Sounds Like A Rude Word But Isn't.

There are some things in life that I’m destined just not to get: for example, anything written by Stephen Poliakoff, or any script that is unlucky enough to find itself in the hands of Michael Winterbottom. Whether I’m simply demented, stupid or slightly retarded, I have another item to add to the list – the films of Pedro Almodóvar (well, Volver at least).

Maybe my not liking Volver exhibits my own prejudices and subjective dislikes much the same as anyone else, but when Mark Kermode describes it as a gorgeously melancholic melodrama-cum-ghost-story, I have to wonder whether he saw the same film as I did. Yeah, OK, so there’s nothing drastically wrong with it – it’s just the critical avalanche of hyperbole that is heaped upon this film just seems to be a little misplaced to me.

Talking of hyperbole, here’s Paul Howlett:

Almodóvar manages to make a ludicrous farce about a mother and daughter who kill the abusive man of the house and set about covering their tracks, hindered by a back-from-the-dead grandmother, into a work of emotionally astute, heartaching drama. It's pure magic...

Except, it isn’t – not really. I think the best way to describe it is three parts melodrama, two parts soap opera and one part camp (or five parts camp if you consider that melodrama and soap opera fall under this heading as well). Don’t get me wrong, I have absolutely nothing against soap opera/continuing drama, or anything that is even remotely camp for that matter – it’s just that in Volver, soap opera is equated with ‘trash TV’, where in fact the film doesn’t really do anything to transcend the genre it’s supposed to be an ironic homage to. Think of it as a feature length episode of Emmerdale with the camp quotient turned up to eleven. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, it’s just not my cup of tea – like I said before, the fact that I didn’t like Volver harshly exposes my likes and dislikes, and there’s nothing I can really do about that. However, if an ‘emotionally astute’ drama is Almodóvar’s aim, then to my mind why can’t the story be told without it being fed through the prism of camp, ironic or not?

Down at the level of screenwriting mechanics, something seems to be amiss as well: although the central planks of the narrative are all sound, characters spend an absolute age saying hello and goodbye to each other, before walking across the street to do the same in someone else’s house. Characters get out of cars, walk down streets, then walk back up them. Cut these travelling to-and-fro moments out of the film, and you’d probably lose about fifteen minutes (which would be a good thing, as I almost nodded off at the 110 minute mark). A good deal of exposition is delivered during these moments in such a way as to make it obvious that these little nuggets of information are going to be vitally important later on – and there’s the problem: it’s obvious that they’re going to be important. Apart from one clunkingly enormous revelation at the film’s conclusion (which is both startling yet somehow banal), everything just seems eminently predictable.

Ah well – I’m off to see Iron Man at the weekend – something tells me that the camp quotient there is going to be dangerously low.

Problems in Oz

The super-reliable Robin Kelly has already posted an article from The Australian where Lynden Barber examines the state of screenwriting down under. Lynden also has an interesting and informative blog on which he has posted the three interviews that served as source material for the article. They make for entertaining and enlightening reading – not just from an Australian point of view, but how it might equate to a UK context. Duncan Thompson’s comments on continuing drama are especially interesting...

Soaps and Responsibility

There’s an interesting interview in yesterday’s Guardian with Lesley Henderson, a sociology lecturer at Brunel University, who has written a book entitled Social Issues in Television Fiction.

Soaps, she says, are hugely significant in shaping public views. "You are talking about a genre that [can] attract around 10 million viewers per episode, and a lot of them are young viewers - people who wouldn't normally sit down and watch a news programme or a documentary about breast cancer or mental illness."

That power, she says, can sit uneasily with "making good telly".

The article reminded me of the (at times) rabid discussion that went on over at Lucy’s gaff a little while back. Many people piled in to state that the only responsibility they had as writers was to the story and nothing else. However, the discussion primarily focussed on horror movies, where creating an atmosphere of revulsion and/or terror doesn’t exactly sit well with a sense of social responsibility. To my mind, soaps are different, if only for the fact that they attract an audience “who wouldn't normally... watch a news programme or a documentary about breast cancer or mental illness." In which case surely the responsibility to get things right is paramount? Or maybe not:

As one experienced scriptwriter told her: "In the end, we are drama. We are not a sociological documentary... and although we try not to go terribly wrong we sometimes ignore the truth in favour of a good story... If we always stuck to the absolute facts we'd have no drama."

The problem arises when you introduce socially realistic story lines (such as mental illness) and expect them to be subservient to the drama. I don’t think that that soap writers and producers can have it both ways. Soap is well known for dealing with everyday issues and on the odd occasion, bringing an issue to the fore that previously, for whatever reason, had not been covered. Throwing a child with Down-Syndrome into the mix, as Brookside did back in the 90s, is of course admirable: however, shuffling that particular child out of the series when it no longer provides for good drama (or leads to a decline in viewing figures) is surely an irresponsible way of dealing with the issue? If elements such as these are going to form part of the dramatic mix, then we should expect that writers and producers should at least have the courage to take the story to its natural conclusion (whatever that may be).

The one thing I can’t stand is when drama (not just soap) attempts to address ‘issues’ to the detriment of the story. However, if you are going to shoehorn in an issue in order to give your drama some much needed contemporary or social relevance, then at least make an attempt to get the detail surrounding the issue right.

At least Emmerdale isn’t considering a story line concerning necrophilia in the near future (but I wouldn’t hold your breath!).