Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by Audiophilander (A) on November 25, 2007 at 00:41:33

In Reply to: RE: The ending was "literary" a la McCarthy. Was that so horrible? posted by clarkjohnsen on November 24, 2007 at 21:18:13

The mediums are different and require different audience considerations; movies should convey stories that are visually cohesive, less embellished with over-talky narrative and disjointed or rambling plots. Translating a work of fiction to the film medium without losing the author's original vision is challenging, and nigh on to impossible in some cases, but the best filmed novels succeed on their own merits, retaining the key elements of the source material without relinquishing pace, character development and storytelling. No Country for Old Men has the first two qualifiers, but falls down in the third.

IMHO, storytelling is very important to a satisfying film-going experience for most folks. Storytelling means not only telling a story that makes sense, but providing a satisfying conclusion to the story, whether that conclusion is upbeat or tragic. The worst possible conclusion to ANY film is to have your protagonist give up in the last scene, for whatever reason.

A film can be structured so that evil succeeds and heroism fails as long as there's an ironic conclusion or an ambiguous twist ending (sans Deus Ex Machina). It's even possible to film a growth story which rehabilitates seriously flawed or totally evil character(s) as long as the audience can relate to the character in some sympathetic or empathetic manner, but a good film should never just stop in mid-stream and leave the audience feeling the story ran out of steam or that the projectionist accidentally lost the last reel!

AuPh

Edits: 11/25/07   11/25/07