"Ready Player One" by Steven Spielberg. Not a brilliant film, but a film made by genius

"Ready Player One" is a Steven Spielberg film about the world of the future, in which all the inhabitants of the earth spend time in virtual reality inspired by the 1980s, Spielberg’s own heyday as a director. I am sure that this picture is a real blockbuster, designed to remind the viewer that, in fact, all of modern Hollywood cinema started with its creator.

Spielberg invented modern Hollywood, everybody knows it for a long time. However, one thing is to know, and another is to see live confirmations. They have not spoiled the 71-year-old director in the last couple of decades. True, for this period there were glimpses of true greatness: "Minority Report" (and still, not "Close Encounters of the Third Kind"), "Munich" and "Bridge of Spies" (both are not "Schindler's List"). In addition, the masterpieces of the level of the 1970-1980s are not one. More often, the living classic offered the audience impeccable quality samples of the humanistic genre film, a high Hollywood standard. It was so until today, when "Ready Player One" appeared and reminded that it was Spielberg who invented blockbusters as such a long time ago.

Perhaps this is not a brilliant film, but can be seen with the naked eye: this is a film of genius. A fountain of pure energy, in the very center of which the viewer suddenly appears. Already in the first fifteen minutes of screen time, you forget about the existence of "The Avengers", "Transformers", and other franchises that conceptually stand on the shoulders of the same Spielberg. There is so much humor, poetry, paradox, adrenaline and love that it is literally impossible to believe in the age and status of the director. Least of all, this is similar to the veteran’s desire to imitate a fashionable trend. Spielberg is younger than the young.

In order to reanimate the Star Wars, George Lucas had to leave there and retire, as if the old Jedi were in a distant cave. Spielberg in his 71 year rushes like mad, and I want to immediately run after him. In addition, this happens a month after the release of his "The Post" - a dean of neoclassical canvases about liberal values. Like the grandfather of All Hollywood, after serious work somewhere in Congress, he came home, dressed in his pajamas, put on his glasses for virtual reality - and woke up in him as a kid with disheveled hair and a dreamy look.

This is exactly the main character of "Ready Player One", a declaratively free version of the sci-fi bestseller Ernest Cline. Wade Watts (21-year-old Tye Sheridan, actor Terrence Malick and Jeff Nichols, young winner of the Venice Festival) is an orphan living in a poor neighborhood under the care of an aunt sometime in 2045. The name and the fate - like a superhero from the comics, but the life of Wade is every day and boring. Therefore, he, like almost the entire population of the globe, spends time in a virtual space called OASIS - an endless game of whatever you want. There the film takes place.

The director dynamically and unobtrusively introduces the viewer to the circumstances that about a hundred pages are devoted to in the original novel. The inventor of OASIS, the great geek and loner James Halliday (played by his new favorite artist Spielberg, Briton Mark Rylance), passed away, leaving humanity not only his monumental brainchild, but also the main game from now on: the search for the Easter egg well hidden in the virtual reality, to which there are three key-tips. Whoever finds them first, will inherit Hallyday - a multi-billion dollar capital and the entire OASIS.

The hunt for the mysterious Easter egg (which really looks like a giant Easter egg) turned into a cult and literally changed the world culture. Now fashion is determined by the 1980s, in which Hallyday was in love. All the all-power egg hunters — lonely knights, powerful clans and the six-member IOI megacorporation — explore the music, cinema, and games of the 1980s in order to find the secret path to the coveted artifact. Wade and his friends - including.

In OASIS, the nickname Wade is Parsifal, and the somewhat straightforward parallel with the most popular hero of the Arturov epic is obvious. It was Parsifal who was an orphan who found the Grail. His naivety and purity helped to accomplish the impossible, in fact, after cleansing the world from filth. This happens in "Ready Player One", where there is a mysterious wise sorcerer (avatar of the late Hallyday), a beautiful lady in trouble, warrior assistants, an enemy army and a nasty rival king. However, Spielberg has always been an outstanding storyteller who was not embarrassed by the arrogance of the archetypical scenes. He knew how to tell them again, as if for the first time. Probably, not everyone will remember today that he had long since taken the third part of “Indiana Jones” about the Grail. In addition, in the novel Cline, she is quoted more than once.

Stuck is not in originality, and even vice versa. The multilayered post-post-post-modern film universe rejects the very concept of identity. All stories are told long ago, films are shot, songs are sung, and game programs are written. King Kong and Mechagodzilla, Freddy Krueger and the Steel Giant, Robocop and Chuckie can be found on the streets and squares, in deserts and seas, solar systems and labyrinths of OASIS; get into the car from "Back to the Future" and walk to the borders of Tolkien Mordor, meet Duke Nukem, Lara Croft and Kratos. Also, fail at Kubrick "The Shining" and relive it again for about fifteen minutes. And all this under "Jump" Van Halen, "Blue Monday" New Order, "Take on me" A-Ha and other hits of the "golden" 1980s.

Enumerate quotes and reminiscences can be infinite, but the charm of "Ready Player One" is not in the idea of recognizing what one of us grew up on, but, on the contrary, in the magical opportunity to learn them for the first time, relive, return to the state of innocence. Spielberg was one of those who literally created the 1980s, but modestly kept himself from quoting himself. In his copyright-free universe, the delight of the mass culture consumer visually melts into a powerful creative impulse, and the player ceases to be a simple user, becoming the creator of the surrounding world and his own destiny. Escapism here is not condemned and not praised: it becomes a motor for moving forward, despite any obstacles, in defiance of logic, in the name of believing in oneself. A miracle happens - at least at the level of a combination of techniques. Time here becomes space, and sound, image, special effects and acting play add up to a delightfully solid symphony.