Counterpoint on Voiceover: Could Shawshank have been even better?

I come to this debate not to concede but to clarify statements that were made about me in Alex’s last post. Do I hate voiceover? Yes. Do I think that it is inherently sloppy and lazy screenwriting? Absolutely.

Alex states that the importance of voiceover is that it gives perspective. I disagree. The power of cinema (as opposed to live theater) is that the perspective we get comes directly from the characters. We get to see through their eyes. We get to feel what they feel. We get to take part in the action in a very emotional way. When a character (or narrator) breaks the “fourth wall” by speaking directly to the audience, that power is lost. It keeps the audience on the “outside” of the movie. And we lose that visceral connection to the character.

When a character tells us what (s)he is feeling, I stop experiencing the events of the film along the character and the movie becomes a much more objective than subjective experience for me. Great artists don’t attach a paragraph of explanation for their creations. Neither do great songwriters explain their songs in the CD liner notes. The joy for the audience is seeing choices played out of the screen and wondering “why did (s)he do that?” Decalogue: Six is a great example of that. I did not fully grasp the actions of either main character in the story, but the more I thought about it, the more I liked that. The last thing I would want is for one of them to tell me what (s)he was thinking.

Alex and I agree that voiceover for expositional purposes is worse than receiving socks for Christmas. It is, as he says, the essence of “Tell, don’t Show” – which is death to a movie. Imagine, if you will, that the expositional paragraph that begins each of the Star Wars films was not written to be read by the audience, but performed by one of the key characters (or even a narrator) while the audience takes a computer-generated tour of the galaxy.

Are you done shuddering at that possibility? Okay, let’s continue.

Voiceover is not the best way to bring us into a character’s mind. As F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote in his notes regarding the unfinished end of The Last Tycoon, “Action is Character.” Plot is the foundation to film, not dialogue or exposition. And action (driven by choice) is the foundation to character. As one of the reviewers (I think it was Adam) on the Filmspotting podcast said recently, “you don’t play adjectives, you play adverbs.” You don’t tell us that you’re sad, happy, introspective, or awestruck, you speak, walk, and make decisions based on the internal feelings. Telling the audience about the feelings or “lessons learn” [ugh] is a unsatisfying shortcut to that end.

Imagine at the beginning of Rushmore that Max Fischer tells us via voiceover how much he loves Rushmore and how he would stay there forever if he could, and then gives us access to his inner-most thoughts about Miss Cross. Even with Wes Anderson’s clever dialogue, it wouldn’t work near as well as how Anderson tells us about Max. He shows us what Max is like with the quick cuts of the 25 or so extra-curricular activities Max is involved with (along with his brilliant opening scene with Brian Cox), and shows us all we need to know about how he thinks of Miss Cross by saving Latin. Max’s creed (“I think you just gotta find something you love to do, and then do it for the rest of your life. For me it’s going to Rushmore.”) is given in the midst of dialogue. Could you imagine that line opening the movie given by voiceover?

Now, to the examples that Alex gave. I admit I don’t remember the voiceover in most of them. That could be due to: (1) bad short-term memory, or (2) that the voiceovers were utterly forgettable. Whatever the case, there are two films that use voiceover (in very different ways) that I must address, because I love both films (as in “top 20 films of all time” love).

The first is The Shawshank Redemption. This film may have been the beginning of my path down film snobbery (my “gateway drug” if you will). And yet, I have to concede that it’s not perfect. The acting is perfect. The dialogue is perfect. The direction is top notch (the iconic shot of Tim Robbins emerging from the sewer pipe being cleansed by the rain gives me goose bumps just thinking about it). And yet, I have to admit that I still don’t like the voiceover. It keeps me at arms length from the picture; it keeps the film just a little bit on the “cold” side for me. There are some terrific lines delivered by Morgan Freeman via voiceover (“I like to think that the last thing that went through the warden’s head, other than that bullet. . .”), but couldn’t those lines have been given just as well (or even better) in dialogue to another character?

The second is Adaption. Here is where I need to clarify what I mean by voiceover, because I will admit, in this films it just works. The film wouldn’t be near the same without it. But here’s why it works in this film as opposed to many of the others. (1) The film is a spoof of the movie “rules.” The Kaufmann brothers characterize the tension in screen writing between following formulas (the Robert McKee seminar) and true creative thinking. So, the irony is (as Alex noted) that he’s using voiceover in a creative way, not according to the formula. (2) Charlie Kaufmann is not talking to the audience with his voiceover – he’s talking to himself. And that’s an important distinction in the film. Because Kaufmann is a severe introvert, who else does he have to talk to? The focus of the film is completely internal, and therefore the internal dialogue given through voiceover works perfectly.

So, I come to the end of this piece with a clarification of what I mean when I say “voiceover.” When it is used to read a letter for the audience’s sake or for telepathic communication (like Galadriel to Frodo in FOTR), that’s fine. But what harms a film is when voiceover is used to speak directly to the audience. That is what keeps the audience from truly entering “into” the picture, and therefore negates the real visceral power of film.

Voicing about Voiceovers

Alright, y’all, it’s been a while. For that I apologize. However, I come to you now, in this great hour of need, to appeal to you to help Doug and I settle, insofar as that is even possible, a debate question.

As we settled yesterday to watch Decalogue VI,[1] the question came up about voiceover. It was inspired by a line from the movie Adaptation, where the brilliant Brian Cox portrays screenplay guru Robert McKee.[2] While speaking at his famous story seminar, ripping apart many different film writer faux pas, he quips in a harsh whisper, “And God help you if you use voiceover!” The nature of the disagreement came with my personal disagreement with him. I don’t think it’s true that voiceover is a bad thing. Doug, however (in his steely way), sided with the Adaptation McKee[3] that voiceover is cheap and never a good idea.[4]

I understood a lot of his reasons. It’s overdone, and often when it is done, it is done badly. I concede that completely. Especially when it’s expositional. Relying on voiceover to move the plot (as opposed to the Story itself – and there is a difference) can be a deadly mistake. You use dialogue, actions, scenes of tension; it’s the show-don’t-tell philosophy all over again. In that regard, voiceover can be completely destructive.

However, to say because of that, it is across-the-board weak – well, I can’t agree with that at all. I mean, some movies need voiceover, not for plot, but for story, because it is their perspective that is one of the key forces of the story. In this regard, it is like dialogue; dialogue that is expositional is cheap and boring, and often annoying, because it lacks perspective and interaction. Voiceover that is expositional is the same. But voiceover itself is like dialogue, in its own special way, because the perspective of the narrator is oftentimes the over-arching perspective of the story, and the interaction is of the narrator with the audience itself. Like the first person narrative in books, the narrator is telling us a story from his/her point of view. And when that works, that’s golden.

I think of it like flashbacks, which are like voiceovers in that they are incredibly hard to do well and they provide perspective. The crown jewel example of this would be Rashomon. The movie is almost completely perspectival – even the flashbacks told in the trial are set within the flashbacks of the three characters dialoguing in the film, and the point of the story is how each carries with it the character’s own perspective. Other films that do flashbacks in interesting and powerful ways could include Laura, Citizen Kane, Unbreakable, Enter the Dragon, Darjeeling Limited, The Bourne Ultimatum, and Big Fish. For every one of those films, there are of course one hundred or even a thousand that do flashbacks really badly, and the same could be said for voiceover, but that does not make the devices themselves bad; it makes them tricky, difficult, and risky. But as in many things, those that are tricky, difficult, and risky are often the stuff of the greatest and most powerful achievements, with the greatest payoff. Hell, in Casablanca, the flashbacks are probably the weakest part of the film, but I don’t know if it could’ve worked without it.

And I don’t know if utter gems like What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?, The Shawshank Redemption, Legends of the Fall, V for Vendetta, Juno, or countless others would work without the voiceover. The voiceovers in these stories make the film, because of the perspectives they provide. I can’t imagine trying to adapt a book to film like The Catcher in the Rye without using voiceover, because it’s not just the story, it’s Holden Caulfield’s (somewhat skewed) perspective of the story that is important. The same is true for these other movies. And rather than get rid of these devices, we need to think of new and fresh ways to use them to empower us to continue to make masterpieces.

Of course, it is not secret that the line that sparked this entire debate is from a movie that heavily relies on voiceover. However, I would hold that Adaptation works because of the voiceover, not in spite of it. It is the singular perspective of Charlie Kaufman that makes something quite “uninteresting” (the struggle of the movie itself) quite interesting indeed.

So let us know what you think, and provide examples from either side of the debate.

Voiceover – 5/5

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[1] Which, incidentally, was incredibly brilliant. Review forthcoming.

[2] Cox was McKee’s own personal choice for the role, I’m told.

[3] It might be something he really thinks, but as I have never been to his seminar or read his book, I don’t know; the movie is all I have to go on.

[4] Yes, he did say never, I don’t care if he denies it =).