What is character development?

19 Mar 2010

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Hari: Seen Hurt Locker?

Me: No. Yesterday it was 8.30 when I was ready to watch a movie. So I selected one with short running time - Ring 2. But 20 minutes into the film, power cut. Waited till 10, no power, so slept. Power resumed at 12 :( You?

Hari: Raging Bull. Again.

Me: Againa? Is that so good? I'm having the DVD, yet to see. Less priority because of all dreadful aspects: running time more than 2 hours, about a boxer, black and white, Martin Scorsese etc.

Hari: One wonderful aspect: Robert De Niro

Me: Should be, though I'm not a fan :) But he was good in Taxi Driver, Ronin and The Deer Hunter. Especially Taxi Driver. When talking to a security during his assassination attempt he looks exactly like a crank and in that talking-to-mirror scene.

Hari: Chanceless. It was like watching a different person playing the lead role in the second half. He must be a lunatic to have gained around 27kgs in 2 months to look the part of a boxer on his way downhill. I was in a dilemma to choose between Travis Bickle and Jake La Motta. Finally choose the latter.

Me: Oh, I'll see it soon. But I can never sit for a second time for a drama :) I always wonder how that is possible for any person :)

Hari: It helps in observing it more minutely! Why would Black and white be a dreadful aspect to you I wonder!

Me: hahaha I have given the wrong impression. I love black and white, just that I'm afraid to see a drama film in it. At the same time, I think films like Godfather and Eastern promises would have been very different and less likable if they were in black and white. The deep reds and blacks are very important in building the atmosphere of those films. That is why I insist on seeing films in original DVD prints and not with all colours washed out in the low quality prints :)

Hari: Afraid to see drama. hahaha! After watching Raging Bull, I was on youtube watching his interviews. There was also a lovely video tribute to him showing various clips from different movies. He is a different guy in each!

Me: A man who has grown to direct a spy thriller that will make Le Carre happy - Good Shepherd. You have seen that?

Hari: Nope. It was a recent movie shot in black and white?

Me: 2006. A long winded movie with slightly boring personal life intertwined into a brilliant spy thriller. It captures the mood of Le Carre's cold war novels perfectly well. If ever you'd be interested in seeing spy thrillers, this would be your type of movie.

24 Mar 2010

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Me: By the way, yesterday I watched Raging Bull :)

Hari: Oh! So?!!

Me: hahaha So what? Drab. Though not boring. Absolutely not my kind of movie. I kept on wondering how you watched it the second time :)

Hari: Oh God! hahaha.... ok ok

Me: hahaha It is me who has to say "Oh God!"

Hari: We both have the right as our tastes are polar opposites :)

Me: hahaha yes yes. I too think they are polar :)

Hari: Not in the least impressed with De Niro or the camera work?

Me: I don't know much to appreciate performances :) De Niro is intense but didn't find him much impressive. May be that is because of the character he's playing - a pathetic, utterly despicable character. Even more than Al Pacino's Tony Montana in Scarface. I didn't like the film for two main reasons: 1. it is just a character drama and absolutely no plot, 2. De Niro's psychopathic extremities gets repetitive and tiring after an hour. B&W cinematography surely gives the feel of the 40s. More than cinematography, editing during the boxing scenes impressed :)

Hari: In my case I like a film when it is just a character drama and has absolutely no plot :D

Me: That is what I understood after seeing this film :)

Hari: hahaha....if you think this film has no plot then you should see Johny Deep's 'Dead Man'. You will hunt me down and kill me after that.

Me: Who is the director?

Hari: Jim Jarmusch

Me: Ghost Dog director? Seems Dead Man is one of the recent Westerns. I may watch :)

Hari: You know Ghost dog?

Me: I know the name of the film; Forrest Whitaker has acted; A remake of or inspired by Le Samourai. That's all I know

Hari: Oh yes. Same film. I din't like it that much. I watched it after Dead Man. And you said you might watch Dead man right? Ok, I tell you again YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED

Me: hahaha. Now I've known one film you'll like for sure - Le Samourai.

Hari: When I tweeted that I dint like Ghost dog one guy said that I should have seen Le Samourai

Me: Yes. But now I get a doubt if you'll like :) Because it's not a character drama.

Hari: Not that I like only character drama...it has to have me hooked one way or the other

Me: I don't see any hooks in Raging Bull. But you see hooks that can hook you for the second time. That's the problem :) Ghost Dog is about a lone assassin, killing somebody and getting chased by police and a villain group?

Hari: My hook for Raging Bull was De Niro and his character development. Yes Ghost dog is about that...but it was too slow...Dead Man was even slower but...well...it was about existentialism! :D

Me: I don't see any character development in La Motta. He remains the same from the first frame to the last frame. Not even a hint of redemption. Maybe I don't have an eye for it :(

Hari: There is development. He keeps getting worse as the years pass by. He has a thick head and can't think straight. He starts with adultery, then becomes suspicious, jealous, loses interest in what used to be his passion, stuffs himself, becomes a sluggard, becomes paranoid that everyone is screwing around with his wife, becomes insecure when she leaves him, rants about his fate in that lonesome 'why why' jail scene, and finally becomes a totally different pathetic person far from the champion, making lame jokes as a standup comedian. He ends up blaming his brother for not taking proper care of him.

Me: Oh, super. So this is what character development is? This is what I think: Character development is not about change in a character. It is about how much we know about a character as the movie progresses. In this case, he's a nut and remains a nut from start to finish. All the happenings around him just repeatedly reiterate that he's a nut, nothing more (that is why I feel it's dull). Wrong?

Hari: He was a nut earlier and still was the bronx bull...people respected and feared him...and he was a nut later too but a real nut now....there is a difference between the two... from power to disgrace he takes a fall due to his stupidity, arrogance, short-sightedness, suspicion etc., I think character development need not be between two extremes like good and bad... it can as well be the stages between two points of equally bad situations

Me: Please read this again: "Character development is not about change in a character (whether from good to bad or from bad to worse). It is about how much we know about a character as the movie progresses." I think you're talking about the change in character while I'm talking about the audience's knowledge about a character.

Hari: Ok got it. But you mean you everything you knew about La Motta at the beginning is exactly the same at the ending?

Me: Absolutely yes. That is what I think.

Hari: Oh I dint think so.

Me: hahaha. Substantiate. I think whatever you think, like he standing up against the big bosses, gaining the title, losing the match and his private life because of his meanness etc., are things that happened to him. There is not even a change in his character. As a character he's the same throughout the movie. What other dimension of his character do you come to know as movie progresses?

Hari: I thought as a handsome boxing champ he was a confident person in life. But was surprised when he turned out to be insecure when his wife says the opponent is good looking and wreaks vengeance by smashing his face. He always could be seen to be in good terms with his brother though he had frequent run-ins with everyone else, but when it comes to his wife, he even suspects his brother.

Me: For me it was crystal clear from the beginning that he's eccentric to the point of psychopathic. I was waiting and waiting for something interesting to happen based on his character, nothing did. I was waiting at least something, let alone interesting, to happen based on his character, again nothing. All that happened were repetition of the same events, till the end. In a sense it occurred to me that whatever happens after he meets his second wife is a back story of his earlier marriage. His first wife whom we see quarreling with him; he should have gone through the same routine with her too.

Hari: hmmm...interesting...maybe I was too awed by the way he played the character that I did not bother about anything else...he seemed real...and putting on 27 kgs so that he could get the sluggishness and mannerism right was something that was stunning to me... maybe I was more awed by his acting and the cinematography in the boxing scenes and anything else...

Me: I think now you've understood your own opinion on Raging Bull a little better :)

Hari: nope...still not very clear until i understand character development first!

Me: hahaha You know very well that there is a lot more to a movie than character development. So if a character impressed you, only a part of the movie impressed you :)

Hari: haha...ok no further arguments. me too leaving now...bye!

Me: Just one line: It's not argument but discussion :)

Hari: sure sure.thanks for starting it...now I want to know the various aspects to look for while appreciating a movie...i don't usually analyse a movie like that...its a matter of feeling... i like it or don't like it... i don't question myself why it is so

Me: hahaha Personal feeling is the foundation of all analyses. All the best for your learning :)

Hari: danks! bye

Me: Bye :)

13 Jul 2010

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Me: Hello, have you seen The Hurt Locker?

Hari: Yes

Me: Liked it?

Hari: It was ok. Nothing much happens. The story as such is naturally tense because it involves ticking bombs ready to explode. You saw?

Me: Yes, I saw a few weeks back. So nothing struck you as special? Character-wise what do you think?

Hari: நான் பார்த்து ரொம்ப மாசம் ஆகுது...saw it immediately at the time of release... character-wise I think the guy is good at what he does and so naturally enjoys it...it doesn't appear as a threat to him...maybe if I had seen it again recently I could comment on it better

Me: So your overall impression of the movie is that the movie is slow but very tense since it involves bombs. In short it's slow but good thriller. Correct?

Hari: Hmm...so you are planning to shoot a movie involving a bomb ready to go in under your boss's seat?

Me: hahaha. No, I asked about The Hurt Locker in relation to our discussion we hand few months back on Raging Bull :)

Hari: Oh. About Character development? What is your opinion about the movie?

Me: First and foremost the movie is a character drama. It's a character drama given thriller coating. The ever-present question, "what type of character is he" is the pivot on which the entire movie revolves. Each and every scene gives us an opportunity to guess the answer to that question. That he remains an enigma till the end is an icing on the character development cake. That it is very tense and thrilling comes only second. I don't know what the critics think, for I've stopped reading reviews few months back. But the above is my opinion. Corollary: Raging Bull should fall at The Hurt Locker's feet and beg.

Hari: Raging Bull is based on a real life character of a boxer called Jake La Motta. Hurt Locker is imagined. In the former, if you find the character never changes during the course of the movie, it may be the reason that the real Jake La Motta just lived that way.

Me: hahaha Real or not real is not a question at all. As a movie what does it bring to the screen? That is the question. As I've already told I think character development is not about whether the character changes or not but about how much we come to know of the character as the movie progresses. I'm not asking why to make a movie based on a never-changing bum like Jake La Motta but that why the movie was not taken in a way that it creates an interest in a bum that is JLM. For your information, The Hurt Locker also is based on a reporter's account of real life incidents surrounding a particular soldier and I vaguely remember that the soldier even sued the filmmakers for using his story or something like that.

Hari: I don't understand how you say it was uninteresting. Here was a guy who once was ruling the boxing world but reduced to a standup comedian now...to know that even a person, so powerful and menacing in a boxing ring can be so vulnerable and full of insecurities and paranoia when it comes to his personal life is interesting...and above all I don't like raging bull from what I got to know about the character...for me it was the way it was portrayed by De Niro... the effort and the way the boxing matches were shot...

Me: Our whole discussion was based on the idea that you found Raging Bull a good character drama. திடீர்னு இப்படி பல்டி அடிச்சா I have no problem :)

Review: The Shining (1980)

Genre: Horror

Director: Stanley Kubrick

Cast: Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd and Scatman Crothers

Language: English

Runtime: 142 min.

In his preface to a recent edition of Pet Sematary, Stephen King mentions that most people find The Shining the scariest of all his novels (though his personal scariest is Pet Sematary). Written in the most prolific period of the author, it remains one of the best novels of modern horror. With its detailed characterization, thick sense of atmosphere and instances that elevate tension to unbearable levels, it has the right ingredients for a devastating horror movie. What more? It has the entire structure of a horror movie with all its subtleties built into it, and for a screenwriter it only takes to do minor changes to make it suitable for screen. But Kubrick along with his co-writer Diane Johnson opted to change the basic premises of the novel and has created a hollow, muddled screenplay with incredibly shallow characterization. As a result, even the best directorial efforts and production values were not able to provide an engrossing viewing experience.

The movie begins with a spectacular aerial ride towards Overlook hotel, showing how isolated it is from the rest of the world. It is the start of winter and the hotel is going to be closed for 5 months. Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) attends an interview for the job of its winter caretaker. The manager sketches some background history of the hotel, about his job and about a 'cabin fever' incident that happened a decade ago when a winter caretaker cut his wife and two daughters into pieces with an axe, stacked them up in a room and blew his brains with a shotgun. Jack in not bothered and accepts the job.

Jack arrives with his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and son Danny (Danny Lloyd) on the closing day. Jack is a writer with troubled history as schoolteacher and aims to complete his novel in the seclusion the hotel is going to provide. Wendy is a tame housewife who is not in the least angered even when her husband insults her in a shocking way. Danny is a psychic, a voice inside him gives glimpses of future events and people's minds. Later, the hotel's chef, Dick Halloran (Scatman Crothers) meets them. He senses Danny's ESP power and calls it "Shining". He himself has shining power and warns Danny not to go into room 237. A month passes by and then starts a series of strange events surrounding Jack and family.

A major aspect that can make us sit through the entire movie is the overpowering sense of dread developed throughout. It is difficult to get more atmospheric than this. Imagine being all alone in a vast hotel where the nearest human is hundreds of kilometers away and you can't reach them because of the snow covered roads. But the screenplay doesn't satisfyingly transform dread into horror. In effect, the movie works well as five or ten minute segments but not as a coherent whole; it is too slack to prolong our interest till end. Many scenes has the camera zooming in on a character, slowly punctuated by a gradual increase in the tempo of eerie music, giving an expectation of something frightful to happen, only to abruptly cut into the next scene. This goes on and on till it eventually becomes tiresome. Basically, nothing much happens in the whole movie. Kubrick has not cared to develop suspense and culminate it in horror as much as he did to make the movie technically superior.

The characters are half developed at best. The movie depicts Jack not as a normal man going mad but as a man already unstable just tipping over the edge. When it takes over 2 hours for this to happen it feels too overstretched to contain our interest. Jack Nicholson's constant twisting of lips and eyebrows doesn't help either; soon it starts bordering on irritation. Shelley Duvall does better as a frightened mother, especially when trembling with fear in the staircase and bathroom scenes. In the novel, Danny's 'shining' plays a central role in holding the plot together and advancing it. This aspect is not fully utilized in the movie - it could have made less difference if Danny was a normal boy. The same goes with Halloran too, he doesn't have much to do.

One thing that has more presence than the characters is the Overlook itself. The deserted hotel simultaneously induces a sense of vastness and inescapable claustrophobia. The pristine interiors with all its rich colours, ornamental decorations, and carpeted floors and the enormously snow laden exterior makes it hard to believe that the entire hotel is a set built inside a studio. It is one of the most perfect sets ever created. The camera has a field's day along its halls, corridors and rooms showcasing the meticulousness that went into creating it. It is especially effective when it steadily follows Danny's tricycle throughout its course inside the hotel, in the long take. Cinematography is consistently ace, be it the opening aerial shots or the chase through the maze.

Another lifesaver is the music by John Alcott. The chilling and at times eerie music plays a major role in developing the pervasive sense of dread. As the film proceeds, it grows discordant perfectly matching the growing madness.

There are many stories of men doing gruesome acts when possessed by evil. But are they really possessed or just gone mad? What is the difference? While the novel chillingly brings out the nuances of a mind gradually getting possessed by evil, the movie tries to deviate by taking the 'mad' route at first but changes course towards the end. With its technical elegance, the movie could have been a great addition to the horror genre, had the screenwriters opted to be more faithful to the novel. At least it would have worked as a good psychological thriller had it maintained the same course till the end and ran 45 minutes lesser.

Why do they make dull aka (?) 'art' films?

Following is a brief discussion in Apr 2010 with Hari, a film enthusiast friend who’s on his way towards realising his film-maker dream. It started with a discussion on stories and changed track to the question "what is art?" When Hari mentioned about his forgotten friend, I asked,

Me: Is he the one who wrote a write-up in the name of story?

Hari: hahaha yes, the same

Me: Why is that such persons always wanted to write about dull subjects? Do they think writing so makes them look like a genius?

Hari: Maybe, he dint think it to be dull... isn’t it subjective.

Me: What sort of a person cannot think that was dull?

Hari: In the short film festival that I saw, there was an animated feature called 'Thomas Comma'. It is the story of a comma who wants to find the perfect sentence to be a part of. He does not want to be just another comma who is part of just another sentence. He goes in search of great writers, but finds they are just typing rubbish for money. No great literature or art is to be found anywhere. He strives and strives with no success. He gets depressed. He rues about his life. He wonders why he alone feels that he has to do something different and great and why he simply does not surrender to mediocrity like millions of other commas. The rest of the story says if he did or did not attain what he wanted to achieve.

Now this was one story which I liked. There were no subtitles and inspite of that, I managed to listen to the dialogues in rapt attention. I didn't find one moment of it dull. But 80% of the audience thought so. They never understood what was going on. What they saw was a silly comma shaped thing going around the screen. They shouted, hooted and created a ruckus to stop the film.

Now, oh great king Vikram, tell me if the movie was really dull or not. Was I wrong in paying attention to a dull story or where the others wrong in not understanding it? Answer me or you head will blow into a million little pieces.

Me: hahaha I don't know the answer. I'm thinking what could be the answer. But I know for sure this is the longest reply you've ever typed. Anyway my head is going to explode :(

Hari: Now was the director here purposely creating a 'dull' feature so that he would be thought a 'genius'? Or was he just creating something that was close to his heart and may be because of that only people who could relate to it could understand? If so wouldn't it make art 'subjective'? similarly, may be that friend wrote about something he had seen happening to his friends...the matter might have been close to his heart...maybe he didn't want to create a mass masala humor post.

Possible?

Me: The subjective part, I already know. At first read, what you've written above appeared enlightening. But on the second read this question came up: Just because art is subjective does it justify anything can be created and called as art?

Hari: Definitely not. The ones that create an impact in you by capturing the truth and changes the way you think might qualify as art. Most of the high brow films and literature do that. Shawshank redemption is art. It is not a movie for time pass. Different people find different takeaways from it. Some find inspiration to hang on to drudgery in the hope of release one day. Now that is art. Vijaykanth giving shock to a transformer in not art. Sure.

Me: hahaha. Excellent example. But seriously, I'll definitely say that transformer shock too is an art. Why do you think it is not art? It is an art that makes people laugh; it's the art of making people laugh. Does art only has to make people think or cry?

Hari: Agree comedy is an art. But in the case of our Narasimha it was not intended to make you laugh in the first place. It was just accidental art.

Me: Why is it not like something like you've told: "Different people find different takeaways from it." Some take it as serious action and some as comedy. Why not?

Hari: People who take it as serious action need to be checked for mental stability :)

Me: hahaha But it's not a convincing answer.