Samantha Morton and Tom Cruise in Minority Report
Jesse Pasternack considers the brilliance and importance of Steven Spielberg’s direction in his 2002 sci-fi masterwork.
A body of work like Steven Spielberg’s is practically built to contain hidden gems. He has directed more than his fair share of indisputable classics, but you can’t make over 30 feature films and not have people argue that at least some of them are underrated. Spielberg arguably made more hidden gems in the 2000s than in any other decade. It was a time when he riffed off of everything from Jacques Tati comedies (The Terminal [2004]) to political thrillers of the 1960s (Munich [2005]). But one of his most interesting hidden gems is also one of his first films from that decade, and it also contains some of his best directing. That film is Minority Report (2002).
Released the same year as Spielberg’s sunnier yet no less weighty Catch Me If You Can, Minority Report is a murder mystery set in the near future. It follows John Anderton (Tom Cruise), the commanding officer of a division known as Precrime. With the help of three “precogs,” which are clairvoyant people, he prevents crimes from happening. Anderton takes pride in his job, despite the demons which drive him. But soon everything changes when Anderton sees that the latest vision from the precogs shows him committing a murder.
Tom Cruise as John Anderton
This is an exciting and intricately plotted story, wonderfully written by the respected writer’s writer Scott Frank. But what elevates it to the status of a modern science-fiction classic is Spielberg’s directing. He creates a constant sense of forward motion from the first tracking shot of Anderton fast-walking through the Precrime division. But that shot is just a rehearsal for a later, more complex one which follows Anderton into and out of an elevator. On a technical level it is exhilarating because of its subtly labyrinthine blocking, but it also moves the story forward as Anderton struggles to escape from the Precrime division. It is an excellent sequence and the most conventional evidence for why Minority Report contains some of Spielberg’s best directing.
But my favorite example of why it features some of his best moments as a filmmaker is a minor one, and it is a shot that lasts under a minute. As Anderton comes to believe that he is destined to commit murder, Spielberg and cinematographer Janusz Kamiński film Anderton from a low angle. In traditional cinematic grammar, directors use that type of angle to make someone seem more powerful and imposing, like Orson Welles did in Citizen Kane (1941). But in this movie, that decision to film Anderton from a low angle makes him seem helpless. Anderton’s belief in his dark fate is so strong that it feels like it is weighing the camera down, and makes the rest of the scene even sadder. That shot, even though it is brief and static, shows that Spielberg is constantly thinking of ways to use even the smallest of technical elements to move the story forward and make you feel the characters emotions. For me, at least, that’s the mark of a filmmaker who is operating at the level at which they do their best work.
Minority Report was not underappreciated in its own time. It grossed $358.4 million worldwide, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning film critic Roger Ebert named it as his pick for the best film of 2002. But it deserves greater acclaim as proof that Spielberg is one of our greatest filmmakers. It demonstrates that he knows how to make a showy sequence shine, or get the most meaning out of a small moment. That, amongst many other reasons, is what separates Spielberg from other artists. He is always willing to make the extra effort, and we are all the better for it.
Minority Report will be shown at IU Cinema on April 24 as the final film of the 5X Philip K. Dick series.