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Notes on Flags of Our Fathers, The Departed, Stranger Than Fiction 12/24/2006 1:45:08 AM
Notes on the story structures of some recent films.
Flags of Our Fathers
posted 12/19/2006
This is an ambitious film. The scope of the early film is not just war for individuals, but for a country at war in need of heroes. This is introduced through a narrator. But the larger focus requires a tight focus on what the story is about, and the creation of a story line so the action of the plot through multiple characters and events creates a powerful fulfillment. Unfortunately, the elements don't all work together toward this end.
As the story begins to focus on the men who would be proclaimed heroes of the battle for Iwo Jima, some potently refuse the honor, and it takes a good part of the film to fully understand why (they were actually part of a second team to raise the flag after a battle to gain the heights of the island). The battle scenes are more dramatic and compelling than the scenes about the soldiers being sent on tour to sell war bonds. During this touring, a soldier named Ira comes to the fore, and seems to be taking the lead as a main character. But the film then reverts to a new narrator, this time the son of one of the soldiers who helped raise the second flag. This ties into the larger focus on why a nation needs to create heroes, but it dilutes a sense of what the film is about and who the main character is. With the shift to a second narrator, the movie's fulfillment becomes diluted.
Shifts in POV work best when they add something to th drama of a film; here the jarring effect of some of the shifts required me to re-orient myself.
A strong attempt to create a masterpiece about war.
The Departed
posted 12/17/2006
This film takes the time to set up the backstory of two young men growing up in South Boston. Each grows up to join the State police, but one goes deep undercover to bring down a local mob boss, while the other joins a special investigations unit trying to bring down Frank Costello (loosely based on Whitey Bulger, a real mob boss in South Boston). The early set up deepens the tension as the two characters must quickly figure out who to lie to and who to tell the truth to, in situations that have fatal consequences.
Recommended.
In real life the question of whether Whitey Bulger, an FBI informant, used his FBI handler for his own ends was never clearly established.
Shortbus
posted 12/15/2006
The director of this film started out with the intention of using sex in a dramatic film in a non-pornographic way by making the characters and their issues the focus of the film. But, the director also allowed the actors to be part of developing the story. The film ends up setting up a central point, that sex doesn't equate intimacy, but then doesn't do much with the point. Some story threads are weaker than others.
Stranger Than Fiction
posted 11/25/2006
This is a funny, cheeky, and, ultimately, heart-felt story about a life-less IRS auditor who discovers he's the creation of an author with writer's block. What she's trying to figure out is how to kill her latest novel's main character, Harold Crick. Harold begins to hear the author's voice narrating her novel and his life, and realizes that his death is approaching.
The plot of the story is whether Harold can change his fate and not die; the story is about how Harold, facing death, comes to life.
Although the film is billed as a comedy, like many good comedies the story is very heart-felt. We share Harold's journey.
I never thought I'd hear the name Italo Calvino mentioned in a Hollywood movie.
