How much bad am I willing to do in the cause of good?

In Lincoln, written by Tony Kushner and directed by Steven Spielberg, President Lincoln so firmly believes in the necessity of Emancipation that he is willing to authorize all manner of arm-twising, dirty deals, and political bribery to get the bill passed.  At the time, Thaddeus Stevens, played in the movie by Tommy Lee Jones, said, “”The greatest measure in the nineteenth century was passed by corruption, aided and abetted by the purest man in America.”

In Zero Dark Thirty, written by Mark Boal and directed by Katherine Bigelow, a young CIA operative called Maya, played by Jessica Chastain, is obsessed with finding and killing Osama Bin Ladin. She is involved in morally reprehensible torture in order to help track down her quarry.  She is driven and relentless, so much so that when she is successful she has no idea what to do next.

Bigelow explains in an interview, “I think what’s so interesting and so poignant for Jessica, myself, for all of us, is this idea that this woman (Maya) has spent the last ten years exclusively in the pursuit of one man and yes, at the end of the day, she triumphed, but it’s not a victory because finally, at the end of the day, you’re left with much larger questions like, where does she go from here? Where do we go from here? Now what?” Chastain adds, “I find that to end the film on that question is far more interesting than providing an answer.”

Can I find the flexibility, the forgiveness, or the mercy to make reasonable compromises?

In Lincoln, the person that has a real protagonist’s journey is Tommy Lee Jones in the role of Thaddeus Stevens. Stevens spent his political life advocating for total Negro emancipation, including the right to vote and own property. He was adamant and uncompromising. In the final, down-to-the-wire vote-taking, Stevens must turn his back on everything he has always stood for in order to assure that Lincoln’s lesser bill passes. Steven’s struggles mightily with his conscience but finally allows practicality to win.

At the time Stevens said: “Believing then, that this is the best proposition that can be made effectual, I accept it. I shall not be driven by clamor or denunciation to throw away a great good because it is not perfect. I will take all I can get in the cause of humanity and leave it to be perfected by better men in better times.”

Steven’s leap of faith was being flexible enough to allow an imperfect bill to pass because that served the greater good.

In the film, Les Miserables, written by William Nicholson and directed by Tom Hopper, prison guard Javert, played by Russell Crowe, cannot compromise his strict moral standards.  He finds it impossible to have mercy and not enforce the strict letter of the law.  What is legal is not always just.  And what is just is not always legal.  This is a great dilemma for Power of Conscience characters.  Javert is in such conflict that he would rather kill himself rather than compromise his precise and rigid sense of duty in favor of what is just and merciful.

In the animated film, Brave, written by Mark Andrews, Steve Purcell, Brenda Chapman, and Irene Mecchi, and directed by Andrews and Chapman and co-directed by Purcell, Queen Elinor is a Power of Conscience character. She is a strict and demanding taskmaster, a perfectionist, and is driven by a strong sense of tradition and royal responsibility. Over the course of the story she finds the flexibility to recognize her daughter’s uniqueness and she learns to fully appreciate Merida for who she is.

What is the higher duty?

Power of Conscience character universally wrestle with the question of what their inherent morality and sense of duty asks of them.  These  characters fear not living up to their own internal standards or sense of propriety and decency.  They are afraid of being or becoming unworthy and must continually prove their own “goodness”  or “righteousness”. These characters don’t fear failure in the eyes of the world; they fear not living up to their own (often impossibly high) moral or ethical standards.

As I said before: What is just is not always legal or proper. And what is legal or proper is not always just.  What is more important?  Is the spirit of the law or the letter of the law more important?  When is it right to be pragmatic and flexible rather than unbending and unyielding in your standards? When is being flexible and pragmatic being lax and immoral? Power of Conscience characters provide a fascinating glimpse into one set of humanity’s great dilemmas.

When it was released I pegged it as a worthy and important film, filled with fascinating historical detail– but also as ponderous and episodic. The film suffers from the same problems Spielberg had with War Horse and Amistad.

War Horse was the definition of an episodic narrative with very little character development. A brave courageous boy acquires a brave courageous horse, the boy loses horse, he is determined to find horse again, he succeeds, and brings the horse home. A goal is set and we watch it being accomplished step-by-step. Read my review of War Horse here.

In Lincoln, a bold visionary president wants to pass a bold visionary bill to emancipate the slaves in the South, he is determined to do this at all costs (and is willing to do whatever back room deals are necessary to push his agenda forward). We watch him step-by-step accomplish his goal.

Daniel Day-Lewis does give the performance of a lifetime in Lincoln. He is stunning and astonishing in the role but his performance is most of the character development that there is in the story. Lincoln is not a fully developed protagonist. He has no inner conflict. Lincoln overcomes nothing in himself to succeed.

There is plenty of external conflict in the battleground horrors of the American Civil War. There is a tremendous amount of relationship conflict– different people in the story clash with each other over every aspect of the political situation. But there is no personal inner conflict for Lincoln. He is very clear and determined about what he wants to accomplish, he shrewdly proceeds to make it happen, and he succeeds.

The person in the film that has a real protagonist’s journey is Tommy Lee Jones in the role of Thaddeus Stevens. Stevens spent his political life advocating for total Negro emancipation, including the right to vote and own property. He was adamant and uncompromising. In the final, down-to-the-wire vote-taking, Stevens must turn his back on everything he has always stood for in order to assure that Lincoln’s lesser bill passes. Steven’s struggles mightily with his conscience but finally allows practicality to win. When the bill passes Stevens takes the original copy home to his Negro wife/mistress and we see his dedication to freedom comes from a very personal place.

This problem with identifying the protagonist is reminiscent with an equal failure in Spielberg’s The Terminal.  In that film a minor character had the most emotional impact and made the biggest emotional sacrifice.  Read my review of The Terminal here.

In Amistad, Spielberg told too large a story. That film detailed the capture of a ship piloted by slaves who mutinied against their masters. The situation resulted in several trials and appeals to determine their freedom. The story was filled with fascinating historical detail but those details over complicated the story.

Amistad, like Lincoln, was populated by numerous interesting characters but didn’t have a central strong personal journey. The strongest, most emotionally intimate journey in Lincoln is Thaddeus Steven’s. Lincoln is beautifully cast and wonderful to look at but, for me, is more a history lesson than a personal story.

The film is beautifully shot but is low on emotional impact and, strangely, low on sacrifice.  Both the boy and the horse survive by a serious of amazing and miraculous coincidences.  A mediocre script in even the hand of  a master director pumped up by an overly emotional score still makes a mediocre movie.

How did War Horse go so wrong?

What the main character in a movie wants is a clear and simple goal.  It is something that directly benefits the protagonist that he or she can physically have or obtain. It is concrete. It is specific. It is the finite object of the character’s personal desire. In War Horse the boy’s want or goal is to find the horse and bring him home. To obtain the want, however, the character must abandon the need.  That personal conflict is the essence of good drama.

What the character needs is an inner ache or yearning that the character is unaware of, denies, suppresses or ignores. It is a deeper, more abstract or intangible human longing. It is not physical or concrete. It is an emotional or spiritual urge or inner call to live up to one’s higher nature. For example: to stand up for one’s beliefs, to become a better parent, to forgive another, to act with integrity, to find one’s faith, to become more altruistic, to be a better friend, to face the truth, to love unselfishly, etc.

To embrace the need, the character must abandon the specific goal (or object of desire) and address more fundamental and far-reaching human concern. One of the most common problems with scripts that don’t work is the lack of a clear and specific want vs. a deep and powerful inner longing.

That is the case in War Horse.  There is plenty of external conflict in the family’s poverty and the horrors of war.  There is a good amount of relationship conflict– different people in the story clash about all sorts of things. But there is no inner conflict. There is nothing the boy needs to over come in himself in order to succeed.  He is as plucky, courageous, determined and resourceful in the beginning of the film as he is at the end of the film.

It’s astonishing that in a film about war there is very little sacrifice for the good of others.  The boy is not changed by his experiences and no one else is much changed either.  The relentlessly upbeat ending is ridiculous in the face of the devastation of “The Great War” which so profoundly changed everyone and everything in Europe.

What the main character wants pulls us through the story. The need draws us deeper into or inside the character. If this bedrock conflict isn’t clear the script won’t add up to very much. Unfortunately, this is the case in War Horse.

(Universal’s) deal with AnyClip can make memorable scenes from “E.T.,” “Jaws” and more available by search and embeddable on Facebook.

Hoping to earn money from every snippet of a film, Universal has licensed rights to a vast portion of its library to AnyClip, a company that chops up films digitally and makes every moment searchable.

The deal is the largest in the short history of AnyClip, which, until the Universal deal to be announced Monday, mostly had rights only to independent films.

AnyClip’s intentions are to sign up distribution partners like IMDb.com, Fandango, Hulu and other sites that will incorporate its abilities and movie clips into their offerings. Each clip is accompanied by an opportunity to buy or rent the entire film, and AnyClip has affiliate arrangements with iTunes, Amazon.con and Netflix.

AnyClip also intends on earning revenue through advertising, and visitors to anyclip.com can grab scenes of movies to embed on their blogs, Facebook pages or what have you.