Hey Gang,
Hope you had a marvelous Monday (alliteration and all).
I accidentally clicked the Stumble button on my StumbleUpon toolbar (which is one of the most fantastic things available on the grand interweb as well as one of the largest ways to realize four hours has gone by and you’ve accomplished next to nothing) and found this link to common film cliches.
On the topics of films. I just finished rewatching Donnie Darko for the fourth time or so. I finally am able to piece a lot of it together. I read the director’s interpretation on wikipedia (which, by the way, makes me an expert) and finally feel like I can understand a lot of what’s happening.
From the quote that Rotten Tomatoes provided from Richard Kelly one can start to see why certain references might have been made:
“Maybe it’s the story of Holden Caulfield, resurrected in 1988 by the spirit of Phillip K. Dick, who was always spinning yarns about schizophrenia and drug abuse breaking the barriers of space and time. Or it’s a black comedy foreshadowing the impact of the 1988 presidential election, which is really the best way to explain it. But first and foremost, I wanted the film to be a piece of social satire that needs to be experienced and digested several times.”
And experience and digest it several times I have. Most films I do not like to view a second time and it is even more unusual for me to want a watch a film four or five or six times. Donnie Darko is an exception. I thoroughly enjoy this film and believe that it gets better every time you watch it again.
On a side note I feel bound to inform anyone who will listen that the supposed sequel to Donnie Darko (in which visionary author of Donnie Darko, Richard Kelley, had no say or creative input) is a pitiful waste of time. If you’re a die-hard cult fan of Donnie Darko, you’ll rent it anyways, but it’s truly not worth your time.
Back to the topic of cliches. It’s how we deal in film. While some deviation from the normal “cliched” shots is necessary (or maybe isn’t) to keep an audience engaged, without the standard plethora of shots we already understand and can take almost instant meaning to it would be harder to convey certain emotional moments or tensions. We have become so used to situations such as this one from the website:
“Two people will often converse while one stares out the window, with their back to the other. When an emotional point is made, the first person will turn around.”
Many people turn up their noses at cliched scenes and motifs, however with the number of films being created every day (especially with the dawn of new content delivery systems such as YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, Vimeo) it becomes more and more difficult, if not impossible, to create unique genuine emotional moments. Let’s face it, if a writer knows they can evoke a certain emotion by using a convention you’ve already been trained to acknowledge, they’re just speaking in your visual language. The only problem becomes then, obviously, if cliches are so pronounced, forced, or strong that they achieve the opposite effect than intended and distract from the immersion of the audience and any possible suspension of disbelief. An overused cliche can be a bit like noticing a boom-mike sneak in to view on the edge of the screen. The fictional world we are convinced is real becomes fake again and our interest drops significantly.
Anyways. Just thoughts of the evening.
Cheers,
-Jack
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