One thing I’m sick of seeing among those who critique films for being too dialogue or exposition heavy or not following their understanding of “show don’t tell” properly is the rather dogmatic declaration that “film is a visual medium”.
Film and Television and Animation are mixed mediums of storytelling designed to in different ways stimulate both sight and sound to convey whatever their artistic intent is. A purely visual medium would be things like paintings, something way more visual than anything else would be Comic Books/Manga or the very modern artform of motion comics. Something that’s not visual at all would be Audio Dramas and Music Records.
I make posts like this to defend allowing artists to make what they want and the audience to enjoy what they want. I am not someone who devalues the visual aspects of film or opposes films that prioritize the visual elements over everything else. Such films have less appeal to me personally but I absolutely respect them, and absolutely do appreciate the visual elements of the movies and shows I do like.
That said there are sometimes bad directorial decisions made because of this over prioritizing of the visuals that YouTube critics defend simply on the principle that they did “something” visually instead of “nothing”. Take for example JustWrite’s video on Rise of Skywalker where he is very critical of that film (more than I am really) but still defends Abrams as a Director over Lucas by showing a scene from a non Star Wars Abrams film where the Camera is spinning around some characters talking as inherently more “interesting” than the Prequels' more muted directorial style where the camera is still while characters talk. As someone who likes Dialogue I don’t appreciate the Camera trying to disorient me while I'm trying to follow a conversation.
But that doesn’t mean I'm always against having some motion going on during a dialogue scene. As an Anime fan I love the scene in the first episode of Fate/Zero where Kerie’s father and Tosaka walk in a circle around him while recruiting him into their scheme. But it’s not nearly as disorienting as that Abrams scene and more importantly serves an artistic purpose beyond just avoiding the accusation of being boring. ReplayValue has a video essay on the scene that explains it way better than I could.
The Irony of all this is how some visual aspects of film get disrespected by this dismissiveness towards anything not purely or primarily visual. When a character is talking, more is going on than just the words themselves, are they being sincere or manipulative or is their trustworthiness ambiguous? How do they feel about what they’re saying, are they talking about something that traumatized them or does it give them great Joy to talk about? Is there maybe something else they are failing to say? These ideas are in part conveyed by how they say it, their facial expressions and how they’re moving. In Live Action that is pretty much entirely in how the Actor performs it, however in Animation the more visual aspects of Acting are done by the Animators, so no you're not respecting them by dismissing dialogue scenes, sometimes the visual performance of a character talking is the best work they’ve done. Maybe none of these people intend to dismiss all that when they say “film is a visual medium” but when saying it in the contexts they do that’s the implication.
That’s why it offends me when Zero Woolfe says sarcastically “what a great way to use this VISUAL medium” about Andrew Garfield’s performance in No Way Home because he has some ideological problem with simply saying what was previously unspoken. His praise of the Marc Webb films are good, it’s the looking down on everything else that bugs me.
But that’s just how this attitude towards film can unintentionally disrespect visuals when it comes to a single scene. When a film gets perceived as an overly talky film it can cause the things that counter that narrative to be willingly ignored. Back when the IMDB forums existed, one forum I liked to spend time on was the 1963 Cleopatra film. And there was such a strong narrative there about how much “overacting” Elizabeth Taylor did in that film that I feel like I’m the only one who noticed near the end when she sees the ring she gave to her son earlier on Octavian’s hand and realizes he’s lying and her son is already dead. That is an understated moment not conveyed in dialogue at all, but because it goes against a common narrative no one talks about it.
Thing is these people know non Visual elements are important because no one would dismiss the value of Music in films and be taken seriously. George Lucas can describe Star Wars as almost just a glorified Music Video for John Williams score and no one goes “um film is a visual medium so why are you putting so much emphasis on an audio element:.”
It’s just talking that seems to bother these people. Maybe they’re Introverts who don’t talk much in real life, but the thing is, so am I. I like watching fictional characters who can do what I can’t, from Flying to Changing Gender at will to talking good.
Maybe it’s just the opposite. Maybe they love talking in real life so much that they want the characters in films to just shut up so they can talk over them and not miss anything.
Update April 2nd: Once again I found a Video Essay that had already argued what I am here with different examples.
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