Drama — Volume 1: Everything is decided in a look
Slow transformation, and the pressure that produces it.
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The volume
In each of these five films someone's life is decided by what they manage to see, or refuse to see, far more than by the events happening around them. One man discovers that his own eyes lie to him. Another crosses thirty years of American history without recognizing a single one of them, and the viewer sees twice, through his eyes and through their own. A third has spent twenty years in a house he stopped looking at. Twelve men realize they looked too quickly, and looking again becomes a physical act performed against everyone who wants to go home. A son does not see himself becoming the man he had sworn he would not be. This is the volume on slow transformation: how to build a descent in which none of the steps is visible from the top, and how to hold a protagonist who never changes.
The five films, and why they are here
The Godfather
A descent in which every step, at the moment it is taken, looks like the most reasonable thing to do.
Forrest Gump
Thirty years of history crossed by someone who recognizes none of it: the gap between his eyes and ours is the whole film.
A Beautiful Mind
Letting the audience believe what it sees and then withdrawing the images: the second half is not a recovery, it is a discipline.
American Beauty
Announcing your own ending in the first scene, and making every dinner that follows feel like a leave-taking.
12 Angry Men
The whole story in one room: how to build tension out of a table, a knife and a walk timed with a watch.
Inside the volume
- Introduction to the genre: the essay that binds the volume's five titles together and says what to watch for.
- Five analytical chapters, one per film, from the dramatic premise to the legacy of the work.
- Comparative glossary: thirteen or fourteen craft concepts, tested against these five titles.
- Over two hundred pages, in PDF and EPUB, in your account library.