Sunday, April 26, 2009
Sometimes Telling is Better than Showing
Words Leigh Rastivo
Sunday, April 26th, 2009 at 8:51 am
Lately I’ve been watching movies. Two this past week: Rachel Getting Married starring Anne Hathaway, and I’ve Loved You So Long starring Kristen Scott Thomas. Both of these films quietly portray the complicated life between siblings, yet my biggest takeaway involves what the films didn’t portray.
Flashback.
Neither film uses flashback to reveal or illuminate what went before — yet both narratives revolve around horrific past events that overshadow the present. The responsibility of revelation falls to the tortured characters, the stunned addict Kym played by Hathaway and Thomas’ haunted ex-con Juliette. And so, the actresses — they are permitted to act.
Imagine that.
The camera closes in on — almost stalks – each actresses’ face during her character’s moment of confession, and the shot never dissolves into a scenic portrayal of that painful memory. The past exists only in each actresses’ current expression of it, and so the agony of today is privileged over the melodrama that caused it. The result: two movies that claw at the emotional center, and rarely descend into anything that distracts from that. I think the right word for it is raw.
We are shown, in gestures, expressions and stilted conversations, that these characters are wounded people. We see the fact of the pain. But we never see the why of it visually. These women tell us why they are so broken. They don’t show us why. And while telling sometimes kills forward momentum, in these stories, the telling informs us; it fills out the story.
I keep imagining these movies if there had been flashback. The events involved children. They were events from which few return at all, let alone unscathed. I can’t imagine a scene that would not have been heavy-handed and histrionic.
So now I’m searching my memory for films where flashback worked . . .
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ABOUT THE WRITER
Raised in the suburbs of Long Island, Leigh moved 14 times to other suburbs before she finally found her rural home on a few acres in the woods of Virginia. She has two sons, one daughter, one son-in-law, and one amazing grandson. (Danger REALLY is his middle name.) Leigh holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Bennington, and writes fiction, nonfiction and poetry. She works as an Adjunct Assistant Professor and a Grant Writer at Old Dominion University. She also teaches at TCC and at The Writer's Studio of Virginia Beach. And she occasionally shows up at http://leighrastivo.com.
Other posts by Leigh Rastivo.
Other posts by Leigh Rastivo.
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i think citizen kane might have made some use of flashback.
ingmar bergman felt that the best subject for film was the human face. persona had a famous long monologue where he combines alternate halves of the two women’s faces to sort of creepily combine them. taking like ten minutes just to show the woman’s face telling the story, however, bergman noted that many people approached him later literally convinced that the scene was depicted in the film.
its just a decision that reflects subject. if the subject of the scene is the events of the past, a flashback is more appropriate. if the subject of the scene is the character in present tense and their feelings about an incident in the past, it is more effective to show their face as they tell the story.
its not always that simple, but it is more often than one might acknowledge. sometimes it’s rilly wacky though. a lot of david cronenberg’s spider is told through subjective flashbacks in which the modern day character actually lurks in the background witnessing his childhood traumas.
in the 80s, when home video created a lucrative new market for cheap horror movies, sequels were all the rage. this led to a rather ludicrous subgenre of z budget sequels using as little new footage as possible and cannibalizing the first movie via flashback. this included silent night deadly night 2, which included flashbacks to events that the flasher backer would not have been present for or was an infant during, and the hills have eyes 2, which among multiple flashbacks includes the memories of a dog.
on the other end of the spectrum, my dinner with andre didn’t depict anything except wallace shawn having dinner with andre gregory, who told wild and crazy stories from around the world. and wallace offered the neurotic new york writer counterpoint. its sort of a buddy comedy in that way, but they don’t have to take down a drug cartel run by commie nazis or anything. they don’t even have anything to avenge.
Very interesting, George.
The last three DVDs I watched at home and liked: LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, JUNO, MOONSTRUCK. No flashback. I need to think of a movie I LOVED that had flashback. Oh — THE GODFATHER.
Have you read THE ROAD yet? I’m wondering how the director will handle flashback — memory is a large part of the story. The foreground of the story is necessarily stark – being post-apocalyptic and all. There’s tension in the present action, but it’s desolate. Could be a fascinating effect, with the past being a vivid contrast. Or it could be lopsided . . .