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According to Aristotle, the first law of storytelling is that plot reigns over all other elements.\u00a0\u00a0 Plot needs to be better conceived and executed than production design, more profound psychologically than any actor\u2019s performance, and more shocking than any gory spray of blood across the screen.<\/p>\n
The second law of storytelling is that characters are rendered relatable to viewers by displaying a fundamental morality, propriety, consistency and truth.\u00a0 Viewers just won\u2019t meld with main characters that are evil, weird, unknowable and false.\u00a0 And if the viewers don\u2019t meld with the characters, then they end up in the emotionally unsatisfying place of watching a story as opposed to experiencing it.<\/p>\n
The third law of storytelling is that stories are not histories. \u00a0In an indispensable and courageous act known as authorial point-of-view, stories take facts about places or events or people and organize them around a theme.\u00a0 This is what makes a 12th<\/sup> Century knight\u2019s armor chink, or a silly girl lost in a rabbit hole, or a woman in Russia being chased by an ideologue, a poet and a capitalist, my problem. \u00a0 Point of view takes courage because it involves the author coming down on one side or another about the relative goodness or badness of the choices related. \u00a0Taking a position is the big risk you get paid for as a storyteller.<\/p>\n And finally, another key law of storytelling is that spectacle is not the protein, but only the salt.\u00a0 Too much salt overwhelms the dish and renders it unpalatable.<\/p>\n So, when I say that The Weinstein Company\u2019s latest release is truly lawless, I\u2019m saying, stay away if you like your movies to be good stories, well told.<\/p>\n Even before we get to the moral problems of the spectacular violence in Lawless, <\/em>its more inexcusable failing is that the movie comes down to just another sad example of tragic waste.\u00a0 Hollywood really, really, really ought to know better by now.\u00a0 The audience sure does.\u00a0 So, why can\u2019t all the producers, directors and executives figure it out?<\/p>\n Lawless<\/em> is a damn waste of wonderful acting talent which includes the deservedly ubiquitous Jessica Chastain and Mia Wasikowski, and the \u201cwhere\u2019ve you been all my life?\u201d hunky, Tom Hardy, and the always fascinatingly creepy, Guy Pearce and lastly, everybody\u2019s younger brother, Shia LaBeouf.\u00a0 The movie makes the mistake of hoping great actors are going to make characters doing morally problematic or even awful things, sympathetic.\u00a0 In this case, the movie sets up as our protagonists as the following: a family of contentious bootleggers, a former trashy lounge entertainer, and a repressed quasi-Amish girl, and expects that we will like them because the story needs us to.\u00a0 We never attach to the characters in Lawless<\/em>, because even really pretty actors aren\u2019t enough to make us forgive characters for their ignorance and stupid choices.\u00a0 Is that really that complicated to fathom?\u00a0 And yet movie after movie founders on the audacity of this particular hope.\u00a0\u00a0 Still, the talented cast here absolutely adds a quality of fascination to the piece.\u00a0 I probably wouldn\u2019t get tired of watching Tom Hardy pick his toenails \u2013 he\u2019s that, you know, \u00a0hot.\u00a0 But his character\u2019s family struggle never became mine.<\/p>\n Principally, the story gets trumped by the very thing that is its strongest suit.\u00a0 The recreation of the bootlegging era is perfectly and wonderfully executed.\u00a0 Every little detail of the making of booze, the period cars and style of dress, the rusty nails on the porch and the grease in Guy Pearce\u2019s \u2018Snidely Whiplash\u2019 hairstyle have been lovingly realized.\u00a0 But a living photograph does not a good movie make.\u00a0 The filmmakers got so caught up in making it all look perfect, that they glossed over the fact that the plot events were not coming together to create a believably motivated transformational arc for the main character. \u00a0(And, by the way, did I mention that I came away not even sure who the main character is, they all change so not or little?)<\/p>\n As always with stories in which the narrative is failing to elicit real emotion, the filmmakers here try and summon up the cheapest of emotion through the depiction of mostly sudden and horrific brutality.\u00a0 I confess, Lawless<\/em> took me into fresh new territory by showing me what a freshly excised scrotum looks like rolling across the floor.\u00a0 Ah yes!\u00a0 Emasculation as entertainment.\u00a0 How did we get through the Golden Age without it?\u00a0 In Lawless<\/em>, human suffering is made the primary spectacle.\u00a0 It is more than excessive.\u00a0 It actually gets boring the way throwing up all night gets tryingly \u201cwill this every stop-ish?\u201d<\/p>\n So, despite our love for this wonderful cast, and despite the loving recreation of the era, we find the movie Lawless<\/em>, guilty of crimes against The Poetics.\u00a0 It oughta be locked up.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" According to Aristotle, the first law of storytelling is that plot reigns over all other elements.\u00a0\u00a0 Plot needs to be better conceived and executed than production design, more profound psychologically than any actor\u2019s performance, and more shocking than any gory spray of blood across the screen. The second law of storytelling is that characters are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1121,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n