The Competent Director
- The competent director has a straightforward interpretation of the text. Character and narrative fall under that interpretation. There is no subtext. Directing the actors and camera choices support that interpretation. Competent directors often have a vigorous camera style, but that style does not deepen meaning.
Here comes that loaded term again, the competent director. In these next three chapters I will chart the roadmap from competence in directing to value (the good director) to transformation (the great director). I know the term competent implies “not good enough,” and I am willing to let that implication stand, even though it is not intended. What is intended is for readers to use this chapter as a baseline for determining what constitutes competent or good enough directing. I could have as easily used the term technical directing, but I did not want to confuse the subject of this chapter with the specific role in television known as the technical or studio director, the person who orchestrates the multicamera movements in a live or taped television show, from news to sitcom. Keep in mind, however, two other phrases—“technically proficient” and “imaginatively understimulated”—to obtain a more layered sense of what I mean by the competent director.
What the Audience Wants
Whether audiences visit movie theaters to be reassured or challenged, whether they seek the familiar or desire the unfamiliar, we know that when they see a film they want more than the “Dragnet” mantra of “just the facts, ma’am.” Whatever the genre, surprise, subversion, subtext, and style all enhance the film experience for the film audience.
We can formulate a set of guiding expectations that go beyond the too general “escape from their own lives for two hours.” First, I would suggest that audiences want a story well told. From the director’s point of view that means narrative clarity. Two good examples of directors who tell a complex story very clearly are Fred Zinnemann in “The Day of the Jackal” (1977) and Robert Zemeckis in “Back to the Future” (1983). Even good directors have lapses when the story is far from clear. Sam Peckinpah loses narrative focus in “Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia” and in “The Osterman Weekend.” Both films exemplify what the audience does not want.
Genre acuity is the second goal for an audience. When they go to a thriller they want to see a thriller, and when they go to a situation comedy they want to laugh. Sidney Pollack’s “Tootsie” (1982) represents the kind of movie that audiences are looking for when they attend a situation comedy. John Frankenheimer’s “Ronin” represents the kind of thriller audiences are looking for when they attend a thriller. Francis Ford Coppola has made many great films, but he was missing in action when he made the situation comedy “Jack” (1995) and when he made the Grisham thriller “The Rainmaker” (1997). These represent the loss of acuity of genre that alienates an audience.
Audiences also are looking for a style that lifts up the narrative. Steven Spielberg understands this notion very well. His Indiana Jones films have a sense of playful fun, a tone that lifts the film experience from B movie plotting to a pleasurable sense of fun. Spielberg’s “Empire of the Sun” (1984) creates an eccentric education for a young British boy in a Japanese prisoner of war camp; the sense of wonder that permeates the boy’s sensibility sustains him through the greatest hardships. Spielberg shifts to a totally opposite extreme, a documentary style, in the ghetto clearance sequence in “Schindler’s List” and in the D-Day landing that opens “Saving Private Ryan.” Because Spielberg had goals for both films, these sequences elevate the power of the films. This sense of style is important for audiences when they attend a film.
Audiences want an emotional journey when they attend a film. That requires inviting the audience to identify with a main character and then articulating that person’s inner struggle. An example will illustrate this point. In Patrice Chereau’s “Queen Margot” (1996), the princess Margot, a Catholic, is forced by her mother, Catherine de Medici, to marry a Protestant, Henry Bourbon of Navarre. The time is 1572, and the Protestants and Catholics of France are struggling for power. A critical component of the plot is the St. Bartholomew’s massacre—the statesanctioned murder of Protestants by the Catholic rulers. The inner journey of Margot, the emotional core of the story, is Margot’s love for her Protestant husband. Because of this love, she chooses to side with her husband Henry against her mother and brothers. By doing so, Margot gives up her safety net and risks everything. Her emotional journey brings the audience into her struggle and her transformation.
The same filmmaker made the film “Intimacy” (1999), a film about two strangers who meet for weekly sex in today’s London. Although the main male character becomes obsessed with his lover, we are never privy to his inner life; consequently, the experience of the film, although sensational, is never emotionally affecting. In “Intimacy,” the audience is left out in the cold, the opposite of the experience of Chereau’s “Queen Margot.”
Although the term subtext seems to carry a pompous theatrical resonance, film audiences who experience it are grateful for its ambition. Jonathan Demme’s “Silence of the Lambs” (1994) is a plot-driven police story: Find the serial killer Buffalo Bill. But, it is also about Clarice’s coming of age as an adult and as a professional person. Like the women who are victims of Buffalo Bill, Clarice may be victimized by men or she can avoid victimization. This is the subtext of “Silence of the Lambs.” Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” (2002–2004) has a number of plots, but let us focus here on Frodo’s journey to rid the world of the ring that involves his personal struggle with the power of good and evil that the ring represents. He succeeds in his quest but is forever changed by the inner struggle he has experienced while transporting the ring. Spiderman has to contend with the evil doings of Dr. Octavius in Sam Rami’s “Spiderman 2” (2004), but he also has to deal with the inner struggle between his own personal goals and his sense of responsibility to his community. In each case, the existence of a powerful subtext raised a plot-driven genre film into a more powerful and meaningful film experience.
Finally, audiences want to be surprised. They want to be surprised by twists and turns of the plot and they want to be surprised by the behavior of characters. The notion that love of a sort (at least affectionate respect) develops between the serial killer Hannibal Lechter and his FBI protegé Clarice Starling is a delightful surprise for audiences, as is the vulnerability of the action hero Indiana Jones when he is in the company of his father in “Indiana Jones and the Lost Crusade” (1987). Surprise, in the form of dialogue or a behavioral twist or a plot shift, is valued by a film’s audience.
Directors and Competence
Here I would like to qualify what will follow in the rest of the chapter. What do I mean by competence in directing? We can have two extremes of directing, with competence lying in between those extremes. At one extreme is directing so bad that it takes on a campy virtue. The films of Ed Wood are a good example of this extreme. At the other extreme are good filmmakers who clearly have added value to their projects but who occasionally lapse. John Frankenheimer, who made the great “Manchurian Candidate” (1962), also made “The Year of the Gun” (1985). William Friedkin, who made “The Exorcist” (1973) and “The French Connection” (1970), also made “The Hunted” (2003). Lapses such as these can be due to personal or professional problems. My point here is that even good directors fall down from time to time.
In between these two extremes lie some of the most commercial directors of all time. To make my point I will concentrate on three: Brett Ratner (“Red Dragon”), Chris Columbus (“Mrs. Doubtfire”), and Richard Donner (“Conspiracy Theory”). The example of “Red Dragon” will suffice for the moment. Based on Thomas Harris’ Hannibal novel, the film is the second film version of the novel. This version by Brett Ratner focuses on the plot to find a serial killer. The Lechter character is a presence in the film but is not as central as he is in Silence of the Lambs, the follow-up Harris novel; nevertheless, the Lechter character dwarfs the protagonist, the FBI psychologist (Ed Norton), as well as the antagonist (Ralph Fiennes).
Turning to the earlier film version, Michael Mann’s “Manhunter” (1986) used emotional instability and its inherent violent unpredictability as the director’s idea. The protagonist, the antagonist, the reporter, and of course Hannibal Lechter all share an unsettled, unsettling instability or fear of it; consequently, their actions and their reactions come as a surprise to the character as well as to the audience, which becomes immersed in that instability. All the while Mann presents a very structured visualization that is clean and antiseptic. When violence does erupt (the murder scenes, the killing of the reporter), they are all the more shocking as they break up the ordered world Mann has visually presented. The result is the powerful, disturbing experience of “Manhunter” created by the use of the director’s idea to add value to the narrative. It is this result that differentiates the competent director from the good director. The two case studies that follow provide creative profiles of two competent directors, Antoine Fuqua and Simon Wincer.
Case Study I. The Competent Director: Antoine Fuqua (“King Arthur,” 2004)
Antoine Fuqua is best known for his 2001 film “Training Day,” featuring Denzel Washington’s Oscar-winning performance. “King Arthur” (2004) followed the Bruce Willis film, “Tears of the Sun” (2003). “King Arthur” is in scale and budget Fuqua’s largest film. The King Arthur legend of early England and the knights of the Round Table has been a frequently used basis for films. Cornell Wilde’s “The Sword of Lancelot” (1963) tells the story as Action Adventure. John Boorman’s “Excalibur” (1981) tells the story as fable, and Joshua Logan’s “Camelot” (1967) tells the story as a musical. Fuqua’s presentation is pure action adventure.
Fuqua, working with a David Franzoni script, casts Arthur as part Roman, part Briton. His knights are Eastern cavalry Sarmatians from the plains adjacent to the Black Sea who are indebted to fight for Rome for 15 years. All have been sent to the Empire’s most distant outpost, Britain. An added complication is that Rome is about to quit Britain. As we join the story, the knights are a day from discharging their duty to Rome, but there is one last assignment for Arthur and his knights: rescue an important Roman family north of Hadrian’s Wall. They need to cross the forest of the Woats, pagan Britons who have never accepted Roman rule. Also complicating the story is the fact that the cruel Saxons have invaded Britain from the north. They pose a real threat as they destroy all and everyone in their path.
It is 450 A.D., and Rome is controlled by the Pope and the Church. The Woats and Arthur’s knights are pagan. At the Roman villa, they find that the priests are torturing and killing the Woats. Arthur intervenes and saves the two Woats who are still alive, a young boy and a woman, Guinevere. This represents Arthur’s first distancing from the authority of Rome, and for Arthur Guinevere will become the voice of Britain for the Britons. On the journey back to Hadrian’s Wall, Merlin, the leader of the Woats, invites Arthur to lead all Britons against the common enemy, the Saxons. Lancelot, Arthur’s friend and principal knight, urges self-interest— ride away, leave this place—but Arthur cannot just ride away as other Romans can. He leads the Britons to defeat the Saxons. A number of his knights, including Lancelot, die in the battle. Arthur becomes King, takes Guinevere as his Queen, and claims Britain as the last bastion of freedom, at which point the film ends.
The text as presented sidesteps the Pagan/Christian thread of the story which became so compelling an element in the narrative in Boorman’s “Excalibur.” Instead, the main thread is the plot: The Romans are leaving. The Saxons are coming. The Woats will fight for their land. What will Arthur do? What will his knights, who are not Britons, do? Although Arthur speaks about equality and freedom, he is presented for the most part as a gifted warrior, and his knights, although physically different from one another, are also attractive and gifted warriors. Some are more physically imposing than others but essentially they are the good guys, no mistake about it.
Guinevere, although she will be the love interest, is more conscience than lover, and she too is a gifted warrior. If I had to characterize this group of protagonists I would call them noble in their idealism and in their comradeship, but these characterizations are stereotypical rather than compelling, suitable to a plot-driven action adventure film. Fuqua used the same approach to characterize the military extraction team in “Tears of the Sun.”
Just as the good are very good, the bad characters are very bad, suitable for the antagonists in an action adventure film. Stellan Skarsgård plays the leader of the Saxons, and he takes the meaning of cruelty to another level. I must admit that it’s great fun to watch a good actor work with a stereotype.
The director’s priority in “King Arthur” is the plot. The battle scenes begin early with the introduction of Arthur and his knights while fighting Woats who have attacked a Roman convoy. Later, the two set pieces involve combat with the Saxons, with the first being a battle on an iced-over lake. That battle pits eight bowmen against a thousand Saxons. A few days later the odds are no better. Thousands of Saxons face Arthur, the knights, and the Woats at Badon Hill inside Hadrian’s Wall. Each battle proves that tactics and bravery and ferocious determination win the day.
Between battles is the time for characterization, but character is presented in shorthand. One knight has a falcon; the most daunting knight, physically, has a relationship with the Woat boy freed at the Roman villa. The second most physically daunting knight has eleven bastard children. Another is masterful with the bow, and yet another is an absolute cynic. The point here is that, for Fuqua, character is not as important as plot.
Although there are numerous plot twists in King Arthur, the story lacks a great deal of surprise. Fuqua’s film is arresting visually, which we will turn to shortly, but the machinations of plot do not shock or thrill us, which brings us to the director’s point of view, or lack of a point of view.
Few characters in history have conjured up more enthusiasm than King Arthur. Was he an idealist? Was he a man ahead of his time? Was Arthur a fool? Antoine Fuqua and Clive Owen have tried to present Arthur as idealistic and noble, yet what he seems to be above all else is a super leader. Fuqua’s Arthur is militaristic, a hero. Fuqua’s Arthur is the idealized hero rather than the idealist as hero. In this sense, he is a romanticized cartoon character, made all the more so for the cruelty of his antagonist. Fuqua’s point of view as the director is to see the Arthur legend as an opportunity for visual excitement, an area that displays his own particular skill as a director. So, we should examine where Fuqua chose to place his camera. Those positions best serve to bring to life his singular view of the text: It is a struggle of good guys versus bad guys, and the heroes will overcome the villains, just as beauty always overcomes ugliness, at least in the plot-driven adventure genre.
With regard to the landscape, Hadrian’s Wall defined the northernmost boundary of lands held by Rome. That land at various times in the film is heavily forested or has ice-covered mountains and lakes. The land is evocative as opposed to being geographically correct. That land is visually presented as heavily shadowed and menacing. The land is not so much a real place as an active environment that takes sides. Realism is far away; atmosphere is everything. Fuqua preferred the use of very low or very high angles and extreme long shots to present the land.
In terms of how he presents people, they too appear in extreme long shot, a dot on the horizon, or in extreme close-up. Fuqua used the land and the people (Arthur, Merlin, the knights, the Romans, and the Saxons) to evoke a particular atmosphere and feeling. It is as if each person is an icon, a superhero, or a supervillain. The intense close-ups establish the person. The extreme long-shots establish the opposition, which is so great that surviving makes each character a superhero. The rapid pace at which characters and their adversaries are juxtaposed only heightens the sense that a hero is being created as we watch. Fuqua almost fetishizes the struggle between these opposites.
Because so much of the plot is battle, the moving camera, whether a steadicam or camera mounted on a helicopter or crane, is important. Movement gives a majestic aesthetic to battle and scale to the opposing sides. Editing on action and specific violence to individuals adds to the fetishizing of violence, a key factor to being victorious. Consequently, the dynamic of battle becomes central to Fuqua as action director. Although his battle scenes are not as emotionally loaded as Kubrick’s nor as aesthetic as Ridley Scott’s battle sequences in “Gladiator,” Fuqua nevertheless manages to make the battles compelling. The settings become critical—the battle on the ice is beautiful to watch as are all the fires and smoke during the battle on Badon Hill. The scenes are devoid of logic, but the look of the battles is every bit as evocative as the dance sequences in Adrian Lyne’s “Flashdance.” I am suggesting that, for Fuqua, the look of the battle was as important as who is fighting or who is winning. The battles are dynamic and exciting, but do not probe too deeply for their logic because that is not what Fuqua is interested in.
“King Arthur,” like the work of Adrian Lyne or Tony Scott, is easy on the eyes and has an MTV pace, but it lacks subtext and a layered character arc. Instead, the film is enjoyable as a linear entertainment populated by beautiful people. Its director, Antoine Fuqua, exemplifies the competent director.
Case Study II. The Competent Director: Simon Wincer (“The Lighthorsemen,” 1987)
Simon Wincer’s “The Lighthorsemen,” a war film set in World War I, is about the desert campaign in the Middle East and the role played by the Lighthorsemen, mounted infantry from Australia. At the beginning of the film, Danny, a young man in Australia, expresses an interest in joining the Lighthorsemen, and the film follows him to the British campaign against the Turks to take Jerusalem. The film focuses on one battle in the campaign, the battle for Beersheba. Danny replaces a veteran who has been injured. Three battle-hardened Lighthorsemen comprise the core relationships for Danny. They are judges and jury as Danny discovers he cannot shoot a man. Rather than endanger his mates, he joins the ambulance corps. At the battle for Beersheba, he saves one of his three mates while another dies in battle. Danny falls in love with a nurse, meets an eccentric intelligence officer, and generally wrestles with his conscience while the Lighthorsemen save the day, win the battle, and go on to national glory in Australia.
The film is an Australian production, but it differs considerably from the earlier “Gallipoli” (1982), a film that condemns the war losses sustained by Australian units under British command. Wincer’s approach is essentially entertaining, more action adventure than war film. Wincer is the director of the celebrated television film, “Lonesome Dove,” and he remains very much in demand as a director of Westerns for television. I have chosen to discuss Wincer’s work here because he is such a successful director and his work is so likeable that my remarks about him should be viewed as a positive take on the competent director as opposed to a critique. What I would like to suggest is that by the choices he has made Wincer has established himself as a competent director.
As to those choices, let us look at them through a prism of six specific criteria, the first five having to do with text interpretation and the sixth with the direction of the camera:
- Simplicity or complexity of the narrative
- Approach to characterization
- How the director treats the narrative (literally or as a start point)
- Issue of surprise
- Point of view of the director
- Where the director chooses to place the camera
Turning to the narrative of “The Lighthorsemen,” we see this simplified narrative intent played out repeatedly. A nurse in the hospital attends to Danny’s wounds. Very quickly they move from a caregiver–patient relationship to would-be lovers. Earlier in the film, Danny has accompanied his colonel on a scouting patrol, during which they encounter a British officer parlaying with the local Bedouins. They escort the major, who may be a spy, to their headquarters. Quickly we learn that he is the intelligence officer for General Allenby, who will shortly take command of the allied army in the region. The spy quickly becomes the indispensable hero of the upcoming campaign against Beersheba. But, to do so, the major enlists the nurse mentioned earlier to write the forged love letter of a wife to her officer husband, a letter that is in short order planted to mislead the Turks about the location of the upcoming offensive. This narrative turn of events is as rapid and simplified as all the other narrative events in the film.
Wincer’s approach is to tell the narrative in a simplified and rapid manner, an approach that will not undermine the overall intent—to present the romantic heroism of the Australian Lighthorsemen regiment. None of the narrative events should distract us from this intent. As we look at Wincer’s approach to characterization, a similar pattern emerges. Danny is shy and young. Having lost a brother in the war, he wants to prove he is as worthy and committed to family and country as was his brother. His problem is that, although he is a good rider and shot, he simply cannot kill another human being. This is his dilemma. No such dilemma for his three mates. They are rugged and manly and they miss their families, but they have no problem killing. We know little else about them.
Officers tend to fall into two categories: The English officers are rigid or eccentric, and the Australian officers are able and risk-taking, feeling and pragmatic, which the English and German officers are not. Only the Turkish officers among the enemy are portrayed as able and honorable. The Germans are rigid and not able or smart. The only woman in the film, the nurse, is compassionate and serious and beautiful—what we would all like our nurses to be. Wincer’s approach to characterization, then, serves the simplified narrative approach.
To take this discussion to the next level, we need to look at whether the director keeps the narrative simple or departs from this strategy. Is the simplified narrative a start point or is it the end point? I would have to say that competent directors tend to view the narrative as the start and end points. The narrative in “The Lighthorsemen” is a good example. The literal treatment of the story as a romantic revisitation of a historical event suggests and makes for a noneditorial experience of a chapter in Australia’s military history. Even from the perspective of Australian films, “The Lighthorsemen” differs from two earlier Australian films dealing with war. Bruce Beresford’s “Breaker Morant” (1980) deals with an incident in the Boer War, and Peter Weir’s “Gallipoli” (1982) deals with the Gallipoli landing in 1915. Both films humanize the main characters who will be sacrificed in the course of acting as soldiers during war, and both films characterize the British command of Australian troops as the reason for those sacrifices. Both films, in this sense, view war as cruel and the killer of the innocents, those Australian sons, who for various reasons found themselves fighting for king and country and then needlessly sacrificed not for country but for king. The enemy is not the Boers or the Turks or the Germans. In both films, the enemy is much closer: It is the colonial rule of the British.
Returning to narrative intent, “Breaker Morant” and “Gallipoli” do tell a clear story but each tells a layered story and not simply because they offer up an anti-war position. Rather, in the case of “Breaker Morant,” the narrative about atrocities against the Boers and the consequences for three participating soldiers reveals atrocities on both sides. Indeed, the implication of the narrative is that war breeds atrocities, and the British making peace with the defeated Boers required sacrifices—in this case, three human sacrifices. In the case of “Gallipoli,” the focus is on the sacrifice of a beautiful, idealistic Australian generation in a battle that was ill conceived by the Admiralty in London. The film is an argument against colonialism, as it illustrates that the colonized (Australia) can only be destroyed in service of the colonial relationship. Although each film has a romantic layer, neither dwells exclusively on that layer, as in the case of Wincer’s “The Lighthorsemen.”
I now turn to the issue of surprise. As I mentioned earlier, audiences want to be surprised by plot and the behavior of the characters. The characters in “The Lighthorsemen” are not surprising. Only the intelligence officer (Anthony Andrews) twists away from expectations. Initially, we are led to believe he may be a German spy. That twist is short lived, and the best we can say about his characterization is that he is eccentric, although that eccentricity and affectation are part and parcel of intelligence officers, a profession that traffics in subterfuge. Beyond this character, there are no surprises in the characterization.
Turning to the plot, even its twists and turns are continually telegraphed in the story. The plot twist that will save the day and win the battle at Beersheba is that the Lighthorsemen are mounted infantry. They are expected to ride to battle, dismount, and fight the enemy. That is what we are told from the beginning of the film, and we do see them dismount to fight. Certainly the Turks expect them to dismount as they charge the city, and when they do the Turkish artillery will decimate their ranks. But, we know that in this battle the Lighthorsemen have been ordered to ride into battle. They do, and they win the day and the town. Plot is treated in just this way throughout the film. There are twists and turns, but not the kind of narrative twist found in two of the great narratives of 2003: Pedro Almodovar’s “Talk to Her” and Denys Arcand’s “The Barbarian Invasions.” In those films, surprises and revelations of deeper narrative intentions have delighted audiences all over the world and raised to almost mythic levels the reputations of these two writer–directors.
Finally, we turn to the point of view of the director. Sometimes referred to as voice, point of view can be best considered as a counterpoint to the narrative. That voice can be articulated around a character or the plot, and it can be expressed in irony or in the direction of performance. Whatever strategy the director chooses, point of view will and should surprise the audience. For example, in Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket” (1987), the first half of the film presents the sergeant in basic training as the enemy. In the second half of the film, set in Vietnam, the critical sequence is a sniper attack. At the end of the sequence, we discover that the sniper is a teenage girl. Dying, she begs for death as the members of the patrol debate whether they should kill her or let her bleed to death. In the end, the most pacifist member of the unit, Joker, kills her. Ironically, this scene is the most humane in the film. Kubrick is displaying a point of view at odds with the narrative. Life is precious. Even death can be precious if it is intended to end suffering. Here, in the midst of a killing field, Kubrick finds humanity. His subversive voice is a distinct and distinctive point of view.
No such irony or subversion is at play in “The Lighthorsemen.” Wincer’s point of view is romantic, just as the characters and events are romantic. Such a direct approach supporting the narrative typifies the work of the competent director. Wincer has chosen to view the soldiers and their plight (survival) through a romantic prism; consequently, the camera generally photographs the action from a low angle looking upward. This creates a heroic image of the four principal characters. He also uses the alternative of extreme long shots of the Lighthorsemen marching across the desert. Such images, shot at daybreak or dusk, provide a powerful impression of unity, strength, even fortitude with regard to the group as a whole. When photographing the Lighthorsemen in battle, Wincer uses various lenses, including telephoto (to compress the visual context) and extreme close-ups of the enemy or of a Lighthorseman responding to the enemy. This alternating between extreme long shots with extreme close-ups supports the romantic sense of the Lighthorsemen. As a battle proceeds, the increased pace or tempo of the editing adds a certain dynamism to the scene. Wincer never varies, however, from his romantic view of the characters or their actions.
Singularity of visualization is a choice that consistently implies the intent of the director. Two extreme examples from other war films will help contextualize the director’s intent. At one extreme is the bombing of Pearl Harbor in Michael Bay’s film “Pearl Harbor” (2000). Bay’s purpose in the film, like Wincer’s, is to romanticize the heroism of the American airman in the film. The attack on Pearl Harbor is not so much horrific in its presentation as it is romantic. At one point, there is a shot of a bomb falling toward the ships that will be destroyed in the harbor. The shot, from the point of view of the bomb, illustrates the precision, even the beauty of the bombing. No tragedy here, just bombs doing their work. At the other extreme is the shot of Slim Pickens riding a nuclear bomb down toward its target in the USSR in Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove” (1991). Pickens rides the bomb as if he is a cowboy riding a bronco. Here, too, we follow the bomb toward its intended target, but the image is intended to editorialize an American airman’s view of attacking the enemy. It is cavalier, even insane in its dissociation from the intent of the bomb: to kill hundreds of thousands of Russians. The image reverberates with director Kubrick’s voice. Nuclear war is insane, an act of madness born of a cowboy mentality. Here, the image is complex and troubling.
Returning to the bombing in “The Lighthorsemen,” bombs fall and men die, particularly Lighthorsemen, but their deaths are romantic deaths. The camera placement records the moment of death more closely to Bay’s interpretation of dying in war, and in this sense the camera placement supports a simplified visual intention.
In this discussion of Wincer’s “The Lighthorsemen” I have tried to present a positive portrait of competent directors, whose approach is straightforward, singular, and consistent when presenting a narrative that is clear, engaging, and implicitly entertaining rather than thought provoking. That is not to say that competent directors are not ambitious in their selection of material. Turning to the work of another competent director, Adrian Lyne, we can compare his treatment of a particular subject matter to the treatment accorded the same material by another director. Both Kubrick and Lyne directed a version of Nabokov’s novel Lolita. Kubrick’s version (1962) of an older man falling for an underage nymphet is filled with irony, humor, and a subversive point of view. Lyne’s version (1994) is a literal treatment of an older man falling in love with a teenager. Lyne’s version has neither humor nor irony. It is a melodrama, straight and simple, and a tragic one at that, whereas the Kubrick version is a commentary on 1950s America and its morality. The Kubrick version is as troubling today as it was when it first appeared.
In 2002, Lyne remade the Claude Chabrol film “Une Femme Infidele” (1976) as “Unfaithful.” Again a comparison is revealing. Chabrol’s film is the tale of a jealous husband who believes his wife is cheating on him. He hires a detective and discovers that she is cheating. When he visits the lover, he finds the man likeable but is overcome by his anger and kills him. The film then explores his guilt and his punishment (he is arrested by the police in the last shot). The film is rife with irony. This plain man with a beautiful wife just cannot believe that she is devoted to him in the way he is to her. His obsession overtakes his life. Perhaps it pushed her away; we are not told, but our empathy is with him. We understand him. We even forgive his transgressions.
Adrian Lyne exhibits no such irony in “Unfaithful.” The film is shifted to a melodrama about the wife, a woman looking for the excitement and thrill of a sexual encounter. She finds it with a Frenchman (an indirect reference to Chabrol’s film), and eventually the husband finds him and kills him. What is the couple to do? Go on as if nothing happened? Confess to the police? We never find out. Lyne leaves us in doubt about their fate. There is no humor, only confusion, in this titillating treatment of unfaithfulness in marriage. The absence of irony or subversion leaves us with the narrative and no editorial view of the subject from the director.
One last example will illustrate how the competent director differs from our subject of the next chapter, the good director. Rob Marshall, the director of the Oscar-winning film “Chicago” (2002), exemplifies the competent director, while Bob Fosse, the director of “Cabaret” (1972), offers us something more. If a director’s idea is floating around in “Chicago,” it is that films about wannabe performers should be fun; consequently, the performances and visualization of the story are charming and energetic—in short, fun. Although “Cabaret” is also about performers and would-be performers, the performances move beyond fun. Fosse’s director’s idea is that Berlin in the 1920s was a desperate place and in that environment all barriers fell. Sensuality, anxiety, living in the moment, violence—all become the new reality. When Fosse directed the performances of the master of ceremonies and the other characters he was directing for that subtext. The master of ceremonies is ironic, Sally Bowles is sensual, and so on. When he presents the Nazi song in the beer garden, he focuses on the youthful innocence of the singers (in contrast to the implications of the lyrics). The consequence is a musical that is fun but also one that has gravitas. This is the result of Fosse’s director’s idea. Fosse is a good director, while Marshall remains an example of the competent director. We turn next to the director that adds value to the project, the good director.