by Paolo Braga
No.
(a beat)
See you tomorrow.
A concise response, that only apparently regards Mrs. Murtaugh’s cuisine. Rigg’s “no” means: “this is a serious, man-to-man talk. I’ll prove it to you by not making any compliments about the roast we had for dinner”.
Riggs “does” something new that brings conflict to a new height. He forces Murtaugh to be consistent. He wanted a real relationship, right? Then he can’t pretend nothing happened31. He has to make a choice. Either appreciate a friendship that brings him to the heart of the action or listen to the fifty-year old who, deep inside, tells him not to take any risks.
The fifty-year old policeman is left speechless. He looks at the younger policeman pulling away and doesn’t know if he should be happy (he can have an extra friend, someone who knows how to earn respect) or worried (with a friend like that, you always end up down the most dangerous path).
This dialogue is also similar to the model in the handbooks. There is initial direction (Murtaugh looks like he is in control of the situation and seems to have obtained even more than he had hoped for in the first beat), conflict (Riggs doubts he can trust his partner), exposition, ← 39 | 40 → characterization (Riggs reveals some details of his backstory) and reversal (the one who initiated the talk and laid down the conditions finds himself being conditioned).
The Best of Youth. “Then let’s get you signed out!”
The extremism of the 1970s – a neurotic country that has repressed the exuberance of the last ten years, ceasing to grow and make progress. This is the core theme of The Best of Youth, the film written by Stefano Rulli and Sandro Petraglia and directed by Marco Tullio Giordana in 2003, an account of nearly forty years of Italian history through the story of two brothers.
Nicola (Luigi Lo Cascio), a psychiatrist, is the key character who, through his effort to bring about a change in the way the mentally ill are considered, symbolizes the strength and efforts of progress in a nation. Nicola represents the norm, that suffers and at times is bogged down, but never gives up in his effort to control two opposite and extreme ways of thinking.
Nicola’s brother Matteo (Alessio Boni) embodies the apprehension of the “right-wing”. Tormented since adolescence and consumed by a deaf sense of inadequacy, Matteo searches in vain, first by joining the police force and using power to curb his own restlessness.
The apprehension of the “left-wing”, instead, is embodied in the character of Giulia (Sonia Bergamasco), Nicola’s wife, whose inclination towards self-destruction is materialized in terrorist activities.
This dialogue between Nicola and Matteo coincides with their momentary re-union and, in comparison to the scenes analyzed above, is an example of a slightly different way of writing verbal confrontation. A way that spaces out the tit for tat with several pauses to create tension. A way that moves a part of the dramatic force of the contents on the communicative registers and on the emotional tone adopted by one of the two speakers (Nicola).
In addition, the dialogue is different from the ones in Munich and in Lethal Weapon in that it follows the opposite direction. In fact, it ends ← 40 | 41 → with the protagonist feeling positive. He obtained the temporary objective that motivated his actions.
THE SCENE. It is quite long – two minutes – and is set in the hallway of a police station in Turin.
Nicola is off to the side. He lives in Turin and witnessed the violent encounters between the police and the protesters. He found out Matteo beat one of the protesters, seriously injuring him, and has come to pay a visit. Nicola was never happy about his brother’s choice to enter the police force and now, not having seen each other for months, they are re-united in the city Nicola lives in. His objective is to take him away, at least for a little while, from his lonely, existential life.
On the other hand, Matteo is the antagonist. He took all his anger out on the protester during the manifestation, first to save his comrade, but also just to vent his anger.
PHASE 1. Nicola and Matteo embrace. Matteo is happy to see his brother and for a moment he forgets all that is tormenting and depressing him:
NICOLA
How are you? What a way to meet
again. I thought you were in
Treviso.
MATTEO
Yeah, they called in reinforcements
for the protest.
Matteo is uneasy as he talks, remembering all that happened.
PHASE 2. Nicola picks up on his unease and addresses it, opening a second, long beat with conflict:
NICOLA
Weren’t you lucky.
MATTEO
Hmm…
← 41 | 42 → Reference to Matteo’s violent act breaks the pleasantness. Matteo doesn’t want to talk about it. He becomes stiff and walks away, sitting down on a bench. He stares out in front of him, absorbed by problems that only he is aware of. Nicola then sits down next to him and, after a long silence, he tries to reason with him. Matteo, however, is like a wall of cold indifference that can’t be broken.
NICOLA
It was legitimate self-defense,
right?
MATTEO
(aloof)
If they hadn’t pulled me off him,
I would have killed him.
NICOLA
Are they going to try you?
MATTEO
I don’t know. But I’ve been
transferred.
NICOLA
Where to?
MATTEO
Bologna. I leave tomorrow.
NICOLA
Anyway, that guy you hurt is going
to be okay, fortunately.
MATTEO
I don’t give a shit.
← 42 | 43 → Action: Nicola tries to provoke remorse in Matteo, to involve him in Nicola’s own concern for his well-being. Reaction: Matteo is closed, like a stranger. He really doesn’t care.
The dialogue takes a turn…
PHASE 3. Nicola loses his patience:
NICOLA
(upset)
How long are you going to keep
this up?
Nicola is irritated (new action: he reprimands him). His first approach has failed. Matteo doesn’t want to listen to reason. He withdraws even further from Nicola. He stands up and walks over to the window on the other side of the hallway. Another long silence. Nicola reflects and decides to change strategy.
PHASE 4. A new beat begins, marked by Nicola’s own words to himself for support. His tone suddenly becomes constructive, encouraging, as if the psychiatrist were about to begin speaking with a whimsical child:
NICOLA
(to himself)
All right, let’s start over.
Nicola reaches his brother and stands next to him. He stares out the window and begins to tease him. He purposely makes his words sound naïve and allusive. The words of someone curious to see just how long it is before the person being teased loses his patience:
NICOLA
Hi, Matteo. How are you? You want
to come with me? I’ll show you
where I live. We can relax a bit.
Are you allowed to leave? What’s
the procedure? Ask for permission
from the Ministry of Internal
← 43 | 44 → Affairs? Kiss the ground the police
chief walks on? Pray to St. Michael
the Archangel, the patron saint of
the police?
It’s a good strategy that works. Pretending to start over from the very beginning with a conversation that is “extra” normal, then adding a series of questions that provoke a change.
With the last few questions, the tension on Matteo’s face begins to subside. He begins to smile and then finally turns around, giving up:
MATTEO
All I have to do is sign out.
The climax:
NICOLA
Then let’s get you signed out!
In the last line, Nicola’s familiar tone of
voice, provoking and encouraging, reaches the climax. Nicola says the last line as if he were giving a child the encouragement needed to take a medicine that wasn’t even bitter.
In the scene following, on the streets of Turin, Nicola and Matteo walk together and Matteo is at peace.
This scene also follows the model quite closely. There is the initial direction (the embrace), conflict and change of direction (the memory of the death of a protester), exposition and characterization (Matteo is impassible and responds to the question of legitimate defense, announces his transfer), rise of conflict and reversal (Matteo has left the imprisonment of the station and has become a free citizen).
The work done by the director and the actors to enhance the steps of conflict in this dialogue from The Best of Youth can be greatly appreciated, probably even more than in the last two examples.
The end of one beat and the beginning of the next is marked by the characters’ movement to a different spot in the same scene. First they are standing while they embrace. Then they both sit down on the bench. ← 44 | 45 → Then one stands and walks over to the window while the other remains sitting. Finally, at the point the two brothers are the most distant in their points of view, they both stand next to the window.
Long pauses are used for each changing beat to show the audience just how tough Matteo’s inner turmoil and suffering is, making it very frustrating for Nicola to show his affection. In the final beat, following Matteo’s change, the director moves in on a tight close-up of the young man. His face stands out against the slightly unfocused face of Nicola, who stares out the window, never looking at him as he speaks in the background. This choice allows the end of the scene to maximize expressions to their fullest. Nicola’s appeal – his series of exasperating questions – is in fact like a small counseling session. The psychiatrist uses irony to break through his patient’s resistance and push him out of his vexation, playing down the situation he has found himself in. The scene represents something else as well. A man speaks to his brother, using the same tactics that were used in their family when they were younger ‒ teasing the stubborn one. It highlights the irony. The one who always wanted to do things his own way, ended up escaping into a reality (the police force) based on absolute obedience to a superior.
Direct attack and sudden backlash
I’d like to introduce this topic with a few examples. The following are the last lines of a couple of scenes taken from different films.
The first is from Erin Brockovich (USA 2000). George (Aaron Eckhart) breaks up with Erin (Julia Roberts). Sick and tired of being left alone with the children while Erin is at work, her companion gives her an idea on how to replace his presence, exactly what she deserves:
GEORGE
I mean, you got a raise. You can
afford daycare. You don’t need me.
← 45 | 46 → The King’s Speech (United Kingdom 2010). Speech therapist Lionel (Geoffrey Rush) conjectures that Bertie (Colin Firth), a man full of complexes, could succeed his brother to the throne of England. Bertie is terrorized by the idea and becomes furious:
BERTIE
I’m the son of a king. The brother
of a king. You’re the disappointing
son of a brewer! A jumped-up
jackeroo from the outback! You’re
nobody. These sessions are over!
The Social Network (USA 2010). Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) flies into a rage and pretends to punch Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), who ducks out of the way. Eduardo sarcastically states:
EDUARDO
I like standing next to you, Sean.
It makes me look so tough…
Like these examples show, aggressiveness, which is not the only conflict-creating solution a screenwriter has available to him in order to create tension, is nonetheless very effective32. Aggressiveness is especially useful at the end of a scene when an attack becomes personal (moving dialogue away from the point at stake and onto the nature of the relationship between the two people involved in the argument). Offending someone provides a powerful climax.
There are two types of attacks: instinctive or calculating.
The polemical and offensive remarks cited above obviously fall into the first category – they are “direct attacks”. In all three cases, the opinion that underrates the speaker is believed to be the result of an instinctive, spontaneous escalation of conflict. Communication is thus ← 46 | 47 → ended brusquely by a speaker who is disappointed and frustrated with regards to his objectives. The sense of a relationship being traumatically severed takes priority. Someone leaves the scene slamming the door behind him33.
Calculating attacks, instead, contain an element of warning or threat. This is typical when the power-possessing antagonist wants to reaffirm the status quo, to keep all “out-of-line” behavior at bay and remind the protagonist he must show submission. The calculating attack arrives therefore at the end of the scene, like a sudden reversal. We could thus call it “a sudden backlash”. The final punch arrives just when the dialogue appears to end with little harm done to the protagonist. Here are a few examples.
This first one is from The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen, directed and written by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Germany 2006), two-thirds through the film.
THE SCENE. In East Berlin, Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe), a Stasi agent, is spying on a couple of artists. The integrity of his actions has been weighing on his conscious and he decides to secretly help the couple he is spying on. In order to do this, the agent needs more autonomy. For example, he needs to get rid of the other agents on the mission. Wiesler makes this request of his own superior and old friend, Lieutenant colonel Anton Grubitz (Ulrich Tukur), in the office.
Despite Grubitz’s doubts (“you’re hiding something from me…”), in the end he disregards the agent’s true intentions and gives his okay. Wiesler gets up to say goodbye. His superior watches him heading towards the door. The dialogue seems to be over, and yet…
SUDDEN BACKLASH. A warning arrives that revives the tension:
← 47 | 48 → GRUBITZ
How was it, when we sat here
together twenty years ago? You
know, they proposed me for a
professor job… See, grades don’t
matter in the real world, even
though mine weren’t too bad…
This warning is a blow to Weisler’s self-esteem. Firstly, Grubitz is actually saying: “I expected more of you, and I want more from you”. With this, Grubitz highlights their different hierarchical levels, placing their friendship or, at least, Grubitz’s usual informal way with Wiesler, in second place.
The driving force, however, is even more powerful. The audience, in fact, remembers meeting the two characters at the beginning of the film in a scene where Grubitz goes to visit Wiesler after a tough lesson at the Stasi training school. On that occasion, Grubitz joked with his friend, emphasizing how, unlike himself, Wiesler hadn’t been so successful with his career.
The same words are repeated now, in the plot twist, when the audience can interpret their meaning in light of their deeper knowledge of Wiesler. For example, the audience now knows just how much the agent, even through spying on the artists, truly believes in real socialism, devoid of careerism. In light of this, the effectiveness of the plot twist is obvious. It is an insinuation based on the implicit comparison Grubitz makes of his own experiences with that of his subordinate, which makes the allusion much more personal. It is as if the boss says to Wiesler: “mark the words of someone who knows you well and is better than you. You don’t know how to close a deal. You get lost in questions of methodology or principal. Prove me wrong, at least this once”34.
← 48 | 49 → The second example is a key scene in the film A Few Good Men.
THE SCENE. U.S. Navy lawyers Lionel Kaffee (Tom Cruise) and Joanne Galloway (Demi Moore) are colonel Jessep’s (Jack Nicholson) guests at lunch. Jessep is the commander of the Naval base in Cuba where a h
omicide was committed and the two lawyers have gone to investigate. Suspected of withholding information, Jessep embodies the abuse of power. He is an overbearing and deceitful monarch. The two lawyers find themselves in the wolf’s lair with the wolf himself as their host.
Given this, screenwriter Sorkin creates tension with an initial phase of friendly conversation. Then he makes the confrontation flare up by keeping Kaffee, Jessep’s true adversary, on the sidelines. Thus, the scene seems to have reached its climax when Galloway presses the colonel and, protected by his own higher ranks, shuts her up with a direct attack – an avalanche of fierce sarcasm on the erotic prerogatives of a female officer like Joanne. It doesn’t seem like he could pass the line any further (Jessep’s words have made it brutally clear that on base he says and does whatever he wants). Tension begins to diminish. The scene seems destined to end on a subtle tone. This impression is even confirmed by Kaffee, who encouraging his colleague to leave, stands up from the table to leave and yet…
SUDDEN BACKLASH. To stir things up again, Kaffee makes a request so he can close the case as soon as possible and not bother the colonel with anything else. His tone of voice comes across as condescending to the colonel:
KAFFEE
Colonel, I’ll just need a copy
of Santiago’s transfer order.
Even though what he asks for is not of prime importance (only proof of the victim Santiago’s transfer order, to clear Jessep’s name completely), Kaffee’s tone of voice seems to indicate that he asks the question because he is only following procedure. Jessep, however, senses danger and decides to put Kaffee on the spot. He pretends he doesn’t understand:
← 49 | 50 → JESSEP
What’s that?
KAFFEE
Santiago’s transfer order. You guys
have paperwork on that kind of
thing. I just need it for the file…
JESSEP
For the file.
KAFFEE
Yeah.
JESSEP
Of course you can have a copy of
the transfer order for the file. I’m
here to help in any way I can.
KAFFEE
Thank you.
JESSEP
You believe that, don’t you, Danny,