It's Only A Movie

The other night, while watching "Primal Fear" with Susan, I quickly began a running commentary pointing out technical errors and plot holes. Susan appropriately chided me, "It's only a movie". That got me thinking about the suspension of belief that underlies the movie watching experience.

The most realistic viewing should be a documentary, then maybe a dramatization of a true story, followed probably by the drama "based on a true story". Then we edge out to pure fiction and further out to sci-fi and fantasy.

But regardless of the degree of reality inherent in the genre, a good movie will grab us quickly and make us want to believe and care about the characters whose lives we are so intimately observing. Even an animated cartoon character can become real to us if the story is appealing enough. Repulsion is the other side of the appeal coin. Some actors, settings and genres we may find particularly appealing or especially repulsive. Some dialogue is so poorly written or delivered that it makes us laugh at the wrong time, thereby straining credulity.

Production values alone cannot make a movie believable, nor can lack of such values destroy belief in an otherwise good movie. The story and acting are much more important. And so is the director, who can botch a good script and accept mediocre performances, or enhance what is on the page and draw out the best acting.

Artistic license is allowed in movie making, but has its bounds. The grammar of film permits certain shortcuts we all take for granted, and the rules are soft enough to allow some experimenting. But if a film goes too far with license or experiments to the point of annoying distraction, it risks calling attention to the unreal artifice of the entire experience and puncturing the balloon of disbelief.

Characters on the screen who seem real cause us to react viscerally. We root for or against them. They stir our emotions We care about them. But they have to remain true to their character. They can and often should change in the course of the movie, but the change has to feel real, based on the character we have come to know in the course of the movie

Sometimes a movie has us in its grasp and then lets us go, by doing something so inconsistent with what has gone before that we cannot accept it. The failed trick ending or even just an ending that seems wrong can cause this let down. Sometimes movies are filmed with alternate endings, both of which are tried out in sneak previews. I suppose if a character has inherent ambivalence, then the ending could legitimately go either way. But if that is true, then maybe the film should end with the character facing the fork in the road while the screen fades to black.

Is this where we came in?

When my brother and I were young kids and able to get a few coins on a Saturday, we could walk to the neighborhood movie theater. In fact I seem to remember one coin, a quarter, was enough for two tickets. As the youngest, it was my job to solicit the money from our step-dad, a task made easier after his first few Olys of Saturday morning had time to work their mellowing magic. Olympia was the beer of choice, not because it was brewed with artesian water, but because it was cheap. The corner grocer knew it was OK to let two kids with a wagon pack a case home on credit, and in payment of our delivery services, movie money seemed appropriate.

We just walked to the theater, without any idea of what movie was playing or what time it started. When we got there, we looked at the posters in front to get an idea of what was on, and then bought our tickets and went inside, where we had to pass through the heavy curtains protecting the aisle from the lobby lights. Once on the dark side, we had to do that walk of faith, with our hands in front like Frankenstein, hoping there wasn't some obstacle in the aisle or maybe an unexpected drop off, all the while knowing how foolish we looked to those already seated with their eyes adjusted to the dark. Sometimes we had to just stand in the aisle until a bright scene exposed the audience long enough for us to get our bearings and grab an empty seat.

The matinees were usually cowboy movies or adventure serials and it was easy to tell what was going on because the plots were all the same, with the heros fighting the villains and ultimately winning. But since we did not start watching at the beginning, for us the victory usually came in the middle of our viewing and then we had to stay for the next beginning and keep watching until we recognized that "this is where we came in". As we graduated to more distant theaters with musicals and dramas, the plots were a little over our heads, which made it harder to recognize where we came in, particularly in the dramas.

Some screenplays are written a little like our matinee experience. The story begins in the middle and then flashes back and forward until we recognize that we have been given the whole thing.  A scriptwriter on a recent special feature I watched said the only flashbacks that are proper are ones that advance the plot. I don't know if I can explain what he meant, but I agree with him.  Starting briefly in the present and then telling the whole back story straight through is fairly common and works well, as when "Citizen Kane" dies with "Rosebud" on his lips, prefacing the telling of his tale. Too much time shifting is often a screen writer's way of trying to mask a weak story.