By
Phil Leckman
I saw a film this week - a stylish, lavishly photographed little picture about a self-obsessed computer geek and the stripper he hires for a weekend in Vegas. But for all its seamless flashbacks and inner monologues and arty camera angles, "The Center of the World" is really a movie about the ugliness in two people's souls and how they try to hide from it. And as the film laboriously hammered this unhappy theme home for the fifteenth successive time, I found myself groaning audibly and checking my watch.
I suppose I could just take my lack of enthusiasm for "The Center of the World" at face value - a wasted night at a bad movie - and leave it at that. But the problem with "The Center of the World" to me seems to be indicative of a larger problem within filmmaking, and a major divide among movie-going audiences. Let's call it structure versus story.
Some people watch movies for the way they're put together - for artful turns of plot and pacing, for unconventional, non-linear storylines or for the subtle symbolism a skilled director can inject. This group of movie-goers is usually pretty easy to identify: they discuss films in terms of their directors, not their actors. Their conversations are peppered with film-school jargon: "story arcs" and "mise-en-scene." They tend to take their discussion of movies very seriously, discussing topics like the color symbolism in "Traffic" with the sort of grave, concerned air usually reserved for United Nations peace negotiations.
For the second group of film fans, in which I wholeheartedly place myself, the play's the thing. We could care less about the religious imagery in Thomas Paul Anderson's "Magnolia" or "The Limey"'s unconventional timeline as long as we get a solid story, compelling characters and meaningful interactions. We watch movies for the ideas they contain, not the way those ideas are framed or photographed. Inspiration, emotion, excitement - this is what we look for in a film, not an esoteric assemblage of lighting and camera angles.
In some ways, I suppose, setting a good story up in opposition to a good structure is counterproductive. After all, the vast majority of American movies these days lack both. But I've seen a host of films in recent years in which directors emphasize style over substance, lavishing attention on color and mood while virtually ignoring the concerns of the story itself.
The aforementioned "Magnolia" is a good example - while it certainly featured a talented cast, the acting was so overwhelmed by Anderson's exhausting, self-indulgent directing that I spent the last hour of the movie wishing I could afford another trip to the snack bar. I could name a host of other offenders - "The Center of the World" was certainly one - but I'm sure anyone who shares my affection for substance over structure will have no problem compiling their own list of examples.
The real shame with structure-driven pictures is that they leave out so much of what a good movie-going experience should be. When a film has both a good story and a creative structure - when a director gives his plot and characters as much forethought as he does his film stock or lighting setup - the results are so much more satisfying. Take the Coen brothers' recent "O Brother Where Art Thou?" as a good example. To be sure, it was cleverly directed, studded with tongue-in-cheek references to Homer's "Odyssey" as well as less obvious nods to "The Wizard of Oz" and other classic films. But this wasn't at the expense of the story. "O Brother" also highlighted memorable, engaging characters, hilarious dialogue and inspired acting from its principles. What resulted was what good filmmaking should be - a mix of plot and thought and stage and soul, greater than the sum of its parts.
