Where's the Drama

When I was at film school I was privileged enough to attend a workshop in directing by a prominent, successful and highly-respected Hollywood director. He wanted to impress on us students the very simple fact that all a director has to do is to read the scene, find out where the drama is and then place the camera there. It should be a clear decision. “There is only one place for the camera to be”, he would say. It is the director’s job to figure out where that is. Find out the drama in a scene and that is where you place the camera.
For example: Your story involves a couple on a first date, they have just entered her apartment and she goes to the kitchen to fix coffee. Where should you, the director, place the camera? With her? That’s definitely where the action is. Or with him? In the living room doing nothing? Well, it’s a no-brainer. With him, all the time. The action may be with her, but the drama is with him. He is in a strange room, a room belonging to a person he likes and wishes to impress and/or find out more about. He may not be ‘doing’ much but there is a lot of drama going on in his head.
That’s the beauty of film – through the actors eyes and slightest of movements we can sense tension, anxiety, sadness, elation – a whole gamut of emotions can be communicated. Even stillness can convey so much drama. And that is always where the camera should be. Watching the drama.

Sometimes the action is also where the drama is. For example, a woman performing CPR on her husband, who eventually dies. Action and drama combined. And that is always a great way to convey drama – through action. But it is not always possible and perhaps it is a braver filmmaker who goes straight for the drama and does not hide behind action. Ingmar Bergman was one of those filmmakers. Not a lot of action in some of his films but a whole lot of drama.
In one of his iconic films, ‘Persona’, a young nurse, Alma, is put in charge of Elisabeth, an actress who is seemingly healthy in all respects, but will not talk. As they spend time together, Alma speaks to Elisabeth constantly, never receiving any answer, eventually finding that her own personality is being submerged into Elisabeth's persona. It is an extraordinarily powerful drama that relies on the medium of film to convey its message. I do not believe that this same drama would work in live theatre for example. One cannot see into a character’s eyes on the stage. And that is so often where the drama lies. The unseen within the scene.

Another film that uses eyes as the window through which we see the drama is ‘Dangerous Liaisons’, directed by Stephen Frears from the adaptation by Christopher Hampton. Glenn Close’s character, the Rococo-era French aristocrat Marquise Isabelle de Merteuil, has been amorally hellbent on bending everyone to her will, no matter the method or the cost. The finale has the Marquise sitting in front of the mirror removing her make-up, accepting her own betrayal and defeat. It is an extraordinary scene that lasts a whole five minutes. That’s a lot of screen time – count it in your head – an awful long time for nothing much to be happening. But watch her – watch her eyes – a thunderstorm of emotion is going on. That is where the drama is – within her.
That is the beauty of this medium of story-telling – the moving picture. It alone has the ability to transmit to an audience like no other art form.