While fan appear to see Steven Spielberg as something close to infallible, critics have not always been kid to him, despite or perhaps because of his massive popularity. Film critics (whoever they are) seemed to agree that Spielberg's films oozed with style, but for some reason also believed them devoid of content. Such critics presumed a Spielberg film did little than to titillate the masses, but never to enlighten. This is not true of SF writers like Brian Adlis whose admiration for the original Close Encounters - not the special edition - painted Spielberg as a complex director with unique vision for his characters.

I won't pretend to be any kind of Spielberg scholar - nearly everything I have written on him over the last few months comes from casual observation of a handful of films, and not the intense scene by scene study his body of work deserves. And as reluctant to admit this, I have not even seen all of his films once, not even his well-received debut Dual. Any study of Spielberg may well be beyond my ability or wiliness to dedicate the time or finances (though if someone should give me a complete set of his work on DVD, I might try).

Perhaps some of the more critical critics are right in believing that many of Spielberg's techniques for characterization are merely part of a personal formula which he can quickly adapt from film to film, creating an illusion of depth that will enhance what is largely a series of action films. Some critics have even claimed Spielberg sought to make films like The Color Purple or Schindler's List in order to better show his talents as a filmmaker of death, the way the fictional director did sought to make Brother Where Art Thou in one of my favorite films, Sullivan's Travels. I tend to side with Adlis, because there is a pattern to Spielberg's madness, and the devices he uses seem to raise some interesting points and highlight aspects of a philosophy that most Summer block busters lack.

Spielberg's entertainments - as Graham Greene would have called them - seem to make statements despite their so called lack of depth, and a viewer might well be able to divine Spielberg's philosophy on a host of subjects from close observation, covering subjects of heroism, faith, the environment, not to mention questions central to the science fiction genre such as the impact of technology for good or bad.

While some themes are easy to spot such as his 1960s cynical view of suburban sprawl (one reason why he gave the lead adult role to San Francisco Digger Peter Coyote in ET), other issues such as the concept of family leave viewers more puzzled at the end of the film than at their beginning, raising questions that he may wish to have linger in our heads after we leave the theater.

Few aspects of those Spielberg films I've seen so taunt me as his insisting upon endowing his main characters with some quirk, compulsion or undying fear. This was no simple formula or prop but a study, some creating an interesting plot development such as the snakes in Indiana Jones movies, but some are infinitely more complex such as the main character's social discomfort with children in Jurassic Park.

Putting these character traits into neat boxes is not easy task. While you can paint the compulsive behavior of the fisherman in Jaws as a retelling of Moby Dick, where does the compulsive behavior come from in Close Encounters? Can we really blame it on the Aliens as an invitation for the Dreyfus character to - as the pop group Sticks put it - come sail away? Sometimes, as in a Greek tragedy, the compulsion is off stage such as the mysteriously missing father from ET who for some unknown reason hates Mexico, and yet for an equally unfathomable reason, insists on going there.

War of the Worlds is hardly without such a compulsive personality with its main character so obsessed with Mustangs that he not only takes apart one in his garage but hauls the engine up into his kitchen where he fiddles with it. Was it this compulsion that drove his wife into the arms of another man - the way the compulsive behavior of the Dreyfus character (building a mountain out of a mole hill literally in his kitchen) drove his family away in Close Encounters?

Even repeated viewings of Spielberg's lighter films may never uncover all the layers of meaning he has made his films with. Perhaps they have no deeper meaning at all, no real great philosophy, and his films - as one of his characters noted in Jurassic Park - are merely elaborate flee circuses, mechanical institutions that prime the pump of our imaginations and drive us crazy as we struggle to make sense of nonsense.

Perhaps in the end, Spielberg chuckles over our endeavors or hopes we may figure it out after all.