As you may have spotted from my Five Word Movie Review, I saw Jerzy Skolimowski's Deep End on Film4 last night.
It was a remastered re-release of a though-lost film from 1970. The DigiBox blurb called it a "forgotten gem". It certainly didn't look like it was now over 40 years old, in part helped by the hero's again-in-fashion floppy Justin Bieber haircut (incidently, if you come across this post becuase you've searched "Justin Bieber", I wouldn't bother following me).
The set-up of the film was interesting enough as well, with young Mike (John Moulder-Brown) taking a job in a public bath, and falling for engaged co-worker Sue (a very young Jane Asher). Also, both the leads were very good. I am aware that film-making styles have changed over the years, and this was probably a low-budget effort, but parts of the film just struck me as odd. None of the actors seemed to be on the same energy level, they were constantly repeating themselves and going down conversational avenues that went nowhere.
I think I was past the halfway point when I worked out the problem. The scenes were being improvised. After the film finished I looked it up and, sure enough, a number of scenes were largely improvised.
It is one of several films and movies I have recently seen that use a lot of on-camera improvisation, and I'm afraid I always find the results the same. The scenes are overly long, unfocused, characters repeat themselves, the actors' emotions don't seem "in sync", everyone has a kind of stoner confusion about what they are supposed to be doing, and characters repeat themselves.
It is worth pointing out that it may be a huge number of films use this kind of improvisation, but I don't notice because it is successfully done. However, I do read a lot of "behind the scenes" information about films, and I don't see improvisation mentioned where I hadn't already spotted or been suspicious of it.
"Yes," you say, "But you were already aware it was improvised, so that is confirmation bias."
Sometimes, maybe.
I recently saw Monsters, and while I was aware it was a very "suck it and see" production, the impression I had got from the movie's publicity was that cast and crew drove around Central America until they found a great-looking location, then flicked through the script to find a scene they could shoot there. What is apparent when watching the movie, is that the script was not as advanced as simply being a case of picking a scene, refreshing the lines and shooting. Much of it was being made up on the spot. As with Deep End, I thought it improvised, then went and confirmed this.
So I must be sounding like some kind of mad control freak, who will not allow actors any interpretation of the material.
Actually the opposite is true. I think actors especially can find great insight and hidden meaning in a character or scene. I am also all in favour of improvisation, but that is what rehearsals are for. What rehearsals and read-throughs have taught me is that rehearsing with a script sounds like Soap Opera acting. None of the cast have had time to synchronise their emotions.
Rehearsing without a script just feels meeting someone you don't know at a dinner party, and the awkward probing back and forth that ensues.
I'm certainly not saying it can't be done, but it needs a special sort of director and actors for it, or the right circumstances.
Harrison Ford, after hours of frustrating, fruitless shooting on The Empire Strikes Back famously ad-libbed his line "I know" in response to Leia's admission that she loves him. Bill Murray is also supposed to have ad-libbed much of his Ghostbusters dialogue (to the extent that many have said he deserved a writing credit), while others claim he was simply adept at making the scripted dialogue sound spontaneous.
While "What's my motivation?" has become something of a cliché, it is still the most important question for an actor and director. Maybe motivation is too loaded a term, and "objective" would be better. Much of directing an individual scene comes down to intention, and what a character is trying to achieve.
However, when this approach is used in a scene with no dialogue or clear destination, I have observed it can result in characters withdrawing and fixating on whatever it is they were told their objective is. Presumably for fear of violating their Prime Director, the characters become intransigent over the smallest little detail.
To cite an early scene from Deep End, Mike receives a tip for performing a sexual favour for one of the bathers. He doesn't take it and Sue arrives to give him it. The following scene felt like a minute and a half of the following:
Sue: Take it.
Mike: No.
Sue: Take it.
Mike: No.
Sue: Take it.
Mike: No.
Okay, there was a little more to it than that, but I have never seen such a fuss made of a coin. Any writer would know that is bad stuff (unless it is setting up an important character trait - did Mike think of himself as a Rent Boy and was trying to disprove it to himself?), and a director should avoid it too.
Often the defence, justification, or reason for improvising scenes is "realism". I'm still not quite sure what this means. Film, by its very nature, is unrealistic (something which the god-awful Dogme 95 manifesto sought to address, and I wish it hadn't).
Firstly, if realism was the issue, the night scenes would not have been shot with a huge 10 kilowatt light in the middle of the road, nor in my day-to-day life I tend not to see people with camera shadows on the backs of their heads.
Secondly, the ending of the film is ludicrous beyond belief, and there are several unlikely plot contrivances that seem to render the "it's all for the sake of realism" argument null and void. Generally, I have observed that to get interesting material from "realistic" performances, it is necessary for the situations to wholly ridiculous. Even the producers of dross like Big Brother know that Reality Television is anything but.
Thirdly, I would argue that honesty is more important than realism, especially in drama. I have often seen performances where a good actor responds in a certain way and I think, "My god. That's just what I would feel or say."
By contrast, in improvised film, I constantly find myself thinking, "What an odd thing to say or do."
Good actors and directors can cultivate the feeling and sense of truthfulness (if that isn't a contradiction in terms) without the awkward toing and froing of a scene no one can tell has gone on too long. The only real conversations I have ever had that seem similar to an improvised scene are when we have been ragingly drunk.
All of the above makes it tempting for me to think it is laziness, self-indulgence, or lack of confidence that causes directors to go down this route. But some of our best-regarded directors are known for it. Mike Leigh, Ken Loach, Gus van Sant all make use of this technique with mixed results, in my opinion.
This is not to say I have a problem with characters behaving "realistically". Quite the opposite, I often opt to give my main characters a bit of "alone time" now and then so we can observe them when their guard is down and, if I were ever to ask an actor to improvise some action, I would do it here. I think people are at their most fascinating when they are not putting on a front for society's benefit, hence a large amount of people-watching on my part.
Lest you think it is all bad, here is a great compilation of unscripted lines in famous films. I would, however, point out that there is a big difference between a line that is not in the shooting script, and true improvisation.
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