Friday, February 22, 2013
Beyond Words
I found it interesting to note that the lack of dialogue did not hurt The Romance of the Forest. Radcliffe's description of the character interactions are more than enough. It is especially impressive because it is not a first person narrative, which would have made it easier to get away with. Here's a prompt for you: what other books or films have gotten away with no dialogue in dramatic moments. Here is an example from On The Waterfront: http://youtu.be/geh_Mu622SY (start at 1.25 if you want).
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ReplyDeleteI also found it interesting that there was so little dialogue but that it did not take away from the story. You prompted that we find other examples where there is little dialogue in movies and books, there are many. One thing that you mentioned was that Radcliff did not do the descriptions in first person, which would have been easier, and my first example did use first person and it is Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen. In this novel the description and a lot of the progression of the story comes from what Elizabeth Bennet tells us. The example I found in a movie is in Glory where Denzel Washington plays a freed slave in the Union’s 54th Massachusetts Voluntary Infantry. In the scene he is being whipped for attempted desertion by his commanding officer. What makes the scene so moving is that when his shirt is removed you see the scars from his former slave owner on his back. Then the whipping begins and he is completely silent during the whole thing. He looks at the captain in charge of the regiment that gave the order just staring silently as tears eventually run down his cheeks. This scene is so moving and is has no words because they were not needed just as the dialogue in the beginning of Radcliffe’s book.
ReplyDeleteThat's a really nice clip. I agree that a lot of the time an image alone can be more powerful than a dialogue heavy scene just like a description can be more powerful than a dialogue heavy passage. The narrator is also able to describe things differently than the characters might be able to express in dialogue. Your prompt calls to mind this scene from The 400 Blows http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbcyPBW0hWk .
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