Before I read the thread...
Apologies in advance to those who have praised elements that I'm about to pan. I'm not meaning to pick any fights, or belittle a film I have considerable affectin for....
But...
If I were running a screenwriting program, and GRAN TORINO was submitted by someone applying for admission, I'd be very excited. "It's a mess, but I love what the guy's going for. Tons of potential." If this script was submitted by someone as their graduating project, I'd flunk them.
I'm fascinated by the same themes that fascinate this guy (and Clint Eastwood) - violence and non-violence, revenge and forgiveness, justice, sacrifice. In fact, with respect to the last on the list, I'd be very surprised if the screenwriter isn't a Christian.
But the script is
so flawed, so amateur in execution, I truly can't believe it got made without extensive rewrites. Honestly, the whole story it tells is just fine. But the telling of that story has every beginner weakness there is. Going back to my imaginary screenwriting program, you really could use this film to illustrate a very long list of bad (or weak, or inexperienced) screenwriting gaffs. We see something in action, and then it's spelled out for us in on-the-nose, first level dialogue. The story lurches forward erratically. Characters speak lines that evoke audible responses from the audience, but none at all from the people in the scene (I'm thinking of Clint wandering around the neighbours' place at the barbecue, insuliting them out loud, and getting no reaction whatsoever - does no one speak any English at all?). Then he heads upstairs to spit blood into the sink (an endlessly repeated motif that doesn't build, just repeats and goes nowhere at all) and splash water on his face, and remark (to himself, to us) that he has more in common with these people than with his own family - only we haven't seen that at all in the events, the dramatic action: all we see is his alienness from this odd culture, his incomprehension, and his insults. Again and again we are told what the writer wants to convey, but rarely has he actually succeeded in actually showing it happening. Either that, or he successfully shows us something, and then goeas ahead and reiterates it.
Interesting characters - the young priest, for instance - have no character arc whatsoever: he is the same in every scene. Until all of a sudden he says he isn't, that he's changed, he's pissed off: only, there's no change in his behaviour, no consequence to his expressed change, no shift in the story line. There's a nifty reversal when the young priest reveals that he works with these gangs, and knows them: a shocker, coming from the baby-faced, freckled young fellow. Only there's no reaction to the disclosure, and the potentially interesting reversal isn't followed through with. It leads to nothing. If a domino falls and doesn't knock over another domino, does anybody care?
Scenes happen where nothing happens - and then we're told what was supposed to have happened, what the writer meant the scene to accomplish. Characters are convinced, their minds changed, by nothing that was said or done in the scene: it's like the writer knows that he wants the story to have a reversal, that he wants a character to have an insight or be brought to a change or a decision, but he simply lacks the ability to write the dialogue or create the dramatic action that motivate or even demonstrate the change. The characters have a little chat, then one of them declares that he's changed his mind, or made the decision. Clint's character delivers continual asides to no one at all, that spell out what he's thinking - things that are perfectly obvious without being spoken. Sometimes the un-PC talk is bracing, right on the money: more often it's just unconvincing, or overstays its welcome, or rings false. And it doesn't build or develop: it doesn't go anywhere. We get the priest in every second scene, playing exactly the same actions, filling exactly the same dramatic function over and over, until suddenly he's forgotten for half an hour, then suddenly pops back into the story.
Enough already. I'm ranting. That wasn't really my intent: it's just, I didn't want to simply say the screenwriting was flawed without being specific.
The writing reminds me of the performance by the neighbour girl. Her essential quality is wonderful - fiesty, fearless, smart, energetic. But her actual acting is very awkward indeed - she brings some of the most unconvincing line readings I've ever heard on a screen. Tremendous potential, but boy does she need some seasoning, experience, craft. Just like the screenwriter.
Okay, I think I've made my perception clear. So I am utterly gobsmacked, dumbfounded, perplexed, baffled to read...
Village Voice: "a generally superb script by newcomer Nick Schenk"
L.A. Tmes, Patrick Goldstein: "The script was so well crafted and understated (and the credits went by so fast) that after seeing the picture, I immediately called Bill Gerber, one of the film's producers, to find out which one of the many A-list screenwriters who must always be knocking down Eastwood's door had penned the story."
Or about Eastwood's occasionally wonderful, but more often caricatured, almost campy performance, Peter Travers of Rolling Stone writes: "But an Oscar for acting? Not yet. Get busy, Academy." About the neighbour girl, "the wonderful Ahney Her." Well, sort of wonderful, but also very amateur. But we've been over that.
Of all the reviewers I've read so far, only Stephanie Zacharek seems to notice the pervasive amateur quality of the screenplay, and the unconvincing elements in many scenes (Well, Ebert nods gently toward a few). Did nobody notice? It's like listening to the grade six band, with a third of the kids playing flat, another third playing sharp, and the ones who are in tune have no sense of rhythm. Any elementary school music teacher would hear the dissonance, but the newspaper's classical critic considers the performance "generally superb, wonderful," remarks that it's destined for the highest musical awards in the land, and suspects that the kids were members of the Berlin Philharmonic in disguise. Huh?
The teacher in me is very willing to see all the promise and good intentions and occasional successes in the film (and especially the screenplay). The spiritual themes hunter is happy to see those things play out here. Heck, I can recount the story-line and it SOUNDS like a swell movie. But, quite simply, it needed a major rewrite. by a skilled, experienced writer to actualize all that potential.
Seems to me a general love for Eastwood, and the idea of what an interesting entry this is into his revenge/violence oevre, have blinded critics to the film's immense weaknesses of craft.
I'll stop repeating myself now, and go read the thread.
This post has been edited by Ron Reed: 08 January 2009 - 02:49 AM
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