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FILM FOR THOUGHT:
(Wednesdays Year-Round & FREE to Members!)
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 Each week, Charley Walters shares some interesting information surrounding either one of the films coming up at The Dreamland or Dreamland Drive-In, or provides some top notch recommendations on how to beef up your movie pedigree at home. (These films will be available via cable providers, streaming services, and often times, your local library).
TALK OR ACTION OR BOTH?
The Dreamland recently screened TAR, which stars Cate Blanchett as a fictional orchestra conductor. Shortly after the film begins, her character is interviewed by the New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik (who, in a clever move, plays himself). Does this go on for ten minutes? Fifteen? It’s hard for me to say, but it was for much longer than one would have expected.
I wasn’t bored for an instant -- fine acting, smart editing, imaginative camera angles and movement. But perhaps most striking was that the director (Todd Field) believed that an audience would welcome a long scene in which two actors simply sat and talked.
Where was the action? Well, the talk was the action, and why not? Nowadays too many films rely on non-stop moving, breakneck cutting, people screaming, things exploding, etc. So, when a film shows something as natural and as common as two people speaking to each other, that can unnerve many viewers.
It shouldn’t. Louis Malle’s My Dinner with Andre (1981) is nearly two hours of two men talking in a restaurant, and Roger Ebert chose it as his best film of the year. Eric Rohmer’s My Night at Maud’s (1969) is similarly well-known because of its lengthy dialogues, and those are but two cases where mere conversation is cogent drama.
Social media usually receives most of the blame for today’s short attention spans, and rightfully so. But don’t excuse much of contemporary cinema. Yes, keep those explosions, but let’s see more – and less -- than that.
Charley Walters
Film for Thought Co-Programmer
Dreamland Board of Directors
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THE DREAMLAND, 17 South Water Street
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