There were two main reasons that I rented this one. One was to see Steve Martin in a serious role and how well he would do with it. The other was to hear the famous David Mamet dialogue I'd read about.
As for Steve Martin, he was fine, as good comic actors often are when someone gives them a chance with a serious part.
As for the dialogue, I have to admit that I just don't get it. Every example I've ever seen that tried to communicate how well David Mamet writes dialogue sounds just like everybody in this movie, and it simply didn't connect with me. They all spoke with the same speech pattern, which seems like bad writing from my perspective. They were all terse, bland, and repeated themselves a lot, as though the bland things they were saying were profound just because they were repeated. I'm not expecting soliloquies in a film with a modern setting, but even the dullest of real people have some color to their speech. If someone can actually tell me why this is considered good writing, I'd love to understand it. It's certainly economical writing, and it is distinctive, but that's all.
That said, I immensely enjoyed the movie because of the brilliantly twisting plot. I'm very tempted to rent other movies written by David Mamet for that reason, but I don't know if I want to tolerate the dialogue that put me off so much.
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3 comments:
"They all spoke with the same speech pattern, which seems like bad writing from my perspective."
Have you watched much Buffy? or anything else Joss Whedon's done?
I think Mamet's best is Glengarry Glen Ross.
-Nathan
I've watched virtually everything Joss Whedon has done. There's a significant difference between having a particular style and everybody speaking exactly alike. If I read a Joss Whedon script from the Buffy TV series, I could tell when Giles is speaking versus when Buffy is speaking versus when Willow is speaking simply by the choice of words. Most of them have a tendency to ramble and use more pop culture references than the average person does, but there are also *very* distinct differences. Also note that the characters on the Buffy TV series don't speak at all like the characters from the fourth Alien movie, also written by Joss Whedon.
I couldn't distinguish *any* of the characters from "The Spanish Prisoner" by speech pattern. A style can be a matter of taste. But any book on writing dialogue will tell you that your characters should speak distinctively differently from each other, and Mamet's characters (at least in "The Spanish Prisoner") simply don't.
Any given style can be sufficiently enjoyable to an individual as to trump what are usually considered flaws in the writing. H. P. Lovecraft and Joss Whedon are examples of that for me. Obviously it doesn't work that way for me with Mamet's style. I honestly can't see how that style would appeal to virtually anyone, and yet enough people love his work for me to have heard about him having an especially high level of skill in writing dialogue. A higher quality example of his work might change my mind, or maybe I just don't like his approach. This might be good material for a conversation in person some time.
Just finished watching Glengarry Glen Ross. Much better acting than "The Spanish Prisoner", better than average plotting again, and the same repetitive speech patterns regardless of who is speaking.
Mamet is just not my cup of tea.
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