Don't Say A Word

An obvious universal truth is that, unless you have divine perspective, you can never see the full story. Here's another unremarkable one. Life is unscripted and therefore inherently unpredictable. This hampers the dubious work of experts and forecasters. However, what always strikes me is how the nature of reality is in such contrast to the vast majortity of films and television series. Once you introduce a script, you normally end up with complete nonsense. It might be greatly enjoyable, well made and beautifully acted nonsense but still very much nonsense.

There are so many perfect examples, it's almost impossible to know where to begin. However, I'm just going to take the last two films I saw on television. The first one is the 2001 film, Don't Say A Word, starring Michael Douglas and Sean Bean which I watched on Film Four last Saturday night. To prove how bad this film is, all I need to tell you is the beginning of the plot. Sean Bean kidnaps Michael Douglas's daughter. Based solely on this information, anyone can easily work out how the film will develop and end.

To prove this theory, I gave my wife the film's tiny summary and this is how the conversation ensued:

WIFE: Right, well, Sean Bean is the baddy and has a silly, Sheffield accent.
ME: Yes
W: Michael Douglas plays a loving father who, against all the odds, out foxes Sean Bean.
M: Yes
W: At the end of the film, Michael Douglas fights it out with Sean Bean.
M: Yes. And?
W: Michael Douglas kills Sean Bean and in the final scene you see Douglas walking off into the sunset holding his daughter.
M: That's it, exactly.

Pathetic, really. Now let's try the same exercise with the 1994 film, The Specialists, which I saw last night, starring James Woods, Sharon Stone and Sylvester Stallone. This film is so predictable that you don't even need a summary. Sly Stallone is obviously the goodie, who kills James Woods, the baddie, at the end of the film and wins the girl, Sharon Stone. The rest, as they say, is mere commentary.

Television series are even more formulaic.

Columbo/Quincy/Magnum/T J Hooker etc always get their man. In soap operas, whenever someone kisses some else at an inappropriate time, someone even more inappropriate will always wander in and the episode will end on a terribly tedious cliffhanger.

To be fair, many books have been written lampooning the essential silliness of films. The writer, Joe Queenan, does it better than most and I would heartily recommend any of his books. The film business is rooted in fantasy and escapism and it's not suprising that the resulting product is generally very silly. However, there are some notable exceptions.

At the same time that Don't Say a Word was on Film Four, Channel Four was screening The Departed which won the Best Picture Oscar in 2006 for the brilliant British producer, Graham King. The film is set in Boston and is about an undercover agent in the Irish Mafia. It was expertly directed by Martin Scorsese and featured a stellar cast including Jack Nicholson, Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Martin Sheen and Mark Wahlberg. Apart from Ray Winstone's laughable American accent, everything about this film is really good but the best thing is that it blurs the traditional goodie and baddie roles and you can never work out how the film will turn out. Indeed, to borrow a cliche, William Monahan's tremendous script packs a real shocker at the end (I won't ruin it for you if you haven't seen it!).

Unfortunately for every Departed, there are a thousand Don't Say a Words, for every Sopranos, a hundred thousand Columbos and for every District 9, a million Avatars. I suppose there's another universal truth in there somewhere. You have to swim through oceans of mediocrity to discover a single gem.