Jaws

I think the most horrifying thing about this movie is not the great white itself, but the tragedy. From the woman who lost her son, to Quint’s war story, every event is illustrated through shark attacks given free roam by the seas. It’s not a flaw to notice that people would not be bothered by sharks if they didn’t bother them, but rather an observation of the flaw of humans, who constantly decide the fate of every living thing they come across. It’s a critique of the cruel world that business and money and power has created, where a mayor cannot value life over a dollar. Where a police chief cannot bear to stand up to the powers that his job depends on, until those powers are gutted by the very thing that they let continue. There’s a tragedy and terror in the way that we let things go, because nothing bad could ever happen to us. And what if nothing did? Is the life of someone else so insignificant to us, that we feel it’s right to reassure ourselves that their pain and death is meaningless, because they’re not us?  An incredible and haunting film directed by Spielberg, I think I definitely need to start getting into more of his work.