15
votes
Denis Villeneuve hates dialogue in film
Link information
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- Title
- Denis Villeneuve: "Frankly, I Hate Dialogue. Dialogue Is For Theatre And Television"
- Authors
- Tom Tapp
- Published
- Feb 26 2024
- Word count
- 401 words
Frankly, this explains why I have been singularly unimpressed by any of his work. Yes, including Dune. And Sicario, Blade Runner 2049, Arrival which you'd think is a story that should feature language fairly centrally. They're all flat and dull and uninteresting, yet a huge segment of online geek culture worships them endlessly.
Movies are a collaborative art form. And everyone has their own tastes. All movies are not all things to all people, ever. The same goes for creatives working on them, that play a role in creating them.
Villeneuve is not the first, nor the last, director who gravitates to the visual. Who places the primacy on the visual. And it's extremely common, even increasingly common, for directors to come onboard a project and immediately ignore writers or otherwise take a chainsaw to the script. We have directors like Zach Snyder, Gareth Edwards, Colin Trevorrow, and Tim Miller who either came up through effects/lensing, or who have demonstrated repeatedly they, like Villeneuve, consider what they see through the lens to be the single most important aspect of a film project. Not just important, but to the point of actively downplaying or otherwise discounting the contribution of other elements.
Such as the script.
Anyone who likes Villeneuve, or other visual filmmakers, more power to you. Enjoy the pretty pictures. Me, I prefer a meaty story. It's especially ironic, I feel, that Villeneuve is shitting on scripts and writers when you consider one of his cited filmmaker influences is Spielberg. A director who decisively understands the role story plays in film. Spielberg is one of the greats because he can bring all the threads together, not just the pretty pictures. He finds heart, he finds meaning, he finds characters.
Then he films them beautifully. Elevating the project, and explaining why so often Spielberg has produced classics of cinema. It's not just what you're looking at. It's what you're feeling, what you're thinking, what you're hearing. Actors and writers add character and story, and make the pretty pictures have meaning.
Such a shame more of the current crop of directors don't seem to invest in the whole, and instead focus only on the subset of lens.
He saying he doesn't like amount of dialogue in current movies, or how much it's used instead of other elements, not that he doesn't like a story or script. I don't think anyone can charge Villeneuve movies with not having much story, or not much story worth paying attention to. His work are more story-laden affairs than a lot of his blockbuster contemporaries. He has a history of elevating the scripts exactly the way you describe a "good" director doing, especially with a project like Sicario which, for my money, very few directors could have elevated on top of that script more than Villeneuve. In almost anyone else's hands, Sicario would have been more like... well, Sicario 2: jingoistic, kinda racist, and more focused on the spectacle of violence and xenophobia.
Snyder, Edwards, and Trevorrow aren't remotely in the same level of quality as Villeneuve when it comes to handling a story. Sure, all of them like the visuals and the lens more than most others but to suggest that Villeneuve joins them in sacrificing the story for it has to ignore the genuinely good and interesting stories in his work. It's not like he wants to throw away the script and just wing it visually. This is the guy who directed the one 20-years-later sequel that actually feels like a proper followup, and now has multiple successful adaptations of written stories. He has repeatedly shown an ability to understand what makes the original work tick and adapt it into a movie, not just into a script. And that involves a lot more visuals for him than someone, say, adapting a Marvel comic for the MCU. To that end: Arrival does feature language and communication centrally as that was part of the original short story, and his additions to Dune involve adding more dialogue and writing as well—Rebecca Ferguson wasn't doing improv for all those new elements of Lady Jessica.
And let's take a step back from the Hollwood ones. The man also has Incendies and Polytechnique on his resume, along with Prisoners and Enemy. None of these movies can really be accused of being style over substance affairs. They're low budget, personal, heart-wrenching stories with plenty of dialogue. Especially Polytechnique, which handled sensitive subject matter so artfully that it should be (and probably has been) studied when it comes to making a work based on a heinous crime or tragedy.
I don't understand where the idea of "Villeneuve hates story" is coming from just because he said something about not liking dialogue in movies. This is someone who puts in a ton of story into his work. All he's saying is that there are other ways to tell a story and movies have a very powerful way: visual. I don't think it serves anyone to take hyperbole and flatten it out into an absolute when the reasons behind statements like that depend on context and nuance. His actual complaint here is rooted in how much exposition and dialogue is in every major movie, especially blockbusters, when they could choose to tell those same things visually.
Woah woah woah woah. Trevorrow doesn't belong there lol. He doesn't know how to properly do visuals on a film.
I think Villenueve was operating on a similar plane as Fincher on Sicario. Where he elevated a genre script that maybe wasn't good to something really exciting. I haven't seen Sicario: Day of the Soldado, but it is important to note that many people have those same critiques for Sicario as Taylor Sheridan wrote both. Critiques I think are unfounded and mostly come from non-Mexicans. Although I think Sheridan's best work (Sicario and Hell or High Water) are a result of directors elevating his scripts.
Enemy maybe belongs there, though it stars Jake Gyllenhaal. But Prisoners is definitely Hollywood affair, with multiple movie stars in the cast and a budget of 46 million. It's Denis's breakout Hollywood film.
I think what's getting lost in the weeds here is Denis specifically bringing up modern prestige TV shows. Many of which don't feature striking images, but are very talky talky and drag plot points and dialogue scenes to fit the runtime of a television show. And how certain movies are attempting to emulate that while sacrificing the more technical aspects of filmmaking that make it a visual form.
Right, I guess I meant those larger Hollywood blockbuster affairs. I'm admittedly not much of a film industry person to know off-hand. Prisoners still strikes me as "indie" in comparison even though you're right, it's about as Hollywood as anything else.
Unfounded for the first movie. But for the second... I honestly can't think of another movie where I thought to myself "Ah shit this is going to get real bad" within five minutes. It really felt like FOX News terror porn.
I'd recommend watching it only because it's a great comparison for how a director like Villeneuve approaches a script versus a more workman director. I've seen Villeneuve talk about how he really pulled the women out from between the lines in Dune and recognized their significance more in his adaptation. I can't help but feel he did something similar with that first Sicario script because the story and themes he ended up delivering are not at all present in Sicario Day of the Soldado.
Yeah Prisoners is interesting cause it's a pretty straight forward thriller, but with beautiful visuals and religious themes.
This is the only good thing about the Disney+ Star Wars shows (and to a smaller extent all streaming-first shows). The episodes are just as long as they need to be, nobody is forcing them to compress or stretch the story of the episode to exactly 44 minutes (with 16 minutes of commercials).
(The shortest episode of The Mandalorian is 30 minutes, the longest is 56 minutes)
This is so plainly evident when you compare Ridley Scott's original 1982 masterpiece with Dennis Villeneuve's Blade Runner 2049. The original was a story about a man hunting and killing 4 fugitives who didn't want to be killed. That's it. That's the entire plot.
Theres a ton of themes about the nature of humanity, who has the right to live and under which conditions, what we think of as authentic vs artificial and so on, and the special effects, cinematography, set design, costumes, sound, score are all incredible, which is why it's one of my favorite movies of all time, but the plot is absolutely dead simple.
2049's plot by comparison is much more complex. The goal of the main character is unclear in the beginning. He finds a motivation, rather than being given one. There are new wrinkles throughout the story. It's unclear who is loyal to who in many cases. New developments change the main character's motivation multiple times. It's an extremely complex plot by blockbuster standards and it's still conveyed rather well without much dialogue.
One of the things that I like about Villeneuve is that because his films don't have much dialog, actors are forced to convey their thoughts in much more subtle ways.
One of my favorite scenes in 2049 is
spoilers
The famous scene in the final act when K is walking along the bridge and sees the giant targeted Joi ad talking to him. He says nothing, but Ryan Gosling's facial expressions tell you everything you need to know in the scene; the realization that truly, his entire life was just a giant manufactured lie. He already knew wasn't special or authentic; he was grown in a vat like all the other replicants. The one thing he truly thought in his life that was unique and special, his love with Joi, was also just another artificial construct sold to him by a corporation. He of course intellectually knew that the entire time, but you can see Gosling's character internalizing it in that scene. Simultaneously realizing that Deckard, and his love for his daughter is the single authentic thing he's ever experienced in his entire life, and thus, worth dying for. It's a very powerful scene.It's totally fine to dislike the movies of Dennis Villeneuve. However, the notion that Villeneuve favors vacuous spectacle to the detriment of narrative is, in my opinion, completely unsubstantiated by an honest appreciation of his work.
I find his stories unquestionably "meaty".
It is possible that you're mistaking brevity for silence and implication with dullness.
Some like Bruce Willis, Clint Eastwood, Humphrey Bogart, or Jodie Foster. Others might prefer James Stewart, Daniel Day-Lewis, or Meryl Streep. Contention versus extension. Film noir versus screwball comedy. It's a difference in affinity, not in quality or sophistication. I am in both camps myself. Either way, it's perfectly fine.
I think having movies too reliant on dialogue to tell their story is what makes them dull and uninteresting. Film is a visual medium, and so many movies seem to forget that and give us long stretches of dialogue with not much to actually look at. Villeneuve is successful because he is very good at also using sound, and most importantly, visuals, to convey his stories. He is a firm believer in the "show, don't tell" narrative technique.
In Blade Runner 2049, there is a scene where K visits an orphanage and finds a toy wooden horse. It is several minutes of just music and visuals as K and the audience start connecting the dots and realizing that the toy was his, and that he is the child he's been looking for during the first act of the film. The whole scene works so well and feels unique because this major plot point is conveyed entirely without dialogue. The audience is made to feel what K is feeling through music and good cinematography, rather than having him spell it out to us through a narration or dialogue with another character.
This is the perfect example of what Villeneuve does.
Some other director would've added a second character along with K and they would've talked about stuff a lot. Or maybe have some internal dialogue for K where he talks about what he sees and feels.
To me, it's more emotional and impactful without someone yapping on top of the visuals and music.
At the same time this is why I am impressed by his work. He moves the story and makes me feel just with images and music. I don't need a character to explain in a voiceover or dialogue how they feel, I want to experience it.
Villeneuve is the master of that. But it also means you can't watch is movies with a phone in one hand, doomscrolling Twitter, you need to really be in it.
Dune is one example of that. He conveys the feeling and emotion of what's happening in the story without dialogue. You don't need someone describing the horrors of the Harkonnen/Sardaukar attack in the first movie, he does it without any words needed.
The important thing being missed is that the dialogue that is present is natural and makes sense in context, as something people would say in the situation. It's not some metric of words per minute so much as that you feel like you're watching an event happen, and the characters are there in the world doing things without it being for the benefit of the viewer.
"Show, don't tell" means, for fucks sake, don't have dimwitted characters explain contrived story beats to each other to help out an imaginary observer who they imagine to be equally dimwitted.
Character A: "Blah blah nonsensical thing littered with misused technical jargon the writer heard somewhere."
Character B: "eNgLiSh PleAsE."
Character A: "They're going to do the thing, and it will be bad. Like when [hamfisted metaphor]."
Character B: [reaction]
Character C: [Marvel quip]
Commence action sequence until the next dialog bit glues a subsequent action scene to it.
God your dialogue example really nailed it. I think an entire generation really has brain rot from terrible TV and lowest-common-denominator film. They really need their hands held and big explosions every five minutes, otherwise they can't figure out what's going on.
I don't really think they need it, it's just what they've been given in big blockbusters for years. There's a reason Dune, Barbie, Oppenheimer and others took off as much as they did: they don't assume the audience is made of idiots.
Exactly, I didn't want to dogpile on OP. But Villeneuve is my favorite modern film maker because he uses the breadth of his medium.
Now I don't want every movie to be in the Villeneuve style. I also love me a good Fast and Furious movie. But I appreciate that when I watch one of his films I will be pulled into the world like a silent third observer. In Arrival you don't need anyone to say "woah these aliens landing is crazy shit" rather she shows up to teach and it's just silent and empty. You feel that the whole world is losing it because the silence is something we've only experienced during 9/11 or Covid. I think the first conversation on screen is a phone call and we only hear our main character's side but we understand all we need to.
Isn't film the wrong medium if the script of a work is the thing you primarily care about given that its strength is in its status is as a visual medium rather than a textual one such as a book.
Personally I think film and TV rarely stand on their own and are best thought of as a companion piece to literature they are adapted from(Dune) or take influence from(Person of Interest being influenced by Neuromancer).
I think I agree with this take, to an extent. I look at the difference between Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, and I think that the biggest difference is how visual Better Call Saul is. There are many moments of silent contemplation, the pauses after someone says something and the other character needs think about it, the beautiful visuals of the city, or desert, an icecream cone, or blue flower, that convey more than a line of dialogue ever could.
But then I also recognize that the dialogue delivered needs to be carefully crafted in such a way to allow for those moments to occur naturally.
It is definitely a balancing act of visuals to dialogue to music and even sounds effects. It's why I admire movies and television so much. The number of variables that go into it is astounding. You could get 100 different directors and each one would give you a different cut of the same script. And the director (while being super influential) is only a single variable.
The notion that film should be uniquely visual was born with film itself. Early film theorists such as Sergei Eisenstein and Rudolf Arnheim believed images should take precedence over dialogue and music. They also believed that music should be a counterpoint to the visuals, to avoid being redundant. A comedy scene should have a somber soundtrack and a tragedy might be punctuated with humorous tones, essentially interdicting any sentiment other than irony. This had elitist overtones, seeking to differentiate film from the art of the common folk. Theater is cheap, words are dirty, and music is depraved. Film should be elevated, uncontaminated by vulgar emotion.
They lost. Film became the art of the masses, defined as the culmination of sight, sound, and the performing arts. Under that paradigm, Stanley Kubrick is just as cinematic as Todd Solondz, Alain Resnais, Ingmar Bergman, Sidney Lumet, and Richard Linklater. The delicate interplay between moving images, music, dialogue, and sound effects gave rise to an art form that was, at once, highly sophisticated and uniquely engaging. Nowadays, even the cheapest melodrama is orders of magnitude more complex than the contrived artificialism of "pure film".
Perhaps this is simply because the only things that get traction these days are adaptations or remakes? There's plenty of important cinema out there that isn't directly influenced by a book or a comic book.
This is an interesting example, because Gibson was sure that people would see Neuromancer as a ripoff of Blade Runner, even though he was well into writing the book when he saw the film. (Of course, Blade Runner was an adaptation of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, but it was an extremely loose one---the movie's entire "vibe" is very different from the book.)
That is a fair point but allow me to expand on what I meant. I typically see ideas decay into highest entropy in a few common patterns, for example
Folklore, mythology, or philosophical ideas -> fiction(most often books) that heavily utilize core ideas -> Fiction that is influenced by previous fiction and thus inherits some of its ideas -> poorly recollected approximations of ideas that have permeated popular culture.
Due to the manpower needed to create films and the desire for a return on investment films aim for the lowest common denominator and thus usually usually end in that last stop. Occasionally exceptionally well crafted films can ascend to a higher place or encourage its viewers to explore up the chain themselves but its rare due to the aforementioned desire for a return on investment.
The cultural evolution of zombies is a good example of this per Wikipedia the really basic version is
Haitian Folklore -> HP Lovecraft short story(popularized Haitian Zombies in American culture) -> George A. Romero(Slow shambling hordes sort of like Haitian zombies) -> Resident Evil games(Human like zombies where science rather than mysticism is involved) -> iZombie(zombies as mostly human romantic partner)
It probably should not bother me as much as it does but I can’t shake the feeling we are all getting dumber as a result of consuming primarily high entropy versions of ideas at the end of the pipeline since I read Amusing Ourselves to Death
I did not know that. Its really funny that he was worried because they are such different works. I wonder if anyone has done any sort of study of using tvtropes.org to create a sort of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon for trope overlap.
I'm sympathetic to Neil Postman, but I disagree with this exact line of thinking, and in fact I think it's (in my view, dangerously) close to conservative/fascist ideas about cultural degeneration.
To my mind, it's not that the medium of film itself is inherently degenerate or lesser than, say, novels. Go watch La Haine, or Hiroshima mon Amour, or Andrei Rublev if you want to be convinced that films are capable of great profundity. Maybe it's easier to make films that are, for lack of a better word, "junk food", than it is to make such books? But there are books that we would consider "junk", and back before movies, it's something that people worried about a lot---that's part of what Don Quixote is about.
(I have my own ideas about what the "problem" is, insofar as there is one, but they're pretty boring, as they come with a large dose of It Was Capitalism All Along.)