The first two things I notice about a movie are how well the dialogue is written and whether the acting is natural (transparent). Okay, to be honest, I notice nudity first, but I definitely notice dialogue and acting before I notice themes or cinematography or even get the characters straight. And I think the level of dialogue and acting ability varies greatly in movies. Just look at Nicholas Cage movies to see how good and bad it can get.
So, my question is: What was everyone's opinion of those aspects of the film?
Sorry if I'm being coy, but I'd like to hear a few opinions before I offer mine!
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14 comments:
I thought Mia Kirshner's performance was uneven. I thought she fell flat delivering dialogue on a few occasions, including in her early scenes searching with Eric and her first conversation with Zoe.
As the movie progressed, I thought her interactions were genuine with Zoe, Eric, Francis and Thomas.
And I would add that the actors playing Tracey and Eric's roles were consistently stellar and natural.
Perhaps there is a downside to watching a movie several times. While I’ve picked up on a lot more of the details, I’ve maybe lost touch with these aspects. Rather like people you know, these characters have become for me what they are, and they say what they say. It is harder to think of them as performances that could have been different.
But here is one comment about the dialogue. There are several lines in the film that I find memorable. The opening line is one, but that could be thought of as a voice-over since you haven’t seen that actor yet and you never see him again. But consider Francis’s explanation of emotional baggage and his comments about not being asked to come into this world, Harold’s comment about the parrot not forgetting but just losing interest, Christina’s comment about people not having the luxury of deciding what to do with their lives, Eric’s comment that he wished he had a friend so he could tell somebody about meeting Christina, and Thomas’s comment about the animals in the shop: “Just because they are exotic doesn’t mean that they can’t endure extremes”. All these lines drew my attention. That can sometimes be bad news in a movie if it seems the line is more a bit of cleverness delivered by an actor as opposed to something the character would really say. But I didn’t find it to be that way in this movie.
I remember those bits of dialogue as well as Eric's line on "seeing the mysteries of the world" for just $5. They were striking lines, but in Kirshner's case, at first she seemed to be working around a mouthful on natural delivery.
I agree that Mia Kirshner was a bit wooden, especially in the beginning.
There were a lot of memorable lines, including the ones dw mentioned. I liked a lot of them. But I admit I did get the feeling with some of them that the lines were too big for the scene. Like the line about the animals enduring extremes. It felt to me like it was written to be a metaphor, not something anyone would actually say.
Hmmm, did the more memorable lines tend to come at the ends of the scenes? I think that some of them did. If so, that would reinforce the effect that the purpose of the scene was to set up the line.
It is interesting that you see the early bit of Kirshner as wooden. I took that as Christina being guarded. Eric says a lot in their first encounter, but Christina says little. She only reluctantly admits to having babysat the little girl. Now if the first scene with Zoe is that way too, then that would be a problem since she knows Zoe very well by then.
Ben, what did you think?
I thought the dialogue was worthy of a network TV drama. And the acting and direction weren't bad, but they didn't save the writing (as great acting can often do).
The problem I had from early on was constant awkward expository dialogue. I kept thinking, This is what it would be like if I wrote a script. And it made the otherwise okay acting completely wooden, with no deep characterization.
As I said earlier, I see those things first. Thus, I never saw the cinematography or themes -- I was too busy gagging at the dialogue and acting.
However, in light of everyone else's comments, maybe I'm just crazy.
After reading everyone else's posts and comments, I do remember that the film looked good.
I see what Erin and Ben on about. I guess I would describe the dialogue as a little stylized. It isn’t completely natural, but I don’t think that it was intended to be or needs to be. I like how it works, but this kind of stuff is often just a matter of personal taste. If it rubs you the wrong way, then it might trip up your viewing experience.
The fact that it is just personal taste is a point very well taken. For example, I absolutely love Hemingway, and I think his prose style is second-to-none, but when I read it aloud, I find it falls naturally into a stilted pattern. And it makes me love it even more.
I wish I knew why the dialogue in this film rubbed me the wrong way. And I wish I had better control of my likes and dislikes so it wouldn't make it difficult to enjoy other aspects. I'm like that with music, too. If one little thing I don't like catches my ear, I hate it.
What's weird is that it's the stuff that's personal to me that bothers me more -- if it's something everyone would dislike, it doesn't bother me as much as if it's something that only I dislike. I wonder if other folks are like that.
Speaking of stylized dialogue, DW, did you see that the immortal Adrienne Shelly died a few weeks ago? Some of Mia Kirshner's lines and mannerisms reminded me of her.
When I mentioned stylized dialogue, I almost tossed in Hal Hartley as my favorite example of it. No, I hadn’t heard that Adrienne Shelly died. Sorry to hear it. I haven’t seen any of her more recent work. But those early roles with Hartley were just wonderful. Is there anything else she did that you would particularly recommend?
Did you see how she died? It was awful.
"About 5:45 p.m on November 1, 2006, Shelly's husband found her hanging by a bedsheet from a shower rod in the bathtub of an Abingdon Square apartment in the West Village section of Manhattan's Greenwich Village, in what appeared to be a suicide.Shelly, who lived in Tribeca, used the apartment as an office and sublet it as a domicile to a friend. Ostroy (her husband) had dropped her off between 10 and 10:30 a.m. that day, and as the building's doorman told journalists, "He hadn't heard from her and he said it was odd not to hear from her, so he was nervous. And he asked me to go up to the apartment with him, so we went to the front door, and it was unlocked".
An autopsy was performed the following day. The New York City Police Department were suspicious of sneaker prints in the bathtub that did not match Shelly's shoes, who was found wearing only socks. Shelly's husband also indicated that there was money missing from Shelly's wallet. He also vigorously denied allegations that she could have committed suicide.
Press reports on November 6, 2006 stated that police had arrested construction worker Diego Pillco, a 19-year-old illegal alien from Ecuador, who allegedly confessed to killing Shelly after she complained about the noise he was making in the apartment below hers. Police said Pillco had made videos implicating himself in the murder, and as of November 7 was being held without bail for her murder. Saying that he "was having a bad day," Pillco has confessed to the murder.
In answer to your question, I have only seen her in Hal Hartley movies.
She wrote and directed, too, and did a lot of off-Broadway. A review of "I'll Take You There" says: Adrienne Shelly, who became something of an independent filmgoers' version of a pin-up role model/icon with her frequent collaboration as filmmaker Hal Hartley's muse, takes her second attempt in the director's chair with a screwball comedy that has earmarks of her auteur, as well as Woody Allen; good for a start.
I'd like to see that. Apparently, the last film she wrote/directed ('Waitress") was just accepted at Sundance. Interesting article on that.
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