Have you ever noticed just how much of the drama in movies is generated by an unspoken rule that the characters aren’t allowed to communicate well? Instead of naming the problem, they’re forced to skirt around it until the plot makes it impossible to ignore. It’s the cheapest way to build effective drama, but if you don’t fully dissolve yourself in the movie logic, the whole time you want to scream, “can’t anyone just talk about what’s happening directly?!”
Take La La Land. A huge part of the drama of the movie could have been avoided if the Ryan Gosling character said to the Emma Stone character: “I feel pressure to get a steady gig that includes lots of time on the road because I sense you want me to grow up and get real about my career. Could we talk about whether that’s what you actually want, and get clearer about our priorities?” Instead, they never talk about it, and the relationship explodes as a result of their misaligned expectations.
Or: Good Will Hunting. The entire movie feels like it could’ve been skipped if literally any emotionally intelligent person said to Matt Damon’s character: “I feel like you have a tremendous amount of intellectual potential that you’re wasting here — why are you getting in fights rather than trying to do something interesting?”
Communication failures like these make for good storytelling where we, the audience, get to watch the characters stumble towards understanding. But you shouldn’t live like someone waiting for the screenwriter of your life to arrange a convenient resolution. Functional people don’t let things linger unspoken — they name what’s facing them out loud.
It sounds like such a simple thing. And yet, so many of us don’t do it. It’s my experience that movie logic is endemic in dysfunctional organizations, friendships, and marriages. People walk around in a haze of denial, simply assuming that their concerns will disappear. They wait until the problem can’t possibly be ignored anymore, instead of naming it well before it becomes critical. Maybe they don’t even realize at a conscious level that the dynamic in question is capable of being named; they just take it as a background fact about the universe that they can strain against but not change.
What does it look like when you break out of movie logic? I remember the first time I realized I could do this. I was at a bar during my first year of law school with a bunch of people from my class, including a woman with whom I had an awkward dynamic stemming from an unfortunate misunderstanding about a guy. This awkwardness had calcified in my emotional brain to “we don’t like each other, we have beef.” But on that particular evening I had a moment of clarity, and instead of trying to avoid her I walked up to her and said, “I feel like we got off on the wrong foot because of that stupid thing, and I’m sorry about that — I don’t have anything against you at all.” In an instant, the look of flat wariness she’d put on when she saw me walking over melted into relief, and she said “I’m so glad you said that, I’ve been feeling awful about it.” She went on to be my closest friend in law school.
Outcomes like this are common when you figure out how to break the fourth wall. Whether or not both of you were already conscious of the real, underlying issue, when it is spoken out loud, the result is usually relief, like a spell has been broken. Even if the content is uncomfortable, it feels good in the way cutting through layers of unreality always does.
Some other lines of dialogue that would make for bad movies, but good living:
“I’ve noticed that lately, every time we have plans to hang out one-on-one, you invite someone else to join us — is that intentional?”
“I always feel a little awkward around you, and I’m worried it comes across as me not liking you — I just wanted to say that’s not the case.”
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