The Law of Timespans

As I blogged earlier this month, I think that both Australia and Synecdoche, New York are interesting but flawed movies, and in both cases, I liked the first part of the movie better than the second half. That's the thing: both movies divide easily into halves, with a big jump in time separating the two parts.

The first part of Australia, the cattle drove, takes place over a matter of weeks, then there's a jump of several years, then new complications in the form of the Japanese invasion. These later scenes are comparatively weaker, and unnecessary; at the end of the first part, Nullah even says "Everyone got what they want," which is usually a signal that it's time to wrap things up. Synecdoche, New York is trickier because it plays with time throughout: still, in the first half of the film, the jumps in time are not large. But after Caden wins the MacArthur grant, the next thing you know, seventeen years have gone by and the movie's tone becomes increasingly "meta" and stifling.

And that brings me to an artistic axiom I devised, the Law of Timespans: There tends to be an inverse relationship between the amount of time a movie covers and the quality of the movie. In other words, a movie that takes place over a short period of time is more likely to be good than a movie that takes place over a long period of time.

I came up with this theory a couple of years ago after my first viewings of The Godfather, Part II and Chinatown. I became annoyed that Godfather II had won Best Picture in 1974 when I felt that Chinatown was clearly a better movie. But what made it superior? Its perfectly constructed, inexorable plot where nothing is out of place. The way it covers just a few days' time yet takes Jake Gittes from cocksure private eye to tragic hero. Whereas Godfather II is actually kind of messy, toggling between Michael's life as mob boss and Vito's early days in New York City. Despite its decades-long timespan and 3+ hour running time, it doesn't hit me like Chinatown does.

When I first came up with the Law of Timespans I thought it was profound; now, I realize it is more common-sense than ingenious. After all, a shorter timespan = fewer available moments to dramatize = fewer opportunities to make the wrong choice. With less potential story material, it's easier to get a handle on what you do have, and shape it accordingly. In general, I don't believe in Unfettered Art. I believe in form, structure, working within a set of constraints to spur creativity... all of which are aided by a short timespan.

Indeed, my Law of Timespans might be just another way to describe Aristotle's "Unity of Time and Action." It's funny, you read Aristotle's Poetics so many times in drama classes that it becomes a cliche... and you grow to despise the Unities when you read too many classical plays that follow the Unities to an absurd degree, taking place all on one day in some palace antechamber... and then you see a few flawed movies that don't respect the unity of time and action, and you realize how necessary the unities are!

I guess because Homer and other epic poems are fundamental texts of Western civilization, there's a perception that epic works are inherently better or more worthy. Maybe that's true for literature, but it seems like the opposite is true for drama and film. It's become a cliche to say that epic movies are "Shakesperean in scope," but if you think about it, Shakespeare's most acclaimed plays do not take place over long periods of time. He compressed time in his history plays; his comedies (as comedies must be) are madcap and quick; Hamlet is the most famously indecisive character in literature and yet his eponymous play takes place over only about a month's time. Meanwhile, The Winter's Tale is notoriously hard to direct because of its big shift in time, tone, and action halfway through!

Or, alternatively, what made Hitchcock such a great filmmaker? Lots of things... but might one of them be that none of his movies cover much more than a year's time, and many of his best movies cover even shorter timespans?

Mighty Pens, Mighty Swords

I was talking to a fellow playwright last night and we got to lamenting the fact that while modern playwrights may create fantastic worlds on the page, our everyday lives tend to be quiet and constrained. We go to college and then get MFAs; we hole up somewhere and write a play; we submit it to contests; we format everything in that regimented one-page-equals-one-minute style... "Why don't we live back when playwrights actually did things?" we cried. These were the kind of adventurous writers we were thinking of, who don't seem to exist anymore:

• Christopher Marlowe, who is thought to have worked as a royal spy, which might explain his mysterious murder in a tavern
• Aphra Behn, one of my heroes (obviously!) who worked as a spy for Charles II in Antwerp in 1666, before turning to playwriting
• Samuel Beckett, who worked heroically as a courier for the French Resistance
• Vaclav Havel (another of my heroes, obviously!) whose plays, other writings, and political activism helped defeat Communism in Czechoslovakia

I especially like knowing this about Beckett. Sometimes he seems like such a distant and untouchable figure--the craggy sage whose plays espouse such a bleak, lonely vision--that he needs to be humanized, a little. So it's good to know that he fought for the French Resistance. And intriguing that his rejection of James Joyce's daughter Lucia helped drive her to schizophrenia. And comforting to visit his grave in Montparnasse Cemetery and see him buried next to his partner of 50 years, Suzanne--to know that despite the loneliness of his writing, in life and death he was not alone.

Photo from Wikipedia.

And I've always been intrigued by the notion of spying, à la Behn and Marlowe. They say Behn's spying contact, William Scott, was her lover--I hear that and I start imagining a scenario straight out of Hitchcock's Notorious, one of my all-time favorite movies. It also might be the most realistic espionage film ever made: it has no wacky James Bond gadgets, no superhumanly strong and intelligent spies, no shadowy government organizations. Just three heartbreakingly real and flawed people, and the shadowy mysteries of the human heart.

But of course, even if its emotions run deeper and its characters are more human than in a typical spy film, it's still a glossy '40s Hollywood product, and more exciting than anything I am ever likely to experience. Which brings me back to the beginning: what ever happened to the time when being a writer meant being adventurous...meant being notorious?