I'm watching a movie were a man of 25 and a woman of 40 fall in love.
There are some interesting aspects about this movie, and the most fascinating one is that they never state what the problem is. Two people fall in love, they have a sexual relation, they move together; All natural parts of life.
It's like the people making the movie presumes that we all think that fifteen years between a man and a woman is too much; Almost like we ought to know that this is something preposterous and cause of a scandal.
There are few things that you take for granted, that the rest of the world take for granted. You can expect that most people object to murder, but you make a huge mistake if you think that all people see the conflict in a relationship with a fifteen years difference in age.
I don't say that such relationship is uncomplicated. And I don't say that you can't base a story on one of your ideas about what works and what doesn't.
But you have to show it. That is what this professional, big studio made movie has missed. They just presumed that it was so obvious that the relationship was controversial that they missed to expose the conflict.
I'm close to forty. I think men of twenty-five are childish and naive. The woman in this movie does not express anything like this. And the man in question displays very little of it. The only thing is that he reads Harry Potter, which I found quite funny in this situation, because both I and my soon seventy-year-old mom read Harry Potter too. If that is an expression of youth it missed its target.
People surrounding them could have expressed it more clearly that they saw the age as a problem. Now it's kind of vague, more like funny remarks that she fucked the babysitter.
Her former husband turns up in old and grey-looking in trench-coat to contrast the younger man's more relaxed style, but to me, it only made it obvious why she wanted the other man, not because of age, but because of style and attitude.
If you have something that in your mind should cause a conflict, make sure that we understand this conflict. Don't just presume that we understand. Make someone express their opinion, vocalize the problem. Show the struggle. The conflict is the engine of the story. I hardly think you can put it in too much view.
2 comments:
You're so right - assuming a conflict is dangerous territory. Especially today, things which used to be considered inherently conflict-laden are simply facts of life. May-December relationships can have their problems, but they're going to vary from one couple to another. Inter-racial dating, which was simply unimaginable when I was growing up, is hardly noteworthy now.
If we're going to be interested, it will have to be because we're given specifics of a certain situation - or so it seems to me.
"May-December-relationships", thank you, I just learned something new.
Yes, it is dangerous to just presume that the audience is with you.
Then of course something gets more or less shocking one generation to another, and it is difficult to prepare for that, but at least the conflict should be exposed in the first place.
I remember two boys about twelve at the time watching Fried Green Tomatoes and didn't get the attitude towards black people at all. Now, they were not Americans, and had little clue about American history, but in that movie, even if you don't get exactly why, you are aware of the conflict. (While I missed it in Chrimson Tide, because it was too subtile.)
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