Steven Spielberg
Jurassic Park

A Sunday evening, a few beers, friends at home. If you don't know what to watch on TV, you risk ruining a childhood myth. This is not the case with Jurassic Park, which remains a giant in adventure cinema, but with some caveats to mention.

Rewatched twenty-five years later, it seemed inferior to my memories. Not in all its aspects. The scenes with the brachiosaurus, which make the park visitors' eyes pop, the t-rex emerging from the pen like a demon from hell... those are masterful. But also the giant with sharp teeth chasing the ranger's jeep, or when it pokes its snout into the kids’ shuttle. These are pieces of Spielbergian cinema mastery, undeniably.

However, many things left me lukewarm. Let me put it better: I saw here certain tricks and shortcomings of the later Spielberg, which I was convinced weren’t present yet at this point in time. For me, Jurassic Park was pure gold. Yet there are various characters that seem like puppets, jokes in questionable taste, and caricatural traits in profusion. Even Grant is, for a good stretch, somewhat of a caricature, as are Malcolm and Hammond. Not to mention Dennis and Gennaro. Many coarse jokes, character traits carved more with a sledgehammer than with a chisel.

Mind you, it's surely the fault of my hyperbolic childhood memories, further reinforced over the years by the maturing adult’s reminiscence - without rewatching - of his myths. Rewatching certain films is a masochistic operation, a scalpel in the heart and head. In this case, it reaches its peak in the more philosophical parts of the narrative. Maybe it’s just me, but they seemed rather insignificant, approximate, superficial from the side of those wanting to exploit the resurrected beasts, but especially from those defending the right to life, the self-determination of nature. Life always finds a way, chaos, the illusion of control. A bit generic as arguments, in my opinion.

They seemed more piercing prompts to me, but they are instead just a simple narrative gloss, not even very convincing, for a work that obviously looks elsewhere. And it does so with a care and a language that revisited today are impressive, indeed. Simple plot and from the outset wisely “unpleasant”, great narrative strength between spectacle and theoretical discussions, between highly detailed science (sometimes a bit of supercazzola, aided by the dubbing) and down-to-earth squabbles between the protagonists. This weave is irresistible, while the philosophical hyperboles seemed weak to me.

There’s a bit of nostalgia for a box-office-record cinema that was still very human, centered on the actors. The mixed handling of special effects, between computer graphics and stop motion animation (the dinosaur animatronics are legendary) is a kind of happy evolution from the ingenious inventions of Jaws. The dinosaurs are on screen for a limited time because the wonder must not fade. In this sense, the t-rex is a very self-centered lead actor, a Marlon Brando. And so it is the excellent Sam Neill, Laura Dern, Jeff Goldblum, Richard Attenborough, and the iconic Samuel L. Jackson that keep the quality high when the behemoths are not on screen. It's a magnificent duet, if you will, because the faces and amazed expressions are the inevitable counterpart to jaws and claws.

Laura Dern was 26 years old and she is marvelous. She widens her eyes and drops her jaw without holding back. Moreover, she is a “woman with balls” before it became trendy. Someone who wants to be a mom and works her ass off, a strong woman who refuses “discriminations in emergency situations” but without making it too heavy. And then there’s that salmon pink shirt, the tied-up hair.

An adventure and entertainment cinema that still, in part, breathes reality thanks to some scenes filmed on Hawaiian islands. Even here it’s a hybrid, between studio parts and others “on the field”. But the general feeling it gives is that of a true cinema adventure on a lost island, not a cold laboratory reconstruction.

An action-packed ending a bit like this, rushed and pushed, with the velociraptors becoming evil geniuses, for a film that I set out to criticize, in part, but continues to hold a non-marginal spot in my childhood imagination in front of the TV and as a man in a movie theater.