What we got here is a failure to communicate?
As in many films by Steven Spielberg, War of the Worlds in a huge part is about communication – not just the technical side, which other essays in this series will deal with, but about how things breakdown or success between people, intuitions and other elements.
Along with several other key themes lack of communication appears to be at the core of this Spielberg film where we inundated with a repeated pattern of communication failures from the trivial to the most important.
People do not know what to make of the TV reports from Ukraine, even when the same things begin to happen right in their own back yard. The TV raises questions but does not provide the answers. Then gradually, traditional media fades, telephone cease to work, power to computers, TVs and radios fail. And even when these things operate – such as the early warning system over the car radio they fail to communicate or serve the purpose for which they were intended.
The characters – from the cops in Newark struggling to figure out what it is that stirs underground to stranded drivers staring into the abyss of their disabled automobiles – struggle to get information, sometimes as in the scenes approaching the Athens ferry late in the movie, accept whatever they are told, coming up with conflicting theories as to what has transpired.
But the communication problems go well beyond electronics or even media, but are symbolic of a lack of communication between many of the characters.
As the Tim Robbins character points out very late in the movie, most of the characters in War of the Worlds aren’t “on the same page” with each other.
Right from the beginning of the movie, we are confronted with characters who do not understand each other or can not agree, such as the boss at the dock who wants Ray to work and Ray reminds him of the union rules – which of course prompts the boss to tell Ray: “Do you know what you’re problem is?” and Ray – still on a different page – telling the boss he knows a few women who can tell him.
This unrelenting theme continues when Ray arrives back at his house where he is confronted by his ex-wife and her new husband. Ray and Maryann conflict over the agreed upon time they were to meet, Ray says 8:30, she says 8.
Ray and his son, Robbie don’t communicate at all, a fact that Ray mocks Robbie about, when the boy brushes passed him and heads for the house. While Ray makes some pitiful effort to communicate, even going so far as to tell Robbie the front door is locked, Robbie doesn’t listen, then complains about the door being locked when he reaches it.
The kids don’t communicate with Ray at all, even when they dislike sharing a room while staying with him, Mary Ann hears the complaints, not Ray.
Maryann’s mother obviously wouldn’t want to talk to Ray so Maryann cautions him not to call the house in Boston but rather to call Maryann on the cell phone. Tim avoids communicating by ducking out of the way once Maryann and Ray start up their arguments.
There was even miscommunication between Robbie and his parents over whether or not he had written his paper. Robbie said the paper was written but merely needed to be typed, his parents said he hadn’t started writing it.
Dispute over food – as highlighted in another essay – is also an example of miscommunication in this film, when Maryann points out how Ray has no food and Ray refuses to discuss the matter. Later when he tells his daughter to order food, she comes up with health food, something he doesn’t recognize as food. His ignorance of his family’s tastes extends so far as to not even know that his daughter is allergic to peanut butter.
While it is very obvious that Ray and Robbie are “not on the same page,” the more cordial relationship between Ray and his daughter partly disguises their fundamental lack of communication. Ray and the Dakota character disagree in nearly every area. He believes the splinter must be removed from her hand or it will get infected, she believes her body will push out the foreign invader when it is time (a symbolic foreshadowing of the movies main theme). But Ray even refuses to listen to her when she offers advice on how to reach Robbie – she and Robbie are as in touch with each other as ET and Elliott. And Ray hasn’t a clue as to what her “safe spaces” are about.
This is not to say that Ray is totally devoid of positive communication.
Although his street urchin friends struggle to communication, one talking about sun spots the other mocking him for it saying sunspots don’t cause lightning, Ray seems compatible with them. Ray also seems to be able to communication with the local mechanic over the repair of automobiles, although when it comes to conveying the life-saving message to the mechanic, Ray also fails. He also cannot convey what happened to him when he sees his kids after being in Newark, the conversation extending into their flight from danger where he shouts at them about this not being an attack of terrorists but from something beyond.
Ray and Robbie reach the pinnacle of their conflict on the hillside in Connecticut when Robbie tells Ray he has to let him go. Meanwhile the Dakota character is struggling to tell a woman that she is waiting for her father, and yet the woman refuses to listen and drags her away.
Even as late in the movie as the final scenes, the soldiers can’t hear Ray when he shouts about the birds perching on the alien machines.
We get mixed messages at the ferry where a Frank Sinatra recording ironically talks about ruling the world and making every day spring so everybody can be happy, operators for the ferry tell people not to panic that there is room for all and that the ferry will make more than one trip. This is immediacy countered when the alien shows up and the authorities tell people there is no more room.
Failing to communication with the Tim Robbins character, Ray is forced to kill him.
Perhaps Spielberg is telling us that this failure to communicate, this inability to work together as a human race, has led to part of the problem.
While no one in the movie has anyway to talk to the aliens and the aliens would not likely wish to talk to their food source, the film does depict scenes where things work together. The people trapped in the cage help Ray escape his return to the womb, and in doing so, cooperate in the destruction of the monster. Later, the military kills the monster in Boston by working together.
Of course, the whole experience has brought the family together so that by the end of the film, everybody really is on the same page.