on show not tell
Charlotte Wells’ Aftersun, and knowing when to say nothing and when to say something
20 May 23 | Vol 2 Issue 18
I've had guests staying, so more time has been spent entertaining instead of ruminating. These friends disagree with me. Then again, I did postulate badly, and I have to agree — Goodfellas is a fantastic film. I did pick a very poor example.
Flying back long-haul recently, having slept as much as I could on a twenty-three hour flight, book finished, I surfed the inflight entertainment, and caught a couple of movies. I once wrote a column for an actual magazine — Graphics World — reviewing computer books (glam, I know). It raised the question: should one leave a bad review — I admit bad reviews are often terrific fun to read, but do they help? — or is it simply better not to review at all?
We make the world we live in. I chose not to include books I thought were poor. With delight I learnt last month that my father would never give a bad restaurant review, this being people's livelihoods after all. Heap lavish praise when things delight, but leave it to others to pass their own judgements concerning failure. We all suffer the occasional bad night. Given the tweet inches posted on how petulant Musk's latest tantrums are, a policy of saying nothing instead of heralding each outburst, could, I think, bring about a peaceful demise or resolution far quicker.
One film on the flight featured a scattering of movie stars I like, but it left me once again uneasy as to why it's perfectly alright to show sexually assaulted, tortured dead young women, but breast feeding a baby is a no-no in American culture. The other choice was Where The Crawdads Sing. Featuring a neither sexually assaulted nor tortured, but still very dead young man. So permissible. No breast feeding though. Neither of these reveals count as a spoiler I think.
Post flight I had my mother staying with me, which meant the Herculean task of finding a film Anne, my mother, and I would all enjoy. Crawdads was an obvious candidate. Being a book adaptation it contains a plot that adds up, solid characterisation, and is all-in-all a first class mystery coming of age drama. It went down well. The following night's showing was Aftersun. The thinnest of plots, an even thinner script, and breathtaking in its visual richness.
Which led to my later observation chatting with my recent guests, that mainstream American film making in particular has succumbed to tell not show. Each scene, each shot, is a visual representation of the script. That we are told the movie. Not shown. With all the infinite possibility that the film medium offers this seems a terribly wasteful reduction. Obviously citing Goodfellas as an example was foolish. Here is the tracking shot that shows us all we need to know about Karen's acknowledgment that her boyfriend is a gangster, and why she's ok with that, a decision she's already reached before she asks him what it is he does for a living.
Goodfellas | Steadicam Shot
Much has been made of the emotional devastation Aftersun can heap upon the audience. It's certainly moving. Visually amazing. Using image in an expressionist manner to denote different viewpoints, refracted through memory and the passage of time. The most powerful moment of the film, the one that frames everything that occurs and illuminates why we've arrived at this particular moment when resolution is needed, has no dialog, and lasts less than half a minute. Spoiler alert, the next paragraph is only for those who've seen it.
|| Her father's fate, and the reason for the film, why Sophie is reevaluating her relationship with her father, via the memories of their holiday together, is alluded to in only one shot. Indeed thecinemaholic.com/aftersun-ending-explained doesn't even mention it. For twenty seconds, the camera pans up over Sophie placing her feet upon the carpet her father purchased in Turkey. There can only be one explanation, unsaid, as to why the rug is now in her possession. ||
The film is a monument to that moment when, learning to be a parent, a task for which there is no manual, no test, no training wheels, the sudden realisation your own parents weren't always the people they appear to be now. Once they were young, lost in the onslaught of responsibility, emotionally one step behind the weight fostered on them. That it was never natural for them either.
There's the almost magic-realism transition of Calum exiting through the airport swing doors to be lost in the strobe of a disco. A bridge into Sophie's reassessment of her father, updating her incomplete as-a-ten-year-old perception of him, realigning it with her own experience of adult life being a parent.
Aftersun is a masterclass in show not tell. Then again, it deals with fragmentary internal dialogues, not with marrying a mobster. I also had to google what a crawdad is — pretty sure they don't sing.
I would like to end with a sleight observation melding the principles of say nothing if there's nothing good to be said with show don't tell. But it's a no. There's something in there, a criteria for living. But too glib or pat for me to weave together just now. Perhaps because there's also a third essential strand to factor in. The one thing that can't be done in silence, demonstrated when adult Sophie's wife asks her "Hey, are you ok?" during that rug reveal. Even if it's awkward, even if you're unsure of the reception you'll face — let's assume men talking to men about mental health — you sometimes have to speak out, you have to ask your friends "Are you doing alright?"
Aftersun | Official Preview
Fatima Fletcher will return next week when our two heroes won’t feature together in a film. Meanwhile follow fatima.fletcher on Instagram. Her work is for sale at fatimafletcher.com, where she’s available for commissions. Her wonderful orchid place mats are for sale at fatima-fletcher.square.site/s/shop.
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