Part V: Characters (1)
By Miguel Machalski

The fact we will talk about characters after having covered theme, plot and structure in previous articles does not mean this is where I would place this item in order of priority when it comes to writing a screenplay. There is some debate among screenwriters and script specialists as to whether story and structure supersede characterization in importance or the other way round (there are no doubt many more crucial things in life to debate about, but this is not the time and place for that, and all things being equal, this issue is just as suitable to argue about as any other). Personally, I’m more of a character supporter; I’ll usually forget a well-crafted story if its appeal is merely of a narrative nature, but can remember memorable characters way beyond any recollection of the events they enacted.

The reason for this is that what connects us emotionally to a story is what the protagonists experience, and emotional impressions stay with you way longer than mental impressions – often for the rest of your life. The Big Lebowski is a character I’m not likely to forget, nor the miner-cum-magnate played by Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood, nor yet the retired grandmother who wants to learn to write poetry in the midst of a harrowing personal crisis in Lee Chang Dong’s Poetry, but the details of the stories they are part of grow hazy as time goes by. I believe good, solidly built, compelling characters are key to any story, whatever the genre. Hence, I would say that if ‘plot-driven’, a term used to define heavily plotted scripts, means disregard for character development, it’s bad news. One of Hitchcock’s strongest talents – despite his argument in favour of good stories – was focusing on believable, extremely well hewn characters.

But what is a ‘good’ character? Is it someone we like, relate to, identify with? Someone whose goals, obstacles, likes and dislikes are easily distinguishable and clearly established? Someone who undergoes transformation in the course of the film and learns something at the end? In mainstream, commercial filmmaking, the answer would be ‘yes’ because the aim is to reach as broad an audience as possible, worldwide, regardless of cultural specificity and idiosyncrasy. Singularity, quirkiness, ambiguity, may not be to everyone’s taste nor are they common denominators, so in commercial filmmaking there is always a concern that if a character is initially unusual or not necessarily likeable, like Jack Nicholson in As Good As It Gets, he or she must end up with some kind of redeeming feature.

I believe this is an obsolete approach, and as psychological complexity becomes something we are more and more acquainted with and not some obscure knowledge reserved to the initiated, characters built as fictional representations for the purposes of the story or as referential archetypes (and often stereotypes) seem dated and déjà vu. We know, or sense, there are no such things as tough cops, unmitigated evildoers or fearless avengers. If a cop is tough in his job, it could be because he rejects a tenderness in himself he experiences as weakness; if an evildoer has no qualms, he may reacting to some terrible humiliation his father subjected him to; if a righter of wrongs knows no fear, he is probably trying to prove something to himself and to the world. This is not to say that these hidden motivations have necessarily to be revealed or explained within the framework of the story but that they need to be considered as a substantial part of the character’s makeup.

One-dimensional characters respond to the demands of certain dramatic and narrative principles and are called on by writers to contribute with the stories that need to be told, regardless of whether they are being true to who they are or whether the actions that are required of them fit together in a coherent psychological profile. Very often, these characters seem to know they’re inside a story, and are even privy to the outcome. Though Alexander Payne’s Sideways is a noteworthy film, I remember how unlikely I thought it was that the female character played by Virginia Madsen, in keen need of a relationship and finally in love with the character played by Paul Giamatti, would hold it against Giamatti when she finds out that his soon-to-be-married buddy succeeded in sleeping with another woman by lying to her. Madsen (Maya in the film) would have to be really narrow-minded, and even a little dumb, to lay the blame on someone, to the point of breaking off the relationship, for his friend’s fickleness. Her reaction suited the needs of the writer but was not organic to her as a person.

Typically, characters in horror films often adopt absurdly improbable behaviour. In the dead of a stormy night, a young, not particularly bold girl ventures into an abandoned house where she knows several people have been hacked to pieces by an axe-wielding lunatic simply because the writer needs her to, though neither she nor anyone else in their right mind would think of doing anything of the sort unless they were utter morons. Good genre movies do not simply apply the codes of the genre, but create characters who would believably generate the story they are in. In Tomas Alfredson’s poetic vampire film, Let The Right One In, the young boy’s character is presented in such a way that it is utterly plausible he would befriend a vampire. Even if vampires do not exist (which is by no means a certainty), we buy into the story because if they did, the relationship between the boy and the blood-sucker makes complete sense.

Basically, characters in screenplays are people, not entities symbolising archetypical behaviour. This way of looking at characters is somehow archaic. The mythical hero and his journey responded to a limited knowledge of human psyche, or perhaps to an as yet uncharted and intuitive knowledge, and was anyway meant metaphorically, not as a real-life representation of human behaviour. Realistic characters are not necessarily related to realistic situations. Even if you are in a complete fantasy with totally imaginary characters, these need to respond to a coherent and recognisable psychological profile.

Take superheroes. Spiderman is a reluctant saviour. And we relate to his wanting to be just an ordinary guy who can fall in love, have a family and tend to his garden without being burdened with a never-ending struggle against Evil. Who would really want to be in a position like that? So rather than taking for granted that as a person endowed with superpowers he will be gung-ho about battling bad guys day in and day out, he becomes human despite being a totally fantastic creature. Likewise, Batman is a sombre, brooding character who goes after criminals because he witnessed his parents’ murder. This trauma haunts him, and his superhero status is sometimes felt as more of a curse than a blessing.

A frequent objection to characters in screenplays is that they appear as stereotypes. Actually, there are stereotypical characters in life: the brainless hunk, the absent-minded scientist, the neurotic housewife do exist, so why shouldn’t they appear in screenplays? They can, but don’t forget that when we meet these people in real life, there is probably some hidden trait that makes them less stereotyped than they seem. Also, if you do want to portray a stereotype, be sparing in the description. If you need a character who is all brawn and no brains then it’s usually enough to show this in a single scene with a couple of broad brushstrokes. If you start dwelling on it and going into details in one scene after another, the stereotype becomes obvious.

And don’t forget: fiction is fiction and has to abide by stricter rules than real life. A story is a make-believe representation of reality, not reality itself.

(More about characters in next article)
 

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