June 2006

Talking About the Movies: Demanding Movies

By Frank Beaver

For a variety of reasons, the task of producing films with complicated plots and ideas can be challenging for the filmmaker and for the filmgoer as well. Screenplays meant for mass entertainment usually are developed around structural schematics: expository material, "inciting" incidents that establish conflict and set up protagonist-antagonist relationships, evolving story "arcs" that propel the crises, climax, and resolution.  As the narrative progresses, the screenwriter often will insert new information that further illuminates character motivation and which reveals plot details not previously known.  The technique is called "back story," and is a principal means by which traditionally constructed, well-made films enrich the drama and sustain audience interest. The use of structural schematics especially is suited to motion pictures of standard length: 90-minutes to two hours.

Films that set out to tackle more complex ideas or which contain dramatic strategies designed to persuade might take other approaches, often increasing the running time of the film and using imaginative ways of telling the story and driving its argumentative points home.

What makes for a good "complicated" movie? We can start to figure out an answer by looking at a pair of near-misses—complex films that, despite being well made and admired, for some viewers fell short of their initial promise.

A case in point is JFK (1991), Oliver Stone's controversial dramatization of the plethora of assassination theories that had grown up around President John F. Kennedy's 1963 murder in Dallas. JFK when completed ran on the screen for three hours and eight minutes.

Even in its expansive form, Stone was compelled to employ an unusual concluding dramatic strategy he hoped would convince viewers that Kennedy had been the victim of a wide-reaching political conspiracy rather than a lone assassin. Stone opted for a climactic 45-minute monologue, orated in the manner of a history lecture and delivered in a courtroom by the film's principal character, lawyer Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner). Garrison's interpretation of assassination details and central figures allegedly involved in the "conspiracy" raced forward at breathtaking speed.

Accompanying the monologue was a powerful montage of sounds and images (newsreel footage and reenacted scenes) that bombarded the viewer in a way that recalled the editing of the great filmmaker and Soviet propagandist Sergei Eisenstein.  Full of shock and viscera, Stone's montage was one last cinematic charge toward persuasion.

Undeniably this tour-de-force approach constituted brilliant filmmaking. But it wasn't so impressive as an argument. The loaded information and unrelenting pace in the film tended to overwhelm any opportunity for viewers to assimilate its argumentative points. And for many of the film's critics, it also came across as unfair visual manipulation.

The New York Times critic Janet Maslin summed up her reaction to "JFK" by noting that "The camera races bewilderingly across supposedly ‘top secret' documents and the various charts and models being used to explain forensic evidence. Major matters and petty ones are given equal weight. Without a knowledge of conspiracy theory trivia to match the director's and without any ability to assess the film's erratic assortment of facts and fictions, the viewer is at the filmmaker's mercy" (Jan. 5, 1992).

In any film with a complicated plot and complex thesis, time for viewer reflection and assimilation can become a key factor. Reading a novel, one always can flip back and reread pages to seek clarification of complex plot or character points. Or if readers encounter complexity in the narrative, they simply can stop and reflect on it.

On the other hand, a film surges ahead at 24 frames-per-second with the viewer trapped in its world, with able to exert minimal control over the experience.

These factors figure in recent ambitious films with complex, multiple-character stories that attempt  to cover a "big issue" in depth. In fact, last year's Academy Award race was loaded with such films. Crash is one example, as is Syriana, writer-director Stephen Gaghan's fast-paced, multiple-storied mosaic of Middle East oil, corporate and global politics, greed, and terrorism (to name only a few of the subjects treated in the script). For a verite effect, a large cast of principal and secondary characters come and go on the screen in scenes that often seem random and inexplicit in purpose. We are well into the film before characters' connections to the drama's central issue—oil quest—begin to emerge. Even filmgoers and critics who generally admired the film's provocative take on a complex subject were challenged by its demanding nature.

Chicago Sun Times critic Roger Ebert argued, "We're not really supposed to follow it, we're supposed to be surrounded by it…It is not a linear progression from problem to solution.  It is all problem" (Dec. 9, 2005).

David Ansen, in an opinion that reflected the reaction of many filmgoers to Syriana, wrote in Newsweek: "Sometimes you wish Gaghan would simply slow down and let us linger awhile with his characters" (Nov. 28, 2005). When I saw the film at a theater in Ann Arbor, a viewer in front of me turned to her companion as the end credits rolled and said: "Please tell me what that was about." 

I wrote my doctoral thesis on the New York Times' Bosley Crowther, America's first full time film critic (1940-1967) and an ardent social observer of motion pictures.  As films after World War II became more  idea- and issue-oriented, Crowther developed a timeless axiom for evaluating these films: the power of a great movie, he said, resides in its ability to bring clarity to complex ideas. With that prescient observation in mind, my column next month will look at complicated films that seem to have met Crowther's standard.

Film historian and critic Frank Beaver is professor of film and video studies and professor of communication.