I read somewhere that someone who is recognized as a smart film writer identified explanatory dialogue as this thing called “exposition.” So therefore, whenever I hear a character explaining an important element of the film that I am screening to another character, I instantly know that the film I am watching is bad. It instantly takes me out of any immersion I was experiencing because all I can think about during any film I watch for the rest of my life is what the screenwriter intended with every word. This runs counter to my unwavering belief that getting lost in an audiovisual experience of story is precisely what cinema is all about.
Exposition is bad, but so is a lack of character development. Character development is when the plot of a film stops for a minute so that someone can say something that reminds us that the people we are watching are what we call “characters” in a “story.” So someone will say things like “Hey that Chad, he’s a good guy!” so that we know Chad is a good person. I have also learned that a lack of character development is also a sign of a movie’s flaws, so reconciling these two criteria has my mind perplexed in a way that I avoid thinking about.
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