Syncopation: Behind the beat 2
We’re looking at scenes where a character’s awareness is behind that of the audience. We know something and they don’t. Last time we looked at how characters behind the beat can make bad-ass characters look even…worse-assed?
Then there are characters who never realise they’re behind the beat, which seems inherently tragic. And then there’s showing characters behind the beat as The Trap Closes and they realise The Awful Truth. This seems not un-adjacent to melodrama. There’s plenty of it in silent cinema, where the pre-Ibsen/Stanislavsky convention dictates that distress is indicated by either placing the back of the hand to the forehead or pulling at the hair on each side of the face.
Don’t get me wrong, it can be great. Sentiment isn’t easy. You have to work to earn it, but if you’ve done the work and given the audience reasons to care about your characters, when it hits, it hits hard.
Or, you know…
One issue I have with these Big Scenes is they can only be Big Scenes, it’s not a sustainable size or intensity. “Torchwood” had this problem for me. I know, I’m hardly the target audience but a lot of the time it felt that the script, the acting, the cinematography, the editing and the score were all doing and saying the same thing, in unison. THIS IS EXCITING. THIS IS SAD. THE HUMANS ARE WINNING. It didn’t leave much for the audience to do.
But what if you show the character just about to realise what’s happening, and it’s the culmination of the whole story and then you DON’T show the reaction. You leave a space for the audience to fill in what the character must be feeling. Empathy. Catharsis. We are purged. Not in a bad way. Syncopation of revelation and reaction, not as a technical exercise, but because it affects us even more deeply.
WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR “MICHAEL CLAYTON”
This is a masterpiece. Wait, you have seen Tony Gilroy’s Michael Clayton (2007), right? I’m not even kidding, if you haven’t seen Michael Clayton then run — don’t walk — to watch it. It’s a fucking masterpiece. George Clooney, Tilda Swinton and Tom Wilkinson are gods to me and I don’t think they’ve been better in anything else. Written and directed by Tony Gilroy, who wrote the Bourne movies, amongst many others.
The choice is yours, watch the clip first and then read the script, or read the script first and then see what the actors and director and editor did with it. Screenplay here
Spoilers! Michael Clayton (George Clooney) is a lawyer, sort of. Karen Crowder (Tilda Swinton) is a lawyer trying to close a deal that’ll make so much money she’s had people killed including Clayton’s friend and colleague Arthur and also (as far as she knows, with a car bomb) Clayton himself . She’s just about to close the deal. And she steps out the room and…
It looks like a long scene but it goes like the clappers.
What a scene. Her little laugh of incredulity at 2:41. Her deer-in-the-headlights panic. The way language leaves her. The way she tries to get ahead of Clayton, to regain the initiative, to deny, or delay or divert him, to get ahead of the beat. Karen gets her come-uppance, we see the trap sprung, but there’s no glory in it. Clayton walks off. Karen collapses behind him. We never hear her scream when it hits her.
Tilda Swinton is amazing. This interview alone is gold, particularly on the perfect cinematic performance given by a donkey. Her line on the character of Karen Crowder is that “she’s a mediocre actress, badly cast”. I submit that in Swinton’s hands, she becomes much more: a universal avatar of panic, so far out of her depth the fish have lights on, the sum of all our fears about fucking up and getting caught.
What Can We Steal?
Show characters in the moment as the trap closes
It’s good to catch villains in a trap
Show them showing signs of human weakness
Leave gaps for the audience to fill
Silence is eloquent
Walking away can be badass even if nothing physically explodes behind them
Next time, we’ll look at being on the beat.
