains it places on families is a familiar trope in Spielberg’s films, from Jurassic Park (1993) to Catch Me If You Can (2002) to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989).</p> <p>All we know is that Elliott’s father is “in Mexico, with Sally”: left behind is a stressed mother and bickering siblings.</p> <p>Some contend that E.T. is a <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/4239568?seq=1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">modern-day fairy tale</a> or <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1982/08/15/movies/l-film-mailbag-is-et-a-religious-parable-073792.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a Christian parable</a>. For others, it is an illustration of “<a href="https://edoc.hu-berlin.de/bitstream/handle/18452/23096/9783631837801%20%E2%80%93%20Echoes%20of%20Reaganism%20in%20Hollywood%20Blockbuster%20Movies%20from%20the%201980s%20to%20the%202010s.pdf?sequence=1&amp;isAllowed=y" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Reaganite entertainment</a>”, upholding the sanctity of the nuclear family but distrustful of bureaucratic interference and governmental surveillance.</p> <h2>Spielberg at his best</h2> <p>E.T. earned US$800 million at the box office. Adjusted for inflation, four decades on, that is still the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films_in_the_United_States_and_Canada#Adjusted_for_ticket-price_inflation" target="_blank" rel="noopener">fourth highest grossing</a> movie ever.</p> <p>For some naysayers, its success was further evidence of the special effects-laden, high-concept spectacle film that was beginning to reign in mainstream film culture. But I think E.T. is much more than that: it is a movie with a heart. The special effects are minimal. What counts is the story, and the boy and his friend.</p> <p>Spielberg’s films are to this day <a href="https://www.indiewire.com/2011/12/critics-notebook-putting-steven-spielberg-on-trial-50244/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">criticised</a> as mawkish and overly sentimental, deliberately engineered to cynically manipulate our emotions. Not so in E.T.: the pleasure is genuine and the tears are earned.</p> <p>E.T. became a pop culture phenomenon. The shot of Elliott and E.T. on a bike, flying across the moon, remains an iconic image. “Phone home” has become part of our lexicon. Its message of peaceful coexistence between creatures from different worlds today seems more appropriate than ever.</p> <p>Aliens stranded on earth are a staple of contemporary cinema, from Under the Skin (2013) to The Iron Giant (1999). And Netflix’s current global hit Stranger Things contains a treasure trove of E.T.’s visual references.</p> <p>Spielberg may have made bigger, louder films, and more historically profound ones, but E.T. endures as his best.</p> <p><em><strong>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://theconversation.com/e-t-the-extra-terrestrial-at-40-a-deep-meditation-on-loneliness-and-spielbergs-most-exhilarating-film-183985" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>.</strong></em></p> <p><em>Image: Shutterstock</em></p>

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“He’s not a cowboy, he’s an actor”: Jane Campion hits back at Sam Elliott

<p dir="ltr">Director Jane Campion has <a href="https://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/jane-campion-hits-back-at-actor-sam-elliotts-sexist-criticism-of-power-of-the-dog/EUZNS3TH6OIMEAAM4TL3HZJXLI/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">called out</a> actor Sam Elliott after he criticised her film <em>The Power of the Dog</em>.</p> <p dir="ltr">Campion called Elliott “a little bit sexist” and a “b****” a week after he slammed her film for being filmed in New Zealand and its theme of repressed homosexuality, claiming she didn’t know anything about the American West.</p> <p dir="ltr">The New Zealand director responded to Elliott’s criticism over the weekend while speaking at the Directors Guild of America awards in Los Angeles.</p> <p><span id="docs-internal-guid-058a9625-7fff-38f0-dcd6-2a2ebc2dab96"></span></p> <p dir="ltr">“I’m sorry, he was being a little bit of a B-I-T-C-H. I’m sorry to say it but he’s not a cowboy, he’s an actor. The West is a mythic space and there’s a lot of room on the range. I think it’s a little bit sexist,” she said.</p> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"> <p dir="ltr" lang="en">Jane Campion responds to Sam Elliott's <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ThePowerOfTheDog?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ThePowerOfTheDog</a> comments: "I'm sorry, he was being a little bit of a B-I-T-C-H. He's not a cowboy; he's an actor. The West is a mythic space and there's a lot of room on the range. I think it's a little bit sexist." <a href="https://t.co/I32wQ8lCiF">https://t.co/I32wQ8lCiF</a> <a href="https://t.co/Tftq4AoXCy">pic.twitter.com/Tftq4AoXCy</a></p> <p>— Variety (@Variety) <a href="https://twitter.com/Variety/status/1502839949212545028?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 13, 2022</a></p></blockquote> <p dir="ltr">“I consider myself a creator. I think he thinks of me as a woman or something lesser first.”</p> <p dir="ltr">Elliott initially shared his views during an interview on Marc Maron’s WTF podcast several weeks ago, when asked what he thought about the movie.</p> <p dir="ltr">“They made it look like those dancers, those guys in New York who wear bow ties and not much else,” he said.<br />“That’s what all these f***ing cowboys in the movie look like. They’re all running around in chaps and no shirts. There’s all these allusions to homosexuality throughout the movie.”</p> <p dir="ltr">When Maron responded with, “I think that’s what the movie’s about”, referencing how it’s heavily implied Benedict Cumberbatch’s character is a repressed gay man, Elliott claimed Campion was out of her depth making a Western.</p> <p dir="ltr">“She’s a brilliant director, by the way, I love her … previous work - but what the f*** does this woman from down there, New Zealand, know about the American West?” Elliott said.</p> <p dir="ltr">“And why in the f*** does she shoot this movie in New Zealand and call it Montana and say, ‘This is the way it was’. That f***ing rubbed me the wrong way pal.</p> <p dir="ltr">“The myth is that they were these macho men out there with the cattle. I just come from f***ing Texas where I was hanging out with families, not men, families, big, long, extended, multiple-generation families.”</p> <p dir="ltr"><em>The Power of the Dog</em>, a Western psychological drama, has been nominated for 12 Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, which has made Campion the first woman to be nominated for best director twice.</p> <p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-62722e99-7fff-5a45-15ba-2fc46d8d2851"></span></p> <p dir="ltr"><em>Image: Getty Images</em></p>

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High-profile horse trainer suspended over disturbing photo

<p><span>An image of top horse trainer Gordon Elliott posing for a photo while sitting on a dead horse has resulted in horror and anger from the public and British racing circles on Monday.</span><br /><br /><span>The Irishman is one of the sport’s most celebrated figures and has apologised for the disturbing image after it resurfaced on Saturday.</span><br /><br /><span>It depicted him sitting on a horse that had just died of a heart attack after a training run.</span><br /><br /><span>Elliott has since been suspended from horse racing, as reported by the <em>BBC</em>.</span><br /><br /><span>One of his most high-profile employers, Cheveley Park Stud, said they are "truly horrified" by the image.</span></p> <p><img style="width: 500px; height: 281.25px;" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7840081/daily-1.jpg" alt="" data-udi="umb://media/a5af72eeb8b8423abfbf5ad18536013a" /><br /><br /><span>Bookmaker Betfair dropped Elliott as an ambassador, saying his actions were not consistent with its "values".</span><br /><br /><span>A scathing statement from the British Horseracing Authority slammed the star.</span><br /><br /><span>"People who work in our industry believe their values — of caring for and respecting our horses — have been deeply undermined by this behaviour," the statement read.</span><br /><br /><span>The BHA said it was "appalled" by the image, saying: "On behalf of all horse-lovers, we say loudly that British horseracing finds this totally unacceptable."</span><br /><br /><span>Elliot defended his actions, saying the incident occurred “some time ago” and the picture was taken while he waited for the body of the horse to be taken away.</span><br /><br /><span>He went on to explain that he had received a phone call and had sat down on the dead animal “without thinking”.</span><br /><br /><span>The Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board is investigating the incident and the BHA said it is "considering its own regulatory options".</span><br /><br /><span>Both bodies have temporarily banned Elliott.</span><br /><br /><span>Elliott has been a Grand National-winning trainer three times, first taking the prize in 2007 with Silver Birch.</span><br /><br /><span>He would go on to train Tiger Roll to become the first back-to-back winner of horse racing's most gruelling jumps race — in 2018 and '19 — since Red Rum in the 1970s.</span><br /><br /><span>He has trained 32 winners at the Cheltenham Festival.</span><br /><br /><span>Tiger Roll owner, Michael O'Leary, is one of the few to come out in support of Elliott.</span><br /><br /><span>"We accept that this photograph was a grievous but momentary lapse of judgement by Gordon," said O'Leary, who runs the Gigginstown House Stud operation and is also CEO of budget airline Ryanair.</span><br /><br /><span>He continued: “and not in keeping with our 15-year experience of his concern for and attention to the welfare of our horses.</span><br /><br /><span>"We all make mistakes, and what is important is that we learn from them and ensure we do not repeat them. We accept Gordon's sincere, profound and unreserved apology and we will continue to support him and his team."</span><br /><br /><span>The Irish Horseracing Regulatory Board has said their investigation will be dealt with "as quickly as possible".</span></p>

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