Don't tell me, show me

First off, this is a good time and place to mention that this blog may contain movie spoilers, big and small. I'll try to get into the habit of listing the movies I spoil at the beginning of each post.

In movies, like in any medium, there are many ways to get an idea across. Say, for instance, you're directing a film, and you want to let the audience know that your main character, Harry, is angry. How would you do it? You could show Harry red-faced and grinding his teeth. You could have him say "I'm angry." You could have a narrator say "Harry was angry." You could even show Harry looking calm but have a subtitle below him read "Harry's angry."

The best way to let your audience know Harry is angry is the first method: show him red-faced, grinding his teeth, veins popping out of his forehead, one eye twitching. And why not? You have a camera! Yes, you have sound too, but film is primarily a visual medium. Yet too many filmmakers turn portions of their movies into plot exposition diatribes and I really don't know why. Maybe they weren't clever enough to concont a way to visually explain their idea, or maybe their plot became convoluted in the scripting phase but they didn't correct it so they were left with too many ideas to get across and not enough time.

My favorite example of a painfully long monologue is toward the end of Vanilla Sky. Tom Cruise's character gets the entire damn movie explained to him by some guy while they're riding an elevator to the top of an impossibly tall building. I understand that the guy's presence fits in with the plot, but I just hate the way all of the movie's secrets are blown away in a single conversation. Think about the ending of The Usual Suspects. Did the filmmakers decide to explain everything with a drawn-out dialogue exchange? No, they opted to use visuals, combined with brief audio and visual flashbacks, to help the audience understand the secret of the movie. That's the way to hit your audience with a powerful revelation, instead of a huge speech that could be summed up in a pamphlet.

Another example of visual vs. verbal plot exposition would be the games in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Casino Royale. In Pirates, Will Turner plays liar's dice with his father and Davy Jones. I had no clue what liar's dice was when I saw the movie and I still don't know how it works, but I knew who was winning, who was losing, and what was at stake during that scene because it was well shot and acted, not because a spectating character was explaining the game. Such subtlety is not present in Casino Royale, however: during one of the poker scenes, one character keeps leaning into another to whisper things like "Now Bond has to go all in if he wants to stay in the game." Don't tell me that; show me. It doesn't even matter if I can't follow every subtle nuance of the game, as long as I know who's dominating and who's getting grilled.

I have more to write on this topic but I'm tired so that'll come later.