Winter Films - 4

How was watching Planes, Trains and Automobiles last week? Did you love it or hate it? It’s not one of my personal favorites, but audiences generally loved it and still do, so it’s good to look at films that, even though they might not be to your personal taste, are pleasing to a large majority of the audience. This does two things: first, it gets you get out of your comfort zone by forcing you to watch something that you normally wouldn’t choose; and second, it clues you into what the marketplace likes—and both of these things can have an impact on your own writing.

I truly believe that to expand your own writing landscape, you need to watch films that aren’t just in your comfort genres. For example, I’m not a big horror fan, so I make a point to watch horror now and then because guess what? Some creative things are being done in horror today and I want to see them. Who knows, maybe something I see will spark an idea in me that could lead me to write something in that genre! Who knows?

So how can we expand your writing landscape this week as we look at films set in winter? How about going abroad?

If you’re American, you probably don’t watch foreign films—it requires you to read subtitles. Now, if you had been born in Europe, you’d have no problem reading subtitles because you grew up doing it. And this week’s project is going to have you watching a foreign film. To be specific, a French film. And it’s not JUST a foreign film, it’s also a film where every line of dialogue is sung, not spoken.

And I kidding already? Nope. Deadly serious.

Question—did you like La La Land [2016]? If you’ve read these columns, you know I loved it—best movie to come out in the last two years for me. Writer Damien Chazelle is quite open with his inspiration for writing La La Land, and it was a film called The Umbrellas of Cherbourg [1964] by Jacques Demy.

I saw this film in college and it was the first foreign film I’d ever seen. And because all the dialogue was sung rather than being spoken, I somehow got it into my head that that’s what French films were—they were all sung! Like opera or something [I’d never seen an opera either.]

So why am I telling you to watch this film? Well, I’d love to expose you to any foreign film because that would the beginning of you seeing the WORLD of film that is out there. But for our discussion of films set in winter, this is one of my favorites. Like La La Land, this film goes through all four seasons in a year and then it flashes forward to a winter several years after the main action of the film takes place. The plot? Simple—a guy, a girl, their love for one another, and their attempts to overcomes the obstacles that are keeping them apart. And winter? Ooooo, it’s right there, it’s mirroring the mood, the feel of what the characters feel.

So go. Find this film. Fall into the story, the music…and let it snow…

Copyright © Diane Lake

16Dec18

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