Sigh. Had such high hopes for The Homesman, the new western with Hillary Swank and Tommy Lee Jones. You can tell when a director (Jones, in this case) has difficulty with the craft when frequently you find yourself really questioning the characters motives. See, characters in a story--especially the main characters--are expected by the rules of storytelling to follow a consistent trajectory. When they succeed its because of the choices they made in response to challenging obstacles or situations thrown at them. Think: Bond, Indiana Jones, just about every Tom Hanks character, Hercules, Ishmael, etc. Thats why we root for them. Why we follow them on their arc. When they fail, it becomes tragedy. Anakin Skywalkers descent into evil is sad. Maybe fascinating (see: The Wolf of Wall Street). But at least consistent. See, if you create your characters to like oranges, and in every scene they eat oranges, you cant up-out-of-the-blue have them suddenly state that they now like apples. Unless theres some believable reason behind and that reason plays ultimately into the logical progression of the course of the story. If not, the story snags and the audience picks up on this. A character can suddenly like apples, but only because theyve been taken over by the evil aliens and this helps to tip the hero off and save the day. Not the case with The Homesman, where the main characters make some eye-poppingly WTF? decisions that leave you feeling totally cheated. Imagine if halfway through Aliens Sigourney Weavers character suddenly decided to up and hang herself. With no explanation. Or if in Dirty Harry the rugged Detective Callahan suddenly decided to throw aside his one-man-investigation and become a priest. With no explanation. Or in American Beauty Kevin Spaceys character suddenly decided to become a secret agent. Or if instead of sacrificing himself, Gene Hackman, at the end of The Poseidon Adventure, decides to gun down the remaining survivors leaving the rest of the film to be about him trying to find his pet chimp. WTF? Some of the is the script, for sure. A well-written script/story could allow these changes to happen, but nurture and grow them developmentally. Devices like foreshadowing help to do this. And then good direction soaks out the emotions conveyed by the written words and brings them to life by the performers. Some movies, like No Country for Old Men and Birdman, sort of tap dance around the idea that real people arent like fictional, predictable heroes, and that everyone is a cauldron of good, bad and in between. Unforgiven works this ground with power and literacy. But its tricky all or nothing territory, where you risk losing your audience if the script/directing/acting/editing isnt perfect. Such is in The Homesman, where characters make changes that are horribly inconsistent with the momentum of the movie. Even the elements that are poised to bring real menace and conflict to the story--a pack of Native Americans fit for fighting on the hillside or the hint of a winter storm--bring nothing to the story. Now...can someone explain why that whoever kicked the headstone into the river (??) and why TLJ didnt even give a shit, even though he had been carrying it around like his own child for the past fifteen minutes of film time?
Posted on: Sun, 21 Dec 2014 16:29:48 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015