Or, at least not the way the creators intended. Dunkirk became a “man vs. nature” story, for example, and two romantic comedies turned into something else entirely, at least for me. However, Dune stayed a millieu story, minus the politics.
Trans-oceanic flights, at least some of them, now have screens in the back of the seat so people can watch movies, TED talks, and stuff to while away the hours between take-off, snack, and landing. Those who are not sleeping or reading or working on their computers, that is. So on the outbound leg, I “got” to watch Dune (part one) on someone else’s screen every time I looked up from my book or nap. The return flight had a three-fer of Dunkirk, then two rom-coms (both by the same director, as it turned out when I did a little digging later.)
I know the plot of Dune by heart, so it was pretty easy to follow what I could see, and fill in who was whom. However, all the politics of the empire? Nope. Given how the setting drives the novel, the story held up fairly well without the machinations of Harkonnen vs. Atredies. With a story like Dune, missing the dialogue cuts probably a quarter or more of the meaning out of the story, at least in the first third or so of the book. Once Lady Jessica and Paul meet the Fremen, and Paul tastes the Water of Life, I suspect the dialogue becomes much more important, leading up to the final scenes. Paul leading the Fremen against the Harkonnen and Sardaukar troops would still fit, because it is a pure revenge story, but all the background of the Spice, and the Bene Gesserit manipulation of genetics to produce the ultimate human? Gone without the words.
On the way back, I watched bits of Dunkirk. Again, I knew the basic story, but … The enemy in the film is not the oncoming Nazi German army. It is the sea, and time. The way the sky is often depicted in the movie bugged me a little as well, because the sky was white, hazy clouds that left the men and sea isolated, floating out of context of wind and weather, or so it seemed. Without knowing that there are people trying to stop the soldiers from leaving the beach, what you see is men trying to escape the land and sea, with the sea as the greatest foe. That might actually be what the makers of the movie had in mind. Man vs. Nature is an ancient plot, and one that resonates still. But it seems that without the known motivator of the onrush of the Wehrmacht, the story looses some urgency. Not for the individuals, no, but for the larger group. In 45 minutes, the only hint of the war was the Spitfire shooting down a Dornier that had sunk one of the British ships*.
The rom-coms … Well, I could tell at a glance what they were, based on setting and costume. Then I could check off the required characters – the cool minority friend who is the voice of wisdom, then disappointed parents, the cute gay couple, the inept buddy, and so on. I got very tired of seeing the male romantic lead humiliated, and the other non-minority males doing stupid things. I know, that’s how rom-coms work now days, and they are beats that are expected by Hollywood, if not by this viewer. But the story lost the romance element and became a series of awkward moments, emotional sadism of sorts, passing the Idiot Ball, a seduction, another stupid dramatic stunt by the male lead, and “lustfully ever after.”
The second film went from meet-cute to seduction so fast I returned to reading about the technical details of Z-twist vs. S-twist thread and what they can tell archaeologists about spinning and weaving. Again, the things that turned me off are exactly the beats Hollywood (and many romance novels) have to have for the genre. But without words? It fell flat. I didn’t get the emotional connection between characters, if there was supposed to be one. Since rom-coms are a bit like genre romances in that they are produced quickly, on a relatively low budget, for super-readers/super-fans who want clear genre cues and plot beats, what I saw fit that. But the lack of words turned the story from “eventually fall in love” to something else.
What does all this mean for us as writers? Last week, Mary and Karen pointed out that words and description need to carry weight, especially in short fiction. Dialogue too needs to pull a load, even in a visual medium like a feature film. Can you tell a story without words? Of course! But words matter. If I had not known the genre requirements and cultural pushes in the rom-com films, I’d have been totally lost. The other two films would have made a little more sense, but not exactly, perhaps. It was an intriguing exercise.
[For those wondering, the first rom-com was Anyone But You and the second was Friends with Benefits]
*I think it was a Dornier. I’m not as up on my aircraft identification as I used to be.
Mad Genius Club 
13 responses to “Stories Without Words … Don’t Always Work”
A couple of months ago my husband and I found ourselves in a hotel room with a television we could not get sound on. We would normally not even turn on the TV but this was the night before an appointment with life-or-death consequences and we were wanting distractions. We found Deadpool. Sitting next to each other making up lines to make one another laugh was the best thing. We’d seen the movie, which likely helped, but for all it’s shortcomings, Deadpool worked very well to riff off and get very silly. The appointment the next day went very well, totally unrelated, but we were able to sleep that night.
Every so often, I watch an old movie in a language I don’t understand (usually because if there ever was an English dub, the film prints were lost to time). Without being able to hear the tones and cadence of the voices (even without understanding the words), there would be even less chance of me figuring out what is going on.
Just the other day, I re-watched a couple of the 1960s/70s cavemen movies where the dialogue consists mostly of grunting, yelling, and random syllables for names. You have to pay EXTREMELY close attention to the physical actions and facial expressions to figure out the nuances of what is going on.
If that been a written work, the amount of descriptive details required would have been immense. Also maintaining a sense of suspense so the reader’s eyes didn’t glaze over.
In my Bollywood phase, I ran across some films I was curious about (usually because the songs were cool and/or they starred people I was interested in) that were simply not available with subtitles. I quickly discovered that if I paid attention, a basic IMDB synopsis and a knowledge of story tropes were all I needed. (My limited Hindi vocabulary did extend to words for money, love, death, and terms for different types of family relatives, which helped, as did the fact that a lot of the people in these movies were stage trained and acting for the back row). Today, thanks to the auto-translate function on youtube, I wouldn’t need to do that, but it was fun while it lasted, and possibly good mental practice for writing.
The website SCP foundation is a list of horror stories, in the setting of a scientific foundation that collects, stores and analyzes dangerous artifacts and creatures. They held a contest with the goal of presenting a story in the fewest words possible. One person presented a story with no words… and did an excellent job. Here it is, if you are interested. (If it’s hard to follow, the discussion is at the bottom.)
https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-2521
Agreed that Dune part one is an excellent milieu movie; my Dad and I watched it a second time in the theater mostly for the ornithopters and other hardware and architecture.
We’ve now watched nearly 100 foreign films for the International Agatha project and 90% of the time, I’m lost without the subtitles even though I *KNOW* the story the film is based on.
Bad subtitles do not make it easier to follow.
There’s also a zillion cultural differences such as hand gestures and what people are wearing (to distinguish social status) that are lost on me. Just why did most of the population in Harbin use cloth draperies for their front doors? (Checkmate, a Chinese mashup set in the early days of the Republic of China).
There are two Agatha film adaptations where you don’t *HAVE* to have subtitles as long as you’ve got the book at your side. They’re both Russian and both remarkably faithful to the text. See if you can find “Poirot’s Failure” (2002). The Russian “Ten Little Indians” (1987) isn’t quite as faithful (that conversation between Vera and Hugh! Wow!) but otherwise, you can still follow along.
It’s been an interesting experiment on many levels. Do I recognize the story? How much of it remained? Was it worth my time?
Those are very talky, psychological, detail oriented stories with relatively little action, where most people have something to hide, based on the work of one of the most intricate plotters of all time. If someone tried the same experiment with, I dunno, something along the lines of Edgar Allen Poe (mood pieces) or H. Rider Haggard (adventure), would they be as hard to follow in foreign languages? I suspect not.
We will actually find out next year: we’ll be starting the Jane Austen project, watching all the Jane film adaptations including the foreign ones with subtitles.
Will filmmakers the world around follow Jane’s text?
Stay tuned!
Apparently Ip Man has some interesting tone shifts if you see it with everything subtitled, or just the Chinese subtitled.
The Monsieur Hulot comedies are also fascinating to watch first without and then with subtitles. Tati had a fantastic sense of visual humor, and it’s very interesting to try and figure out why things are happening without knowing what they’re saying.
Sometimes lately the dialog is so bad that I watch the movie in Japanese with English subtitles. (Japan has the best voice actors.) I did that with a Pacific Rim movie (can’t remember which one) recently, improved the thing up to marginal watchability.
There are of course movies that can’t be improved by switching languages, because the action is eye-rolling bad. The two rom-cons you mention qualify, due to the Hollywood Trope Checklist approach of the “writers.” I put that in quotes because any monkey can follow a friggin’ checklist and plug words into a template.
I maintain that cut-and-paste AI writing, while horribly un-entertaining, would probably improve over what they do now. Because the machine won’t BELIEVE in what it’s doing, and will therefore allow things into the script that don’t match The Narrative precisely. The mismatch might be mildly amusing.
I’m so thirsty for something Off Narrative that I’m writing Strong Male Leads myself. Currently writing George McIntyre lost in Niflheim, he’s smart-assing his way past the Æsir by being more competent than everyone else, with the occasional application of brute force. Goblins, you know. You shoot ’em in the @$$, they grow back slower.
Long, long ago (like 40 years) I saw a really lousy VHS copy of Hayao Miyazaki’s ‘Nausicaa Of The Valley Of The Wind’ at a con. In Japanese (which I didn’t grok then, and still don’t). Without subtitles.
It was awesome.
Granted, it’s far better with subtitles. Or dubbed; they did an outstanding job on the dub.
Of course, not everybody is Hayao Miyazaki.
D’oh! Silly me, I meant ‘Laputa’! I also saw the chopped version of ‘Nausicaa’ (‘Warriors Of The Wind’) at an art-house theater around the same time. I got mixed up!
I waited many long years, but now I’ve got both of those movies on blue-ray disks. Along with Miyazaki’s other works. Genius, pure genius.
I’ve read graphic novels with long passages without words. Most recently Ben Hatke’s Things In The Basement. And there are movies that have long periods of pure action, without words. Not only do they both have to be structured for that end, they can’t be structured the same. The way the graphic novel does not move at the same time rate as real time produces enormously different effects.