Tuesday, January 21, 1997
FILM:
Latest efforts by directors breathe life, respectability into
style
Perhaps one of the easiest ways to give offense or rouse the
hackles of a filmmaker or other dramatist is to look them straight
in the eye after sampling their work and say, "Gee that was really
melodramatic!" Lop the melo- off, and the compliment will go by
unnoticed; but these days the adjective ‘melodramatic’ has gained
the ring of pejorative.
Of course, it wasn’t always this way. Once upon a time, the
melodrama was just as cherished a genre as the screwball comedy,
the western, or crime film. Old-time directors like Douglas Sirk
(He got a burger named after him at Jack Rabbit Slim’s for those of
you old enough to remember "Pulp Fiction.") built respected
reputations by being masters of this genre. But like the musical,
the melodrama is one of those genres that seems inextricably linked
to an older, more naive, less cynical age.
But stand back everyone, the cadaver’s hand just moved!
Last holiday season, two of the most distinguished films to
debut and then rack up prestigious critic’s circle awards and
year-end kudos had two things in common: they weren’t American, and
they were melodramas.
So what exactly is a melodrama, you may now be wondering,
besides a choice adjective to use when putting down a film for
being a sticky tear-jerker; and what’s the difference between a
drama and a melodrama?
Well to put it broadly, if it has a man as a protagonist, it’s a
drama, and if there’s a woman in the lead, it’s a melodrama. But of
course that’s not 100 percent accurate. But the melodrama, even if
it does have prominent male characters, tends to deal with the
struggles of women. Narrative expert and UCLA Professor Howard
Suber tells us in his famous seminar on Film Structure that the
basis for all drama is the clash between the desires and duties of
an individual; and the melodrama tends to wear this concept on its
sleeve, whereas other genres tend to submerge this dilemma. Take
for example Sirk’s ’50s classic "All That Heaven Allows," about the
love affair in small-town New England between a bourgeois widow and
her woodsy, younger groundskeeper (played by Jane Wyman and Rock
Hudson respectively). Despite their differences, the two forge a
bond and fall madly in love … much to the chagrin of the Norman
Rockwellesque community around them. Torn between her love and her
duty to keep her place within the smotheringly conservative
community, she eventually gives up her lover to satisfy the
community  including her own adult children she’s bound
to.
This same pattern recurs in the aforementioned two films
currently in release. In "Shine" David Helfgott is commanded by his
tyrannical father to abandon his dreams of becoming a
world-renowned pianist because he must stay with his family. David
disobeys, and the cost is high. In "Breaking the Waves" the angelic
Bess embarks on a mission of anonymous sex after her paralyzed
husband tells her he needs to know that she’s still enjoying her
newfound sexuality despite his inability to satisfy her. Bess’
mission is one of startling selflessness and good old-fashioned
martyrdom. It makes her an outcast in her own
claustrophobically-Calvinist community, with everyone including her
husband turning against her.
The melodrama also distinguishes itself from the drama by
placing a high premium on rampant emotionalism. The drama can be
devoid of emotion, or restrain itself and leave everything bubbling
under the surface. But in the melodrama, the bubbling usually gives
way to an eruption, usually made all the more poignant by denying
the protagonist a simplistically happy ending (see recent
melodramas "The Age of Innocence" and "The Bridges of Madison
County").
So what killed the melodrama, besides the fact that audience
sensibility has changed radically in the last 30 years? As usual,
television seems to be close to the heart of all troubles; viewers
have become inundated by shmaltzy melodrama on a weekly basis,
whether it’s a one-hour drama, a made-for-TV movie, or an
afterschool special. But beneath this is the diminishing rate of
returns that threatens all forms of genre storytelling.
It works like this: genre has to be thought of as one tool among
many at the disposal of any storyteller. You have different genres
at your disposal to help you make a point. So let’s say you want to
tell a story that is basically about man’s inhumanity to man, you
could make it a western, you could make it science-fiction, or the
story could just be set in the present. If the story is about
someone realizing that their life is empty and encountering
resistance to change, you could do a western, a spy thriller, or
"Jerry Maguire." The genre was just a way for the storyteller to
get his/her point across, a point that didn’t necessarily have
anything directly to do with the genre.
But somewhere along the way, the point got lost. Genre became
the destination, rather than the vehicle, the ends rather than a
means to an end. Instead of telling stories with verbalized or
non-verbalized points, too much of filmmaking has become genre
reshuffling or recombination (i.e, "What if you put ‘Die Hard’ on a
boat?" or "What if you did a film that was half crime film, half
vampire movie?" etc.).
So this is why genre fiction (be it film or novel) is considered
beneath doers of "literature" or "art films," when the truth is
people like Raymond Chandler and Alfred Hitchcock have proven
different.
The aim of this exegesis is to illustrate that at some point,
like with most genres, the cart got put before the horse with the
melodrama. By shooting for merely result (in this case, tears and
emotion) without having a great story to tell in the process. Bad
genre exercises corrupted the melodrama, and someone began to
associate the genre itself with cheap sentimentality and shallow
emotionalism (see "The Evening Star").
And so generations have been soured, and the term has become a
pejorative.
To all of you who hold similarly low opinions of the genre, all
I can say is try seeing some of the work of Sirk, or the campy
brand of melodrama by German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder, or
the current Kenji Mizoguchi retrospective going on at Melnitz Hall.
Or either "Shine," or "Breaking the Waves." When the emotions are
genuine, and the characters are engaging, you’ll find even the most
crusty and jaded among you will be moved by a good melodrama.
With all the technological strum and thrum the movies have in
their arsenal these days, having a film actually make you feel
something real might just be the most astounding special effect of
all.
Brandon Wilson is a third-year graduate student in directing who
three years ago would’ve quickly turned the page on any column
about the melodrama.