Regarding Titles

It's regularly remarked that movie trailers are often better than the movies they promote. Personally, I feel that a trip to the cinema is almost wasted if I don't arrive in time for the trailers. The cynical explantion of this phenomenon is that all the best moments in the movie are shoe-horned into the trailer and the rest of the running time is just filler, more or less. This might sometimes be the case, but I think there is a more interesting explanation. I think the very format of trailers gives them an appeal that movies can't have, since a two-hour long trailer would be unbearable.

Typically, what a movie trailer seeks to convey is a sense of excitement, since it is trying to get you excited about seeing the movie itself. This it achieves by various devices: a rapid succession of scenes, images of people and things in motion (ironically, often in slow motion, which simply makes it more dramatic), brief and often intriguing snatches of dialogue, unusual camera angles and lighting, and in general by a kind of exaggeration of ordinary cinematic techniques. What you are left with is a sense of compression, of concentration, which it is impossible for a full-length film to achieve, by its very nature.

I think this fact about trailers also applies to a rather similar art-form-- that is, the art of the title. By "title", I mean the titles of movies, books, stage-plays, music albums, paintings, computer games, and so forth. But mostly I am thinking of the titles of books and movies. (I took movie trailers as my point of departure, because I thought my remarks would make more sense that way.)

I think the titles of books and movies, just like trailers, often have an appeal quite distinct from, and sometimes superior to, the works that they "promote".

In his much-underpraised Autobiography, G.K. Chesterton asserts that every wilderness looks bigger when seen through a window. Our own Patrick Kavanagh, in a phrase that is well-known in Ireland because it comes in a poem featured on the English syllabus, said that "through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder". I think both of these claims are very true. And I think that good titles, just like good trailers, are windows through which the landscape outside looks bigger, narrow chinks which let in floods of wonder.

But-- and this is an important point, and one which motivates me to write on this subject-- good titles don't just excite us about the books and films that they label. Good titles excite us about life itself, and do so in a manner different from anything else in the world. At least, I have always found that powerful titles have this effect on me, and I suspect that they have it on other people, as well. I have often found that, at times when I feel dull or uninspired, or when the world itself seems dreary to me, some evocative title will come to my mind and give me a new zest for existence.

I will have to start giving examples, won't I?

Well, this being a Catholic blog, I think I will be unpredictable and choose (perhaps) the most unlikely of titles out of the hundreds that suggest themselves. I work in a university library, and we hold copies of the academic theses submitted to the various departments of the university. One of these theses caught my eye, because I liked the title so much. (Quite a few have snappy titles, actually.) This one concerned the experience of gay teachers in Ireland, and it bears the magnificent title Echoes Down the Corridor.

Now, I don't know about you, but that title makes me shiver with pleasure. I think it almost defies analysis, but here goes, anyway.

First of all, it is dramatic. It not only takes a moment from the flux of everyday life, but it takes a particular evanescent and fleeting moment. The moment it evokes is almost ghostly. And something inside of us thrills to words like echo, whisper, shadow, phantom, ghost, silhouette, rumour-- words whose very vagueness or faintness makes them, paradoxically, all the more vivid.

(Incidentally, I should admit that the word "corridor" is a word that I find very exciting. After all, a corridor is an exciting place. Anybody could walk down it at any moment. It seems to invite whispered conferences, chance meetings, glimpsed figures turning a corner. If you think this is a far-fetched idea, ask yourself why "the corridors of power" is a much more powerful phrase than "the halls of power" or "the chambers of power".)

Now, imagine if the writer of Echoes Down the Corridor had chosen a more prosaic title instead. Imagine if he had used his sub-title, An Examination of the Lives of Gay Teachers in Ireland, as the main title. In that case, wouldn't his work seem strangely diminished in importance? It would seem business-like, dutiful. But the lyricism of Echoes Down the Corridor seems to raise the whole thing to a higher level, to lend it a larger significance.

And this, I think, is true of all acts of naming, and of bequeathing a title. Adam in giving names to all the animals, we dimly feel, somehow shares in God's creative power. Giving a name to a child is an act of immeasurable significance and poignancy. Parents who choose to give names to their babies when those babies don't survive birth are making a very touching declaration of love. Giving a name to a season of a particular year-- The Summer of Love, the Winter of Discontent-- gives them an air of heightened importance, and even (I would claim) a heightened reality. In the famous line from Shakespeare, the poet is said to "give to airy nothing a local habitation and a name."

Naming does not only identify. It creates. It exalts.

Here are some of my own favourite titles. Many of them are titles of books I've never read and films I've never seen. Sometimes I've hated the book or the film but loved the title.

Porterhouse Blue, by Tom Sharpe. (A great book that I only read because I was attracted by the title. The book itself is a bawdy farce, and an excellent one, but a million miles away from the contemplative novel of ideas that the title seemed to suggest.)

Ice Cold in Alex. Cider with Rosie. Goodbye to All That. A Dry, White Season

No Tigers in Africa! (a memoir by a producer of a famous Irish TV documentary series, which often went to Africa for its stories.)

Like a Tree Planted (a biography of an Irish priest). Snow Falling on Cedars. The Growing Summer by Noel Streatfeild. A Girl in Winter by Philip Larkin. Take a Girl Like You by Kingsley Amis.

The Jungle is Neutral by Freddie Spencer Chapman. Sex, Lies and Videotape. The Wonder Years. The Breakfast Club.

On Golden Pond. The Philosopher on Dover Beach by Roger Scruton. All the Way to Bantry Bay by Benedict Kiely (a travel book on our shelves at home.) Postcards from the Edge. Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean.

My Dream of You by Nuala O'Faolain. Who Will Love Polly Odlum? (a chick-lit book I saw a colleague reading once). Not Without My Daughter. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

The Road to Wigan Pier. Stay Me with Flagons (a book about wine; the title is drawn from The Song of Songs). Never Say Never Again. A Man for All Seasons. A Prayer for Owen Meaney. Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. Love and the Russian Winter (a Simply Red album).

Writing out that list (and it could be expanded indefinitely), it occurs to me that there are several things that can make a title stick in your mind.

First of all, and perhaps most fundamentally, a title is rarely appealing if it is not memorable-- which usually means that it should avoid the obvious. Books or movies that take their title from the main character of the story, or describe the subject matter in some very straightforward way, are unlikely to give any special pleasure. Indeed, I've often thought what a wasted opportunity it is, not to give a book or movie some more imaginative title. (Of course, titles that seems straightforward may be subtly ironic or significant-- for instance, Orwell's dystopian novel 1984 seems to have a very mundane title until you read the book and realise that it may not be set in 1984 at all-- that the Party have twisted truth so much that nobody really knows what year it is for sure. But you don't know this until you read the book, so it is not intrinsic to the title.)

Hitting upon a memorable and poetic title, however, is not as simple as coming up with something outlandish. There is a danger of going too far, a danger of falling flat on your face and choosing a title that seems irritating or smug rather than evocative. Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmie Dean, Jimmie Dean comes periously close to doing this-- but it has just enough poignancy to save it. But titles like The Possibility of an Island, The Sun Also Rises, The Englishman Who Went up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind do (I think) fall into this pit.

(Sometimes a title is so audacious it gets away with it-- for instance, Who Is Harry Kellerman and Why is He Saying These Terrible Things About Me?, a 1971 Oscar-nominated film starring Dustin Hoffmann.)

I think a good title often tends to use simple and vivid imagery. A Dry White Season is such a vivid description, and so devoid of explanation, that it satisfies the part of our mind that enjoys haikus or still-life painting. The same is true of Snow Falling on Cedars.

A title is often good because it is rather mysterious-- though there is a big difference between mystery and obscurity. The Postman Always Rings Twice is mysterious, but we feel that it means something and we are intrigued. A title like Blood Simple or No Present Like Time is simply annoying-- we don't know what it means, and we don't care. The difference, I think, lies in the poetry of the first title and the lack of poetry in the other two. In the same way, if we saw a woman with a mysterious medallion hanging around her neck, we would be deliciously intrigued-- but a code made of random words and letters on a cardboard box would leave us cold.

Soem titles are powerful because they are poignant. Goodbye to All That is one such-- in fact, I think that any title that begins with "Goodybe" or Farewell" is automatically poignant. Tuesdays with Morrie is a poignant title, as is Life with Father or Cider with Rosie.

Titles that address somebody or contain an imperative are also evocative-- Take a Girl Like You, Throw Momma from the Train, Cathy Come Home, Save Me the Waltz.

I think that this subject is a very important one, obscure and trivial as it may seem. In fact, it is a subject so important to me personally that I struggle to find words adequate for it. And, though I am not simply using book and movie titles as a point of entry, the subject is really much, much bigger than those.

So much for titles.

My deeper subject-- my deeper theme-- is one that can only be approached indirectly, as I have done here. I don't approach it indirectly out of craftiness, or reverence, or subtlety. I do so because of its very nature it can only be thus approached. I am not ultimately talking about movie titles or books titles per se. I'm talking about the kind of poetry, the kind of beauty, that you find specifically in such titles-- but that has analogues elsewhere.

It is similar to the beauty of imagined pictures in a flickering fire, or the spirit that we hear in a street vendor's cry-- "Get your apples and oranges!". It is similar mental sensation that we so often try to describe by saying "it was like trying to remember some half-forgotten song".

It is seen in horizons. It is heard in myths, and legends, and skippping chants, and in nursery rhymes and ghost stories.

It is the feeling that makes every child, at some time or other, day-dream about the world behind the mirror, or the upside-down landscape that they see past their reflection in a puddle.

It occupies the margin between dreams and waking life.

It lives in a snow-globe, in an old wooden street-sign, in a music box. It haunts empty theatres and deserted cinemas. It's heard in music that is softly playing in the background of a restaurant or a shopping centre, music that seems overheard rather than heard.

It is the reason nobody ever forgets Plato's Allegory of the Cave once they've encountered it.

It is a beauty, perhaps even an ecstasy, so fugitive that it cannot be glimpsed except for the briefest of moments, and even then, not directly. It is never on the surface, never in focus, never to be found in our ordinary stream of time and place-- though it may be seen, or half-seen, in the slow rhythm of decades and centuries, or in the twinkling time-outside-time of sunlight glinting on the ripples of a river on a summer's morning.

Perhaps it has never been expressed more perfectly than in the words of St. Paul: "We see now through a glass, darkly."

The Way, Way Back (Again)

I went to see The Way, Way Back again this evening, two days after seeing it for the first time. I saw it in the Screen cinema, which I somehow contrived to never have visited before, despite being a very ardent cinema-goer, and despite the Screen being one of the very few city centre cinemas in Dublin.

I simply cannot recommend The Way, Way Back strongly enough. I have seen four hundred and forty-one films in the cinema (I know exactly how many since I record them, in an unabashedly anorak way, on a spreadsheet), and I've seen at least that many again on DVD, video and television. And I have no doubt that The Way, Way Back is in the top twenty of all the films I've ever seen, and may even be in the top ten. It really is that good.

There isn't a dull scene in this movie-- there's hardly a dull moment. The word that keeps coming to mind when I think of it is "perfect". Not that the whole movie is perfect (there's no such thing as a perfect movie, in my experience), but the individual scenes are very often judged to perfection-- not overplayed, not underplayed, not too long, not too short, not too cheesy, not too scared of cheesiness.

One example will suffice. Steve Carell plays the villain of the film, the overbearing and subtly sadistic stepfather of the protagonist, who is a shy and dreamy fourteen-year-old boy called Duncan. The film opens with the stepfather asking Duncan how he rates himself on a scale of one to ten. Upon Duncan (reluctantly) rating himself as a six, the stepfather disagrees and tells Duncan that he rates him as a three-- because he doesn't make an effort, he says, adding that "the good news" is that all this is going to change.

Would an adult really say such a thing to the child of the woman he's dating? The achievement of the film is that it makes it seem very plausible. Not only this, but we buy into the idea that the stepfather-- with his designer stubble, his rather heavy-handed charm, and his overbearing confidence-- would not only succeed in seducing the boy's mother, but would also manage to have friends of the calibre we see in the movie, who are fundamentally likeable people.

Not that this is a realistic movie. In fact, it's the purest fantasy. Specifically, it's the fantasy of a fourteen-year-old boy, and the fourteen-year-old boy inside every adult male. (For this reason it might appeal less to women, though the women in the cinema this evening seemed to enjoy it.) Every boy wants to have a friend like the friend Duncan finds in the local water-park manager-- an adult in a position of responsibility who is never angry, and who is always fun, but is also willing to become a father figure when needed. And every boy yearns for the kind of female friend that Duncan makes-- a pretty, clever girl who is not (too) intimidating, is fascinated by him, and is there to comfort him when he needs comforting. Real life isn't like this-- more's the pity.

But in one respect, this movie reminds me of my own life. The waterpark is portrayed as more of a family than a workplace, all of the staff apparently having a blast every day and partying together after hours. This reminds me of my own job. I've worked in UCD library since 2001, and it's always felt like home-- a place where I grew up, a place where I was accepted, a background for the joys and the dramas of my life, even a second family. I don't go along with the idea that entertainment is always wish-fulfilment. Sometimes we like to see a fictional representation of the things that we actually have. Seeing this movie gave me a keener appreciation of my job.

I intend to catch this film again before it leaves theatres, and you can bet I'll buy the DVD when it comes out. I urge you to go to see it, too. If you don't like it, I'll reimburse you the price of the ticket myself. (Note: Offer is not legally enforceable.)

Just When I Thought it was Stupid to go Back to the Cinema...

Readers of this blog will know that I have a long-running love affair with the cinema. And, like all love affairs, it has its ups and downs, its frustrations and rocky patches. I've been going through one recently.

But today...I went to the cinema and discovered that the magic is still there. The poster for the movie I went to see claimed that it would revive my faith in the spirit of humanity. It didn't quite do that, but it did revive my languishing faith in the movies.

The film was The Way, Way Back and I'm already looking forward to seeing it again as soon as possible. It really did "make me laugh and make me cry"-- several times, in both cases. I left the cinema on a high, feeling that I had been given a new gusto for life, and that I wanted to reach out to the people I loved. That's what I want a movie to do to me. Entertainment isn't enough. Entertainment is enough for television, but the cinema is too big a setting, too much of an occasion, for mere entertainment.

Yes, The Way, Way Back is an independent movie, and I usually avoid independent movies. Yes, it's a coming-of-age movie. Yes, it's quirky and charming and feel-good, and all the other things that almost every indie movie ever made seems to aspire towards.

But who cares if it's formulaic? What movie or book isn't formulaic to some degree? I've always insisted that indie movies are every bit as formulaic as big budget blockbusters. But that's nothing against big budget blockbusters-- and it's nothing against independent movies, either. The only important question, in either case, is how well it's done.

The main setting of the story is a waterpark, which instantly gives it a headstart with me, since I'm never happier than when I'm splashing about in water. The water-park is (improbably) managed by a happy-go-lucky beach bum castaway from the eighties, played by Sam Rockwell, and the heart of the movie is his friendship with the protagonist, fourteen-year-old Duncan. Steve Carell stars as the boy's odious and sleazy step-father. (One of the best things about the film is that it makes no effort to take the edge off the step-father's sheer awfulness. The story is already so sweet and feel-good that it needs Carell's superbly obnoxious performance to save it from becoming downright saccharine.)

The film has all the usual indie virtues, but avoids most of the indie vices. There's no studied aimlessness on display here. The story, despite a satisfyingly slow-burning tempo, keeps moving. The dialogue is purposeful and never overdone. Characters are clear-cut. The vignettes serve the story.

It's been many years since I kept up with the movie news, so I hadn't heard anything about the movie. I had no expectations at all, except a soft spot towards coming-of-age stories. Come to think of it-- and remembering how many of my happiest cinema memories come from happening upon movies I'd never heard of-- this is probably a good reason to start avoiding cinema reviews altogether.

This blog officially encourages you to go see The Way, Way Back! Don't wait for DVD-- this is one that has to be seen on the big screen, without distraction from the dog, the doorbell, and the damned phone.