The Unsaid…
I watched two movies recently that got a lot of mileage out of what the characters didn’t say. The first was “Broken Flowers”, the tale of a man, Don Johnston{notice the “t”} (Bill Murray), on a quest. Ostensibly the quest is to find the author of an anonymous note telling him that he has a 20 year old son that he’s never met, but might meet soon. I say ostensibly because I didn’t find that to be central or most compelling aspect of the story. It certainly provided structure, but the storytelling lay in silence. In between the ill-fated attempts to reconnect with women he wasn’t really connected to 20 years earlier, you watch Don think. He mulls, he broods, he pouts, he zones…but he sure doesn’t talk. It almost works really well. I actually enjoyed trying to get into the character’s head; an interesting bit of cerebral sleuthing. Unfortunately, the continuity of the storytelling (for instance, he was driving the same rental car after taking a plane to a new city) created a disconnect that robbed some of the silence of it’s potential for poignancy. It didn’t feel like the moment I was was watching followed the scene I had just seen. I also hated the soundtrack given to us in the guise of a mix cd burned by Don’s friend. I would have been much more effective had there been a new track to each time we transitioned to a new place. It would give a sense of the journey. Instead, the same song was repeated as if the editors (sound and film) didn’t know where the scenes were really going to fit. Again, the potential for poignancy lost. Ultimately, I appreciated the use of silence. I just wanted it to say a little more.
CHAPLAIN: But are you sorry that you killed? (pause)
EDMOND: Yes. (pause) Yes, I am. (pause) Yes.
CHAPLAIN: Why did you kill that girl?
EDMOND: I don’t . . . I . . . I don’t . . . (pause) I . . . (pause) I don’t . . . (pause) I don’t think . . . (pause) I . . . (pause) I don’t . . .
Ahhh… Mamet at his best. Most people look at Mamet’s writing from the perspective of the old joke: “A well dressed man is walking down the street when a homeless man asks him for some money. The man replies, “Neither a borrower nor a lender be. William Shakespeare”. To which the beggar replies, “F U. David Mamet”.” And in some ways they are right. Mamet has a rare ability to create a poetry of obscenity, but I have always been more struck by the unique cadence of his writing. The distinctive start-stop motion of unfinished lines. Notice, I didn’t say unfinished thoughts. That is the great pitfall of acting Mamet; thinking that an unfinished line is an unfinished thought. If anything it’s a signal to the actor that there is so much to the thought that the words are too big to escape the cofines of the mind in turmoil. But enough practical aesthetics for now.
I have long wanted to see Mamet’s play, “Edmond”, on its feet and I got to see the movie version with William H. Macy in the title role. In the story Mamet takes a mid-life crisis, places it in a crucible with monstrous amounts of guilt and self-loathing, and cranks the heat. What results is a distilled and starkly horrific fantasia of a man who doesn’t know how to live. He has no control. And what’s worse, he feels that his lack of control is the result of a systematic surrender he’s been handing over every day of his life. He’s desperate to strike out, but he doesn’t know how or where. He doesn’t even have enough control to get angry; at first. But when he’s pushed once to often, the results are cataclysmic. It’s raw, stripped down, surreal, and discomfiting. Each pause and stutter a soliloquy of pain and rage. Macy is stellar. The crucial scene with Julia Stiles (I’m not going into much detail if you haven’t seen it) is stunning. A few of the performance are uneven (they broke Mamet’s first rule: “invent nothing”), but overall it leaves the head buzzing and the insides tired.
It also makes me itch to be on stage soon. Hmmm… I… I think… if I…. I just…
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