Adult Conversations

Sometimes you watch a movie - and it connects with you in a specific way - and you can't quite pinpoint why. It's easy to acknowledge great acting. Even the work of a great director is not hard to appreciate. But the work of a great writer is not usually the first thing that comes to mind. I can't recall many movie conversations with friends where someone said, "That movie had great dialogue writing!" We have grown comfortable with writing and dialogue in films being used as a device to accelerate the plot or inform the audience. But deep down, our sub conscience is aware that this isn't the pattern of most conversations.

Great directors are aware of this and deal with it differently. Robert Altman famously aimed for streams of overlapping dialogue, Terrence Malick just eliminates it as much as possible. But every now and then there's a movie that is full of dialogue, and it works.

I re-watched Terms of Endearment recently and found myself especially drawn to the characters. But more than that, I realized this is adults - having adult conversations. It's obviously helped by great actors who understand the characters and can deliver the lines perfectly. But more than anything, I realized how rare this has become.