08. How Do Ridley Scott and Steven Spielberg Film War Differently? | Black Hawk Down IV Classics of Our Century: A Film History of the Twenty-First Century in the Making

Classics of Our Century: A Film History of the Twenty-First Century in the Making

Film Debate

Listening Guide

00:26Cinematography: narrowing the shutter angle and removing motion blur.

02:50The film inherits the styles of Full Metal Jacket and Saving Private Ryan.

06:29Comparing Black Hawk Down and Saving Private Ryan.

12:14Scott never writes his own scripts: he is a visual director, not an ideological one.

13:57Scott’s rivalry with Spielberg.

15:19Black Hawk Down’s God’s-eye view.

18:47Art should not be used to promote a prescribed value.

20:50Classical auteur theory places the human being first.

21:04Black Hawk Down creates a new perceptual structure.

Selected Quotes

Lao Ma: Scott never crossed the director’s boundary to write his own screenplays. He can therefore handle the feminism of Thelma & Louise and Alien, the religious tolerance of Kingdom of Heaven, and the republican spirit of Gladiator with equal conviction.

Ah Wu: What should art seek? The best works express life’s many forms—its unknowability, incomprehensibility, impulses, and stirrings.

Lao Ma: Black Hawk Down constructs no proposition about values; it creates a new perceptual structure through which viewers encounter a new sensation of life.

Ah Wu: I increasingly dislike art that explicitly declares or promotes a value, whether right or wrong. It is boring. Art should not, and cannot, do that job.