Any way you slice it

by
Chris
Dashiell

To plot or not to plot? It seems a hallowed truth in the mainstream that plot is the important thing. But not every artist feels this imperative. The character study, or "slice of life," where the events aren't determined dramatically, but flow with a more natural rhythm that reflects the qualities of actual experience - many of the more thoughtful films take this approach, although it tends to result in their banishment to the margins of public attention.

If you read a lot of the daily movie reviewers, especially the ones who use letter grades or stars or whatnot in order to rate a film, you will run across a certain complaint quite often - "Nothing much happens." Occasionally this complaint is justified - for reasons of deficient style, rhythm, or imagination - although these reviewers would be hard put to articulate it that way. More commonly, it reflects an assumption about what a movie is, and what it should be. Of course, there's a place for a conventionally well-made plot in anyone's estimation - and there certainly will always be a place for it in the market. The trouble is when this type of narrative becomes the formula for all kinds of narrative. The mind tends to close against other expressions, so that many people seem to end up not even "getting it" if a film doesn't have a traditional structure of set-up, conflict, climax, resolution and denouement.

Critical reaction to two recent indie films, both directorial debuts, bring these thoughts to mind. But leaving those concerns aside at first, and considering the films on their own terms, as they deserve to be, it is interesting to notice the decisions that are made concerning narrative, and how they affect the result.

THE LOW DOWN is the first feature by English director Jamie Thraves. It follows a twenty-something Londoner named Frank (Aidan Gillen) through that difficult time in life when youth is ending, but you're not sure what growing up looks like, or even if you want to grow up, so you just stay stuck for a while. Frank still parties with his mates and rents a crummy flat in a bad part of town, but he feels a vague unease about it all. When he decides to buy a place of his own, he meets Ruby (Kate Ashfield), a real estate agent. Their search for a house gradually turns into a romance, but the tentative nature of Frank's self-knowledge, and an instinctive shying away from commitment, makes things difficult.

This summary doesn't convey the true flavor of Thraves' technique, which is highly personal, observant, and relaxed. We're not pushed along a storyline. Instead we observe Frank's daily life, and those of his friends - including Mike (Dean Lennox Kelly), his boss at the TV prop company where he works, and his best buddy - and amusing slacker - John (Tobias Menzies), whose rapport with Frank has its fair share of tension as well. The director has the confidence to do odd little things like focusing on some object in a room for a minute, just like a person might do casually, or freeze a frame very briefly to indicate an image that is stuck in a character's mind. The effect of Thraves' varying editing rhythms - his way of letting a scene play out in real time, or using certain shots that don't advance the story but do evoke a feeling - is naturalness, the illusion that we're catching a glimpse of the way these people really live. In short, "slice of life."

It works for me because the writing is interesting and funny without seeming contrived, and because the actors make it look so real. Gillen has the difficult task of portraying an essentially passive person. Most of the film is from his character's point of view, and to a great extent he is watching his life go by rather than acting in it. He pulls it off because there is a wonderful ease and charm about him, and because he is able to express his conflicting feelings so subtly with just facial expressions and body language. His chemistry with Ashfield is very nice. The early stages of their relationship, in particular, are portrayed with a finesse that drew me right in.

I don't go to movies wanting every one of them to be a thrill ride. I liked relaxing with The Low Down because the people were real, and fun to be with, and mostly because I could relate to the situations without the intrusive presence of an attitude or message imposed on the material, as is too often the case. When a writer/ director cares enough about the personal element to let it have free play, I find that refreshing, and I think it shows a lot of wisdom, especially for a first film.

You want plot? Try this, from PANIC, written and directed by Henry Bromell. Alex, a middle-aged man (William H. Macy) goes to a psychiatrist, complaining of feeling dead. It turns out that he works for his father's business, and that business is killing people - a hit-man for hire company. In the psychiatrist's waiting room he meets a young woman named Sarah (Neve Campbell) and he falls for her, although he still loves his wife (Tracey Ullman), with whom he has a six-year-old son. Meanwhile his father (Donald Sutherland) hands him the envelope containing his next assignment. To his horror, Alex discovers that the next victim will be his psychiatrist (John Ritter). This is all in the first half hour or so.

Sometimes I can tell rather early that a film is just losing me. It's not that the premise is absurd - Panic isn't supposed to be realistic. It's that, try as hard as I might, I don't believe in the dialogue I'm hearing, and there's nothing in the situations or characters that challenges me to go deeper. We're supposed to believe that Alex and Sarah could share passion together, that Alex is deeply enmeshed with his father, that his mother (Barbara Bain) would discourage him from leaving the business, that his wife wouldn't notice anything wrong all these years. And we might very well believe all of that - if the writing had enough energy and wit, or if there were satiric undertones. But Bromell, whose background is in television, hasn't learned how to bring three dimensions to the characters, or create something new and different from the mid-life crisis theme. Instead of aiming for the comic, he tries for the deeply moving, and misses.

Macy does the best he can, and Campbell is actually not bad, considering that her character is all surface. Donald Sutherland, unfortunately, is an unconvincing villain. He overdoes everything, and I didn't believe in him for an instant. Sutherland is best in genial roles. In bad guy parts he tends to telegraph everything as if we needed help to realize that his character is evil. The film also features one of those preternaturally wise children, so common in films and uncommon in life, and so cute that I thought I might fwow up.

The narrative decision taken here is to set everything up to convey a certain message. I won't spoil anything by saying what I think the message is, but I will say that it seems to me a very obvious and uninteresting one. If an artist is so sure of the right and wrong of things that he won't let any ambiguity into the material, he ends up strangling his art with his certainty. There's really nothing in this plot that I couldn't predict an hour before it happens, but more importantly, there is nothing at all in the point of view that surprised me. That's a deadly flaw in a film.

I don't want to be too unkind to Panic. It's not a dishonest movie. Bromell doesn't talk out of both sides of his mouth - he is sincere about his aims here. It's just a film without enough inventiveness or conviction to evoke life on the screen, or in my imagination. Halfway through, I had the unmistakable sensation of witnessing a failure, of watching something collapse that I really wanted to succeed. And for some strange reason, this was accompanied by a slight feeling of embarrassment for the actors. Well, better luck next time.

Turning back to the reviewers, I find that the reception for The Low Down has been very mixed, with particularly bad notices from the stars & alphabet crowd. Not enough happens, they say. We don't know enough about the main character to care about what happens to him. (What should be know about him, I wonder - how he was potty trained?) Thraves is too trendy, pretentious, unfocused, subjective. And once again, where's the plot? Not to downplay the inevitable differences in critical opinion concerning any film, I still wonder how expectations color reactions like these. We've seen plenty of stories like this before - usually they're resolved in true Hollywood fashion. The characters in The Low Down seem real to me partly because of the very reluctance of the director to go for plot tension. He has different aims, and for me they succeeded. I didn't notice a plot shoving me along. I only saw characters living their lives.

The real surprise was when I turned to the reviews for Panic. With a few exceptions, the picture got huge raves. The best film in years, brilliant idea, Sutherland is great, different than what you've seen before. My inner cynic suspects that the unusual story (only superficialy reminiscent of The Sopranos) has beguiled these writers into believing in the characters. At least that's the only way I can explain how something so flat, so obvious and unchallenging in its ideas, so unconvincing in its characterizations, could be getting four stars and A's and thumbs up and so on. (Maybe there's an underdog factor here. Artisan looked at Panic and decided to send it straight to cable. Then critical response prompted its current limited release.)

Of course, when it comes to matters of taste, it is presumptious to assume that one's own taste is correct. Even the idea of a correct taste is in itself a bit of arrogance, since it ignores the inherent limitations of any individual's viewpoint. I can only report my responses - what I think, what I feel - as honestly as I can. And part of that responsiblity, I strongly believe, involves being open as much as possible to what a filmmaker is trying to do, and criticize a film on those terms, rather than on terms that are reductive through mere habit on my part. With all due caution stated beforehand, then, I still feel brave enough to say that a great deal of the film writing I read seems too bound up with plot as a determining element, and not enough concerned with style, vision, or character.

CineScene, 2001