Laserdiscs


many other things it is about, JURASSIC PARK is a surprisingly candid attack on Hollywood’s merchandising mentality, a cau­ tionary tale about the conse­ quences of knowing how to sell something before one knows how to handle it with care. (The message is made all the more frightening by the fact that Uni­ versal, on the basis of all the logos and tie-ins glimpsed throughout this movie, obvi­ ously knew how to sell it before it was made.) There are no outstanding


Laura Dern and Sam Neill attend to an ailing Trice rato ps in JURASSIC PARK.


(1970), when a Hollywood movie shot in Peru closes production and leaves behind a dislocated native civilization running around, operating cameras and booms made of sticks and stalks. The sentiment is obvi­ ously more internalized among these people, but Hopper’s film makes an apt double feature suggestion, should you be so inclined. IT’S ALL TRUE is also avail­


able on Paramount Home Video cassette, where its flow as a fea­ ture maybe best appreciated. On laserdisc, it is broken into two all- too-appropriate halves, with Side One encompassing the docu­ mentary portion and Side Two the reconstruction of “Four Men and a Raft” and other loose snip­ pets. The side break is almost too satisfying, making it too conve­ nient to watch either one side or the other. Welles fans will come back to this disc often, but after an initial screening, they may find it unnecessary to consult the pro­ gram often as a whole.


68 JURASSIC PARK


1994, MCA Universal #81409 (VHS-P&S), #82061 (VHS-LB), #41829 (LD/LB-CLV), #41830 (LD/LB-CAV) D/S/SS/CC/THX (discs only), $24.98 (VHS), $44.98 (CLV), $74.98 (CAV), 126m 17s


It was not long after the re­


lease of Steven Spielberg’s eye­ popping JURASSIC PARK (based on the novel by Michael Crich­ ton) that it became fashionable to belittle it as a special effects movie, long on spectacle but short on storytelling. This criti­ cism became even more wide­ spread after the release of SCHINDLER’S LIST (based on the novel by Thomas Keneally), which heralded a born-again Spielberg, a humble artist of responsibility and purpose who offered free screenings to edu­ cational centers, forsaking his former agenda of making films on the basis of their money­ generating potential. Among the


performances in JURASSIC PARK, only good ones, but this does not make it a special ef­ fects movie. The fact that MCA Universal released SCHIND­LER’S LIST on video before JURASSIC PARK brings to light some surprising relationships between the two works. Juras­ sic Park—a resort on an island off the coast of Costa Rica, where living dinosaurs (cloned from blood extracted from prehistoric mosquitoes found in amber) have been bred to stock a zoo for the elite—is, in a sense, not far removed from the Nazi con­ centration camps; it’s a place where officially extinct beings are kept alive, experimented upon, and “purified” by selec­ tive breeding, with science sub­ jugating and controlling the forces of nature by assuming the male role in reproduction. Both films are preoccupied with humans faced with the possibil­ ity of extinction, and both films conclude that, despite human­ kind’s continuous attempts to improve itself by destroying it­ self, “life will find a way.” While JURASSIC PARK seems


a popular preparation for the sobering themes of SCHIND­LER’S LIST, it also acts as a culmination of sorts for Michael

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