This weekend I had the pleasure of watching the new film from Jean Pierre Jeunet called Micmacs. The thing I found fascinating about this quirky crime comedy is the fact that so little is said throughout the film, yet the story and the characters are as well-presented, well-developed and as involving as any other movie. In many ways, Micmacs is Jeunet's ode to silent cinema. Take the scene above for example; we see the clumsy and lonely nature of Bazil, we see that he has been left poor, and the love interest of the narrative is also developed without any kind of dialogue between the two characters. It's all done through sad piano music, through the shot of Bazil nervously tapping his feet, through the fact that the soles of his shoes are falling off as he taps his feet and through the performances by both actors.
Compare this scene above to a scene from, let's say, Avatar.
In this scene, the audience are told what unobtanium is, told why Parker wants it, are able to see the conflict between Parker and Grace, able to understand what Grace plans to achieve on Pandora and even see the reason why Grace doesn't trust Jake though the dialogue.
So which is more effective in presenting a story to the viewer? An exchange of dialogue or the use of sound, visuals and performance?
In my opinion, it would be the latter. After all, cinema is a visual medium and films shouldn't have to solely rely on dialogue to provide the plot and character details. Sure, it is very occasionally necessary to have dialogue in a movie, but in a scene like the one above from Avatar, I find it the dialogue to be utterly redundant as the important plot and character details provided to the audience could easily be shown rather than told.
Couldn't the performances by Sigourney Weaver and Giovanni Ribsy show the conflict between the characters instead of having an argument? Couldn't Grace's plan to "win the hearts and minds of the natives" and "build school and teach them English" be shown through her actually doing these things instead of being forced into the conversation?
Moreover, I watched the first part of Krzysztof Kieslowski's trilogy, Three Colours Blue, last night. The first 30 minutes are almost dialogue-free yet we are given an incredible insight into the hurt, the loss, the depression and the longing that Julie has after her husband and daughter die in a car crash. Instead of throwing in redundant monologues of her feelings we are presented them in how she tries to overdose on medicine and how she touches an ornament that reminds her of her husband. Instead of being told the details of the crash and it's aftermath we see them through shots of leaking brake fluid and we see the car hit the tree when it can't slow down. We aren't even told that her husband was a famous composer, we are shown it on the television report Julie watches in bed.
Therefore, I believe that film-makers should take influence from Jeunet and Kieslowski and tell their stories through visuals instead of dialogue as much as they possibly can.
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