Contour At The Movies

Overall Impression – An extremely simple story that makes an incredibly complex film.  The best movie I’ve seen this year.

THE FOUR QUESTIONS

Who’s your main character? – 9-year-old,  slightly autistic Oskar Schell.

What’s he trying to accomplish? – Professional: Find the lock that fits the key he believes his father left for him. Personal: Deal with the anger and alienation he feels towards his mother.  Private: Overcome his fears and learn that life can continue without his father.

Who’s trying to stop him? – Slightly, only slightly, his mother (but this is a deception.)  It’s the enormity of the task that poses the real obstacle, however there is someone whose actions unwittingly send Oskar down many wrong paths early on.

What happens if he fails? – He never connects with his mother and he loses his grasp on the world.

THE FOUR ARCHETYPES

Orphan – Oskar is coping with (most likely) Asperger’s, which already makes him an orphan in a certain sense.  After the death of his father on 9/11 Oskar is orphaned further and most profoundly, as he had the most wonderful relationship with his father in the history of father-son relationships.

Wanderer – Oskar finds a key hidden in his father’s closet which he believes unlocks a message.  Going by the only word written on the envelope the key was in — ‘Black’ — Oskar sets out to find everyone in New York named Black and see if they knew his father and/or know anything about the key.

Warrior – When the enormity of the task starts to overwhelm him, Oskar teams up with ‘the Renter,’ the mysterious old man who is renting a room at his grandmother’s apartment.  Oskar fights to learn more about the Renter and grapples more strongly with his feelings of loss while fighting to overcome his many fears.

Martyr – Once Oskar discovers the key’s rightful owner and that it truly wasn’t meant for him, Oskar gives up even discovering what mystery the key unlocks (in reality, a message to another grieving son).  He discovers the lengths his mother went to in order to keep him safe and learns to give up his grief and anger, and by doing so discovers the hidden message his father really did leave for him.

AND, IN THE END…

Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close is unabashedly emotional, sentimental, and heartbreaking.  It is also exquisitely crafted.  The script has levels of complexity that are so subtly presented that the hand of the writer is almost invisible in spite of the scenery-chewing dialog delivered by Thomas Horn who plays Oskar.  ’Scenery-chewing’ in this instance is a high compliment.  The story rests on his previously untested shoulders (his only prior credit was winning ‘Kid’s Week’ on Jeopardy).

I’m curious to see how well the movie does; can a story as challenging as this, dealing with the tragedy of 9/11, find an audience?  I hope so.   This is now the second movie I’ve seen recently (The Descendants is the other) made by adults, for adults, and with screenplays that hit their beats and plot points with intelligence and grace beyond measure.

– Jeffrey Alan Schechter

Overall Impression – Subtle and beautiful.  Sneaks up on you like an Hawaiian sunset.

THE FOUR QUESTIONS

Who’s your main character? – Matt King.

What’s he trying to accomplish? – Professional: Manage the sale of his family property. Personal: Hold his family together while his wife is in a coma.  Private: Come to terms with his wife’s adultery.

Who’s trying to stop him? – Cousin Hugh and, to an extent, Brian Speer who is the man Matt’s wife cheated with.

What happens if he fails? – He brings down the wrath of his cousins and he loses his connection with his daughters.

THE FOUR ARCHETYPES

Orphan – Matt’s wife is in a coma following a boating accident, he has an unhealthy relationship with his two daughters.

Wanderer – After Matt discovers that his wife had been having an affair, he takes his daughters on a trip to Kauai to find Brian, the man his wife was having the affair with.

Warrior – Matt finds Brian and sets out to confront him while simultaneously having doubts about selling the family property and making a fortune for himself and his cousins.

Martyr – Matt decides not to sell the land in order to keep the purity of it, even though he will likely be sued by his family.  He also gives permission to Brian to visit his wife who is being taken off of life support.

AND, IN THE END…

The Descendants is a movie for grownups, and instead of trying to pulverize the audience with bombastic drama it lures you in and gently leads you into the lives of the characters.

The movie is anchored by George Clooney who brings a sad, schleppy quality to Matt King (even I look better running in flip-flops) but this is part of the craftsmanship.  Clooney makes us forget that he is cut from the same suave fabric of movie stars of yore so you can focus on his journey.  The story pulls you along, and while it will likely never be a monster grossing movie, it’s a wonderful example of how a screenplay can hit all the beats of conventional story structure but make you think it’s anything but conventional.

– Jeffrey Alan Schechter

Overall Impression – A boy, a soldier, two soldiers, a girl, another soldier, another soldier, and finally back to a boy and his horse.

THE FOUR QUESTIONS

Who’s your main character? – Joey, the horse.

What’s he trying to accomplish? – Professional: Be the best darn horse ever. Personal: Stay alive.  Private: Get back to the boy who raised him (if I can anthropomorphize a horse’s hope.)

Who’s trying to stop him? – World War I.

What happens if he fails? – He dies.

THE FOUR ARCHETYPES

Orphan – Joey is separated from his mother and taken in by the Narracott family.  When WWI begins, he is purchased by the British army and sent to war.

Wanderer – The bulk of the movie is about Joey wandering, and the many different hands he falls into on his way back home.

Warrior – Joey never has a real changeover from Wanderer to Warrior.  Rather, both archetypes blur throughout the middle and end of the film.  Towards the end of the film, Joey makes a break and runs from battle; I suppose one could argue he is now ‘fighting’ to stay alive however this happens so late in the movie that it can’t really be considered the shift to Warrior.

Martyr – There isn’t really any one seminal scene of Joey being willing to sacrifice himself.  In act three many characters have martyr moments, however these are secondary characters, and even tertiary and quaternary characters.  And THERE’S the problem.

AND, IN THE END…

How does one make a PG-13 film for adults where a horse is the main character and without turning it into a Disney talking animal movie?  How does one let the audience into a non-verbal, non-human main character’s head with complete understanding?  How does one drive a dramatic story forward with a main character whose hopes, dreams, choices, and thoughts can only be guessed at?

One can’t.

What one does instead is surround that silent main character with other characters.  Someone has to do the talking, right?  But dramatic tension is more than chit-chat; it’s created by the decisions and actions your main character takes.  It is a fundamental truth that the less proactive and more reactive your main character is, the weaker your main character — and subsequently your story — becomes.  What could be more reactive than a horse;  harnessed, ridden, and led around by a rope?

In an attempt to overcome this crucial, elemental storytelling hurdle, War Horse fills it’s running time with a swirling cast of characters that surround our non-speaking, non-human main character.  The commonality for all these characters is their ability to recognize how special the horse is.  Unfortunately, that’s not enough to keep an audience engaged.  As beautiful as War Horse is to look at, the end result is merely a beautiful film to look at.

Please understand that my goal here is to extrapolate lessons about screenwriting — both good and bad — from every movie I see.  The main lesson of War Horse is the same lesson one usually learns from episodic films with multiple characters: they make it notoriously difficult for audiences to latch onto and emotionally invest in characters.   And as magnificent as Joey is, his power as a tour guide into the world of the film only takes us so far.

I haven’t read the book War Horse that the stage play and movie is based on, however my understanding is that the book does an excellent job of bringing the reader into the mind of Joey, the horse.  That is the power and beauty of literature.  Trying to do that in a film and not come out with Babe is a stiffer challenge, one which even our best filmmakers can’t overcome.

– Jeffrey Alan Schechter