How do you shoot a breakup scene? Lots of dialogue? No dialogue? Interior? Exterior? During the day? At night? In lots of light? No light? Cut up into a number of shots of different sizes? One long take? You could ask these questions all day long and challenge yourself to come up with different answers each time through.
These questions are the basic building blocks of filmmaking. The answers are what separate a unique talent from just another hired gun. And, this is before you get into editing, sound design and soundtrack considerations.
“Mustang Island” has a break up scene. It happens to be the very first shot of the movie. In a stunning and locked off POV shot, a young woman stands facing the camera in a medium close-up. In her face, we see hurt and confusion. In the background, we can just make out a blur of people carrying sparklers. Though their voices are faint, we hear them counting down to a new year. The girl, who we will later know as Molly (Molly Karrasch), ends the moment – and the new year – by boiling over with emotion and running off into the dark.
New Year’s eve, a camera on sticks and no dialogue. Though an extremely simple approach to filmmaking, we have no trouble recognizing this as a break up scene. The moment is so effective, for a second there, you wonder why other filmmakers don’t do the same. Of course, that would be beside the point.
With this opening scene, writer/director Craig Elrod (he co-wrote the script with Nathan Smith) is telling you something about himself as a filmmaker – he likes things simple.
This opening scene is the first domino to fall in an approach to filmmaking that suggests Jim Jarmusch (Stranger Than Paradise, Down By Law) or the bare bones point and shoot style of Robert Bresson (Diary of a Country Priest, Pickpocket).
Whether or not Elrod was influenced by those filmmakers, his style clearly prizes less over more. For most of its slender running time, MI’s camera is locked off on a tripod. The characters, who often stand still for the duration of any given shot, seem unable to move – like they’re somehow trapped inside the four “walls” of the camera’s frame. There are camera movements here and there, but for the most part, once Elrod finds an angle he likes, he locks off the tripod and yells, “Action!”
And, for the most part, this minimalist approach, which also brings to mind Chaplin (City Lights, Modern Times) and the great French sound-silent comedian filmmaker Jacques Tati (Mr. Hulot’s Holiday, Playtime), casts a bit of a spell on you – one that catches you admiring the careful compositions and the tidy way Elrod strips scenes down to their bare essence.
Scenes that would normally include pages of dialogue are stripped of all that blah-blah-blah and become, instead, lessons on just how powerful filmmaking can be at its most basic. Actors may not like it – fewer close-ups and less dialogue – but, after watching a film like MI, you can’t help but wonder why so many other films insist on wall to wall blah-blah-blah. TV shows seem especially weighed down by too much talk.
I am not suggesting that every single film should be made in this style. What I am saying is that the one talent that seems to elude most filmmakers is the ability to take lines and lines of dialogue and replace them with a well chosen image (or well chosen images) that express the same idea or ideas. It is a visual medium, afterall – a moving picture is worth 10,000 words? Sadly, this is lost on most filmmakers who seem content to cram their running times full of needless talk and, my biggest gripe, wall to wall voice over.
MI also has a simple and straightforward story: it’s New Year’s Eve and poor thirty-something Bill (Macon Blair) has just had his heart ripped to shreds by his girlfriend Molly. Devastated, he tracks down one of his exs’ friends and finds out that Molly’s planning on heading out to her parents’ cottage on Mustang Island. He heads there to win her back.
Deadpan, at times funny, at times dull, MI shows us both the strengths and weaknesses of its minimalist style. The strengths win out, but not by much.
There are moments that benefit greatly from this minimalist style, including: the opening shot; a trio of scenes showing Bill hunting down his ex in a series of bars – with his faithful buddies by his side; a fight between Bill and his brother John (John Merriman) lensed in long shot and a gag at a restaurant that uses careful framing to set up and deliver its punchline.
In other places, the style wears out its welcome with some shots going on too long, an accumulated stillness of camera and character occasionally spilling over into monotony and a particularly badly scripted key fight between Bill and Molly. That scene’s spare dialogue suggests that the minimalist style employed by Elrod might be more of a function of his limitations as a writer and director rather than the bold statement of an uncompromising artist. Which is it? No idea. Maybe we’ll find out in his future films.
MI neatly ends much as it began – with a locked off, medium close-up of another girl. Though occasionally funny and, at times, a visual treat, MI is far too slender to warrant even its already barely feature length 86 minute running time.
In the end, It’s minimalist approach to filmmaking produces minimal enjoyment – more or less.
