[I had planned to feature this week a pre-Memorial Day series on blockbuster films. But with the ongoing and very necessary WGA strike, I’ve decided to share instead a handful of older posts which have focused on films with particularly perfect screenplays. I’d love your thoughts on these as well as your nominees for other great screenplays and writing—in any medium—for a crowd-sourced weekend post of solidarity!]
On winter’s and America’s possibiliities and limits in two dark and
powerful films.
When you think about it, snow and
the American Dream have a lot in common. (Don’t worry, I’m not talking about
race. Not this time, anyway.) Both are full of possibility, of a sense of
childlike wonder and innocence, conjuring up nostalgic connections to our
families and our childhoods as well as ideals of play and community and warmth
(paradoxical for snow I know but definitely true for me—snow always makes me
think of hot chocolate and fires in the fireplace). Yet as we get to be adults,
both also suggest much more realistic and limiting and even threatening
details, of dangerous conditions and losses of power and the cold that can set
in if we can’t afford to heat our home. And once we have kids of our own, the coexistence of those two
levels is particularly striking—seeing their own excitement and innocence
and thorough focus on the possibilities, and certainly sharing them, but also
worrying that much more about whether we can get them through the drifts, drive
them safely where they need to go, keep them warm.
I might be stretching the connection to its
breaking point, but the link might help explain why so many films that explore
the promises and pitfalls of the American Dream seem to do so amidst a
snow-covered landscape. Near the top of that list for me are two
character-driven thrillers from the late 1990s: Paul Schrader’s Affliction (1997) and Sam Raimi’s A Simple Plan (1998). Both are based
on novels—the former a work of literary fiction by the late great Russell
Banks, the latter a page-turning thriller by Scott
Smith—but both, to my mind, are among those rare examples of films that
significantly improve upon the source material; partly they do so through
amazing screenplays (Smith interestingly wrote the screenplay based on his own
book, and I would argue changed it for the better in every way), but mostly
through inspired and pitch-perfect casting: Affliction
centers on a career-best
performance from Nick Nolte, but his work is definitely equaled by James
Coburn (in an Academy-Award winning turn), Sissy Spacek, Mary Beth Hurt, and
Willem Dafoe; while Simple is truly
an ensemble piece, with Billy
Bob Thornton and Bill Paxton both doing unbelievable work but great
contributions as well from Bridget Fonda, Brent Briscoe, Chelcie Ross, and Gary
Cole. And in both, again, the snowy setting—small-town New Hampshire in Affliction, small-town North Dakota in Simple, but they might as well be next
door—is a central presence and character in its own right.
The multiple, interconnecting
plot threads of both films are complex, rich, and intentionally suspenseful and
mysterious, and I’m most definitely not going to spoil them here. But I will
say that both are, at heart, stories of the dreams and weaknesses, the ideals
and failures, that we inherit from our parents, and how as adults (and
especially perhaps as adults struggling with the responsibilities of family and
parenthood) we try to live up to and beyond the dreams and ideals but are
pulled back by and ultimately risk becoming ourselves the weaknesses and
failures. It is perhaps not much of a spoiler either (just look at the titles!)
to note that both films, while offering their characters and audiences glimpses
of possibility and hope, bring them and us to extremely bleak final images,
worlds where the snow storms may have passed but where the silence and
lifelessness they have left behind are all we can see and all we can imagine.
And both do so, most powerfully, by bringing their protagonists back to their
childhood homes, sites (in these cases) at one and the same time of those most
innocent ideals and of some of the strongest influences in turning those ideals
into something much darker and colder.
When it comes to
wintry or especially holiday fare, these two definitely aren’t It’s a Wonderful Life, which certainly
connects its own bleak
middle section very fully to a world of snow and storm but which of course ends with its protagonist in
the warmest and most hopeful possible place (and in a home that has become
again the source of such ideals). But either could make a pretty evocative snow
day double feature with that equally great film of the American Dream and its
limits. Next
great screenplay tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What
do you think? Other great screenwriting you’d nominate?
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