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February 20, 2008
Bloody Motifs
Last night we shot a scene that's made it into a number of scripts over the past few years. It was in the script that would become The Outlaw Son, and I think even in a few early drafts of that as well (I cut it out because, well, one piercing was enough). There was one script where the scene was limited to itself, its own encapsulated anecdote; I started to turn it into a short story once, too, but never finished it. In all those iterations, the scene was about a relationship, and when it first occurred to me that it might work well in this film, I resisted because it would be putting something very personal in an entirely different context.
I've been wondering, then, whether I could get away with putting the same scene in multiple films - if a single scene could become a motif the way a certain style of shot does for other filmmakers (Wes Anderson's lateral slow motion dolly, Tarr's tracking shots, etc). The first filmmaker that springs to mind who's come close to doing this is Wong Kar Wai, who has frequently and quite literally recapitulated thematic content across the span of his oveure - secrets whispered in stones and eating to mend a broken heart and so on and so forth. Lots of pineapple. This isn't, to my mind, a case of going back to the well; rather, I see it as a filmmaker exploring a personal shorthand and pushing the very concept of style into a distinctly reactive, specifically physical mode.
So if I took it a step further and just shot this scene again sometime in the future, would I be accused of ripping myself off? Or would it be a distinct and exact enough reflection that audiences would recognize it as something more than that?
Posted by David Lowery at February 20, 2008 11:20 AM
Comments
this is a great point, David, and i actually think that we could list our most intriguing directors as being guilty of this. David Lynch for one, with his fire and highway lines and off-kilter night clubs. i think the most distinct directors actually become more distinct because they reuse situations and objects from previous work. i could write more but, um, i'll just leave it at that for now.
Posted by: tully at February 21, 2008 8:20 AM
Most of my favorite filmmakers (e.g. Hong Sang-soo) can't get over pet themes/characters/shots/scenes, and recapitulate them from movie to movie. I love it when a director's whole canon feels like one large film, constantly (and obsessively!) working through a series of thematic and aesthetic issues, always burrowing deeper within itself. Termite art!
Posted by: wells at February 21, 2008 10:54 AM