1917

Roughly a century before 2019, when the film, 1917, was made, the Great War, or what would subsequently be renamed, World War I, was raging in Europe. Incredibly, soldiers had to live in dug-out trenches for years. It is no wonder that the war would bring the Spanish Flu to both Europe and America. In 2020, roughly a century after that flu, the coronavirus pandemic was occurring globally, yet without any war to have incubated that virus. By 2020, Europeans and Americans alike could not have imagined what life must have been like in the trenches. The film’s finest contribution, I submit, is in capturing that context, which in effect does a great deal of the story-telling. The film is thus a good illustration of the role that context can play in story-telling in an audio-visual medium such as film.

Sam Mendes, and his cinematographer, Roger Deakins, took advantage of new camera technology, by which I am cameras that are small enough to slither through a narrow trench filled with men and yet with a good picture-quality, and a mile-long trench dug under the supervision of the production engineer to tape shots as long as 5 or 6 minutes as the actors playing Blake and Schofield run through the trenches and then through an abandoned enemy line and on to find a unit in order to relay an order from a general to cancel a planned attack rather than fall into the German trap. The dramatic tension is made real not only because the context is so real—being shot on location—but also because the entire movie is one shot made up of a stitched series of long shots. No cuts within a dialogue to capture two faces. By 2020, that old technique had arguably become stale, and thus possibly disruptive of the suspension of disbelief (e.g., “Oh, that’s right, I’m watching a movie, rather than being fully engaged in the story-world.”).

Incredibly, the grip holding the camera runs ahead of the two protagonists as they (and the cameraman) must carefully navigate between the extras in the trenches, then at a juncture or fork the camera-shot shifts seamlessly to follow the two protagonist. The shifts from holding the camera to connecting it to crane are also seamless. From the perspective of the view, the entire film is one shot.

Although Mendes and Deakins both said after the filming that staying with the two protagonists without interruption through the film allowed the viewer to get to know them better, or more intimately, I contend that getting into the context was an even greater benefit. The film opens with a shot of a beautiful landscape, and as that shot goes on by means of the hand-held camera staying in front of the protagonists as they eventually go into a trench, their world incrementally envelops the view until not even the sky can be scene. Mendes emphasizes the subtle clues that the viewer gets along the way as to the relationship between the two soldiers—they had become friends in spite of coming from different backgrounds—but it is the context itself—the trenches—that really calls out to the viewer’s attention. This is especially so because the camera goes with the soldiers through about a mile of trenches. They way they are laid out, and what the extras are doing in the trenches primarily gives the viewer an authentic view of what life in the trenches was like and even the feeling of experiencing it, albeit as if on tour. For that is what the film really is—an engaging tour at close range and sustained by one continuous shot of 1917 as experienced by soldiers. To the extent that World War I was a war of contending trenches by trench-adapted creatures, then the film is a virtual experiential into 24 hours of that war at close range.  

Mary Poppins Returns

Films are commonly known to have two or three dimensions in terms of perspective. Animated films were for decades in the twentieth century in two dimensions—a flat story-world—until the advent of animated films made to show depth, hence three dimensions. Still another, third or fourth respectively, dimension is the element of time in the story-world. Literally, as the still frames are moved one to the next, changes can be perceived in the story-world; you won’t see any change by looking at a frame. Then we get to the dimensions that extend outside of the story-world. One possible dimension is how the narrative or the story-world in a film relates to the book upon which the particular film is based. This dimension becomes visible in terms of meaning particularly when similarities exist, but differences too can prompt attention the dimension itself. In this essay, I discuss another dimension that involves the content in a film but extends out into the world of the audience. When made manifest, this dimension can carry significant meaning for the audience, for this dimension involves both a society’s “social reality” and what is shown in a film.

Mary Poppins Returns (2018) hit the screens 44 years after Mary Poppins (1964). In that span of time, a lot can change societally, and this includes the inevitable loss of seasoned actors. An actor in his or her prime in 1964 may not have been alive in 2018. David Tominson, who had played George Banks in Mary Poppins, died in 2000. When Mary Poppins Returns was filmed, Julie Andrews, Glynis Jones, and Dick Van Dyke were all alive, but aged. Glynis Jones and Dick Van Dyke were in their 90’s. While Andrews could not have played Mary Poppins again, as the good witch stays perpetually young, she could have played the flower woman, who is played by Angela Lansbury. Whereas Andrews was in her early 80’s during filming, Lansbury was about a decade older. Unknown health issues, however, may have played their own role.

 

Dick Van Dyke as Mr. Dawes, Sr.

Dick Van Dyke as Bert

Dick Van Dyke as Mr. Dawes, Jr.

Dick Van Dyke is where the “actor” dimension really kicks in. He played both Bert, the chimney sweeper, and Mr. Dawes, Sr., the head of the bank, in Mary Poppins, and played Mr. Dawes, Jr., head of the bank, in Mary Poppins Returns. Van Dyke plays both Dawes when those characters are very old, though only in the case of Dawes, Jr. is Van Dyke himself old (early 90’s). That the actor was that old and could still dance (although a stunt-double probably made the run up on the desk) was astonishing in itself, which in turn could be sufficient to get the attention of audiences on the actor. Besides that he is in two films made 44 years apart, the nonagenarian is dancing in both! What tremendous bookends for a wonderful career. Moreover, this perspective can link together such different periods in society (or such different societies) and in one’s own life for the audience members who were old enough to remember the first film in the 1960’s and 1970’s. 

Mr. Dawes, Jr.(left) and Sr. (right), played by Dick Van Dyke. He was 92 and 38 during the respective filming.

Dawes senior and junior look so much alike that it is as if age finally allowed Van Dyke to play the same character, albeit in much heavier “aging” make-up the first time. Obviously, a character who is very old in the first movie cannot be alive in a story in which George Banks’ son and daughter are grown adults, the son with three kids. The senior/junior thing makes this correction, though this point was lost on me while watching the second film. To me, an actor who was young in the 1960’s could be fit age-wise to play virtually the very same old character 44 years later. In the field of acting, this is significant, especially given the dancing.

The dimension itself is the link between the two Dawes characters and the actor, Dick Van Dyke. His story, in other words, becomes salient so his acting out Dawes Jr. in Mary Poppins Returns goes beyond the film itself, including its narrative and story-world, to the world lived out by the audience. For people who had been aware of Van Dyke’s career, the point at which the actor could, as an old man himself, still act and dance in his nineties, and, relatedly, be age-fitting to the character can hold great meaning beyond that in the narrative concerning that character.

Interestingly, the serious message that Dawes Jr. gives the Banks family is delivered as if it were the main point of the film. Namely, if a person is prudent, such as in deciding when very young to deposit even just some coins rather than spend them, the person will be rewarded greatly decades later. In the story, this is a lesson not only for Michael and Jane Banks, but also Michael’s three kids. Such a down-to-earth leitmotif is at odds with all the flying in the air and, moreover, the alternative “thesis” contender: that even the impossible can be possible as evinced by Mary Poppins’ magic. For the magic of compounding interest wherein money seems to grow is not magic at all, but, rather, a manifestation of the time-value of money: that a coin today is worth more than one tomorrow because you can only spend the former today.

The Sound of Music: Marital Roles and Inner Transformations

Fifty years after the film’s initial release in 1965, viewers of The Sound of Music could measure the imprint of the women’s movement of the 1970s by how very different—antiquated actually—the film is in terms of marital roles. Whether Liesl in the first half of the film or Maria in the second, their acceptance of the dominance of husbands over wives stood out like a blade of grass needing to be cut in 2015 for all but a minority of viewers. Yet the internal changes that Maria and the Captain have the courage to undergo resonate in any age, being so much a part of human nature, as distinct from sociological artifacts.

Through roughly the first half of the film, Maria is an individualist bristling first against the conventionality of the convent and then the Captain’s authoritarianism. She refuses, for example, to come to his whistle on principle. In fact, the rebel asks him what signal she could whistle to call him. Meanwhile, Liesl, the captain’s oldest at 16 going on 17, sings of wanting to be needing “someone older and wiser telling [her] what to do.” She will depend on Rolf, she adds. “I’ll take care of you,” he sings in return. In 1965, this exchange would not have sounded odd in the least to most American and European audiences—yet how odd to the ears listening fifty years later. That a cultural understanding can seem like common sense in one era and yet so contrived just fifty years later ought to convince us that what we take for granted as given may be anything but.

Even within the film’s story, Maria changes remarkably from rebel to passive wife. She leaves all decisions to the Captain, including whether and when they would leave Austria. She even refuses Max Detweiler’s request that she try to move the Captain off his opposition to his children singing in public. “I can’t ask the Captain to be less than he is,” she tells Max. The internal shift is remarkable. Like that of the Captain, it happens in an instant.

When the Captain professes his love for Maria, she quickly realizes in song that in her miserable childhood, “I must have done something right.” That added self-confidence may enable her to stop fighting her negative self-image that took form in her miserable childhood. How do you solve a problem like Maria? She does, by feeling worthy of being loved. She does not have enough self-confidence to feel this herself, in spite of her singing, “I have confidence in confidence itself” on her way initially to the family’s formidable mansion. Someone must love her as she is, when her self-confidence is insufficient to kick off her negative self-image and the related rebelliousness. She gets the needed boost when the Captain tells her that he has loved her since her first day with the family—when she sat on the pinecone at dinner. In fact, the inner transformation is instantaneous. From then on, she is radically different—fully in line with the era’s values and customs and not at all independent.

Similarly, when the Captain first hears his children singing, his harsh, formal demeanor melts away instantly and he is a changed person too. He has forgotten what music was like in his house before his wife died—and it is the sound of music that instantly melts away his mourning. Only once he has undergone that inner change can he feel the love he has for Maria, which in turn triggers her realization that she had not been such a bad kid after all. In achieving an inner freedom from her self-hatred, which was fueling her rebelliousness, she willingly subjects herself to her husband’s will and command. Having dropped his command at home, he in turn leads the Von Trapp family out of love rather than from autocratic rule.

During the filming, Christopher Plummer, who played the Captain, said the story is too saccharine; he even referred to the movie’s title derisively as the sound of mucous. On the one hand, that the film is a musical means it is not cinema verité; no one should expect a musical to mirror real-life because people don’t pause several times a day to sing a song. On the other hand, Plummer had a point in that the inner transformations of both his character and Maria occur instantly and without any effort. Besides being utterly unrealistic, glossing over the process of the change compromises the character-development aspect of the film. In other words, the two main characters are rendered too plastic, and thus not readily believable.[1]

Viewing the film in 2015 rather than 1965, the film would doubtless feel even more unrealistic, given the antiquated stances of Rolf and Liesl on marital roles and Maria’s wholesale deference to the Captain as his wife. Standing between these characters and the viewer in 2015 is the women’s movement that transformed the role of women in society as well as in marriages seemingly overnight in the 1970s. Of course, this transition was hardly instantaneous, and neither was it without struggle on the individual, interpersonal, and societal levels. Interestingly, the sense of fakeness in the antiquated views and conduct would only compound the apprehension of fakeness in the inner transformations of the Captain and Maria. One day, the film may even be viewed as a fairy-tale—as a piece of art rather than a film based on a true story. 

Nevertheless, internal change freeing a person from grief or a negative self-image is of timeless value because such change is a feature of human nature itself, and therefore the story is apt to be engaging in any era. Hence the film can be said to have a timeless aura befitting such a classic of cinema.

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[1] By means of comparison, Pray for Bobby (2009), a film about a gay teenager in an evangelical Christian family, highlights the mother’s arduous inner-struggle as she questions and then changes her religious view on homosexuality. Her entire demeanor changes in the process. The change is hardly instantaneous, unlike those of the Captain and Maria in The Sound of Music. 

Marnie

Some movies are remembered for their narrative; other films attract an audience out of sheer star-power. Generally speaking, both story and charisma can be of value to a film. The value of a charismatic actor playing a character of substance can be realized by watching the performance dubbed with the voice of another actor. Watching the film Forgiven once dubbed in French, I popped out the DVD even before the end of the first act because the voices of Gene Hackman, Clint Eastwood, and Morgan Freeman were gone. In the case of Marnie (1964), as well as the James Bond franchise, the flims would lose out without Sean Connery’s voice. Even so, a film that distorts or stretches a narrative to attract (and rely on) an actor’s charisma is also suboptimal. I contend that this excess compromises Marnie.

In both the book written by Winston Graham and the film’s initial outline written by Joseph Stefano (who had written Psycho), Mark Rutland has his wife Marnie see a psychiatrist. That character did not survive into the final cut. In the documentary, The Trouble with Marnie, Stefano speculates that the doctor was cut so the Mark character would be powerful enough to attract a star. A star obtained, the question is whether Sean Connery’s charisma was sufficient to carry the character’s load. For in dropping the psychiatrist, that role fell on the husband. Although Stefano believes this gave the character more than it could carry, the intensity of Sean Connery in playing the part made up for this drawback or vulnerability in the film. Indeed, Jay Presson Allen, the film’s screenwriter, suggests that Connery’s charisma made up (in the audience’s eyes) for his character raping Marnie on their honeymoon. Even so, Stefano concludes that omitting the psychiatrist robbed the film of something. I am inclined to agree.

The problem lies with characterization. Specifically, Mark Rutland’s co-dependency is understated while his ability to bring his wife to a psychological catharsis is, well, fictional. In term of the character’s psychological need to become invested in solving Marnie’s problem, this is shrugged off at one point with, “I’m not perfect.”  Thanks to Connery’s charisma, the audience is easily convinced that Mark is fine. In fact, the co-dependent husband effectively pulls off what would be a feat even for a psychologist. For her part, Marnie is somehow able to confront her childhood trauma without any need of a professional; the amateur is sufficient.

To be sure, the film is finctional. Even so, the rules of a story would come crashing down in terms of credulity if they breach what they claim to represent. Were Mark Rutland to suddenly float in the air as if gravity were an optional force in the film’s story-world, the narrative would quickly lose credibility by its own reckoning. Witches can fly in The Wizard of Oz because the story-world, being itself a fantasy within a fictional world, permits it. The story-world in Marnie is stitched much more closely to the world in which we live, so the feats have to be believable. Although some slack can be smoothed over by a star’s charisma, even James Bond falls short in effectively turning a co-dependent rapist-husband into a miracle-worker. Although the audience may not see past the charisma, the plot’s contortions may leave a rather hollow aftertaste. Abstractly, good story-telling does not distort narrative hoping that characterization will make up for it.

Tired Characterization and Narrative: The Dowager Countess in “Quartet”

I’m on a quest. Not of the Biblical variety, as I do not intend to take on The Screenwriter’s Bible. Nor does my aspiration fall under the treasure-hunt genre, for I am no Harrison Ford or Johnny Depp. My lofty goal is to fashion a narrative that is at once readily comprehensible and novel rather than formulaic. Whether from having lived past forty or some objective fact in an industry whose story-telling groves have become as deep as those in a well-trodden Roman road, I am instinctively drawn to break out of a rather dogmatically constraining aperture of story-telling. Simply put, the world may soon become bored with familiar storylines. The key to freedom from ennui may well be the achievement of a deep awareness of the extant contours of the modern story so often percolating out of Hollywood. In this essay, I examine Quartet, a 2012 film about four retired opera singers living in a stately yet nearly bankrupt home for retired musicians.

Maggie Smith plays Jean Horton, a singer whose fame eclipses that of the other singers in the house. This permits the character to take on the scent of a more notable character, the Dowager Countess, which Smith was playing in the popular television series, Downton Abbey (which in its fourth season began to suffer as well from recycled plot-themes). At one point in Quartet, Smith’s character says in exasperation to an on-coming house-maid in a hallway, “One way or the other, dear.” The likeness in diction and tone to the great lines that Smith delivers in Downton Abbey would not be lost on any viewers of the series. While leveraging on an actor’s more popular character may titillate an audience and thus earn some points at the box office, the very same viewers may also get the impression of tired dialogue and characterization. I take it as an article of faith that strong narrative requires its own characters, rather than those clothed with the well-worn garments of characters from other stories.

Similarly, the dramatic conflict in a story risks not being taken serious if it comes across as too formulaic. In Quartet, Tom Courtenay plays Reginald Paget, a member of the quartet who had been briefly married to the cheating Horton. His turn-about from a desire to leave the home when Horton moved occurs at break-neck speed and is woefully predictable. As formulaic as this “relationship” tension is, the denoument of the related “task” obstacle is even more predictable. The attentive viewer cannot help but realize early on that the film would largely reduce to whether Horton agrees to join the other three singers in the quartet. Incredibly, with so much riding on Horton’s resistance, the audience gets precious little payback as the film ends as the quartet’s members are being introduced on stage. 

From this case study, I wonder—je me demande—whether the element of dramatic tension in films hasn’t become too monolithic. Moreover, can the element be overdone in a narrative? In early films such as Frankenstein (1931), the dramatic tension is overcome relatively quickly once the conflict takes over the story. Today, the fighting can go on and on, as if it were an end in itself. I suspect that the “big question” in Quartet is distended in its significance in order to carry along a story that banks on Maggie Smith’s aristocratic character in Downton Abbey.  Whether in extending that narrative beyond its natural lifespan or in exporting the Dowager Countess into other narratives that themselves follow all too worn groves, the art of film and story-telling more broadly suffer. Perhaps the overriding question here is whether the conformity is artificial or in some way an actual constraint.