It falls to sheriff Martin Brody (Roy Scheider), shark expert Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) and local shark hunter Quint (Robert Shaw) to hunt this menace down.
Man, what a letdown.
JK, this movie is a masterpiece.
I did not get around to watching Jaws until a couple of years ago.
It is a testament to its power that - despite being aware of a lot of its iconography beforehand - Jaws is not undiminished by its imprint on popular culture.
Starting with the sound of water and John Williams’ iconic theme, as the camera travels underwater, Jaws is obsessed with grounding you into the story - down to the sparseness of the credits, which are dispensed with separate chunks that do not distract from what is important in the scene.
While it is associated with starting the summer blockbuster, what sticks out about Jaws is its sense of everyday life - every frame filled with extras, and background conversations.
The film is filled with great bits of found character: Martin’s son mimicking his hand gestures at the dining table; the gossiping crowd at the town council meeting, Hooper and Quint bonding over scars.
And while its scares still work (at least for this relatively fresh viewer), Jaws is as breezy as the season it pokes fun at:
Hooper making faces behind Quint’s back; Brody trying to avoid falling out of the boat while Hooper is taking pictures - and then having to backtrack when Quint arrives on deck with a speargun.
The film is a prime example of economic storytelling, subtly dispersing information and dramatic foreshadowing - one example that stood out to me is during the scene when Brody is reading the book about shark attacks - there is an image of a shark with a tank in its mouth.
Spielberg’s early work is marked by a dark sense of irony, as the filmmaker plays with the viewer’s expectations: When the beach goers are spooked by a hoax, particular focus is paid to one child on a floatation device similar to the one the Kitner boy was on when he was killed.
When the Orca leaves to hunt, the film shifts in tone, becoming more of a heightened adventure tale. The film becomes a triangle of conflicting masculinities - Hooper’s intellectual blue blood, Quint’s older, working class individualist, and Martin Brody.
With his one liners, philosophizing, and actions (crushing a beer in one hand), Robert Shaw’s great hunter is a figure out of time, a mythic monster killer. From his introduction in the town meeting, he is an iconic figure.
Richard Dreyfuss’s Matt Hooper is a study in contrast. Sarcastic, confident in his knowledge, and always wearing his feelings on his sleeves.
Both of these characters offer divergent but believable opponents for the shark - which makes their incapacitation all the more terrifying.
The third act is a terrific example of dramatic escalation - Hooper is disabled, Quint is eaten and Martin is left trapped on the sinking boat.
Famously, the shark is barely shown throughout the movie - during the third attack, it is faintly visible diving below its eventual victim as he tries to scramble onto his boat.
The use of objects - the broken platform during the attack on the fishermen; the yellow barrels during the third act - to signify the shark’s presence are ingenious, and this Schrodinger’s Shark approach allows the filmmakers to have their cake and eat it.
Ultimately, what stands out now about Jaws is how much of an ode it is to the everyman hero.
While the cast is great, it is Roy Scheider as the hydrophobic Sheriff Brody who holds the movie together.
His world-weariness and sense of self doubt give the movie a weight and sense of human frailty, with a touch of laconic humor, that makes Brody feel so real. His shriek of joy when he’s killed the shark is a thing of beauty.
What else is there to say? Jaws is a great movie.
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