Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Dialect with Joel Chandler Harris and the Coen Brothers
Posted by: Lain // Category: Mystery and Suspense, Uncategorized, Uncle Remus, Very Serious Posts With No Funny Business // 12:26 pm
The staff of the Wren’s Nest took in No Country for Old Men last weekend at one of our two favorite theaters: Midtown Arts Cinema (you can read about our other favorite here).
The filmmakers–the Coen brothers–are phenomenal storytellers. The single most important part of their movies is the dialogue (well, that and lighting, but no matter!).
Each of the movies you’ve seen by them employ hilariously intricate dialect. They’re almost love letters to the words of the people: respectfully precise, provincially astute, and knowingly clever. There’s a fine line between funny and making fun, and the Coen brothers toe it expertly.
In the truest sense of the word, it’s folklore brought on screen.
Without the dialect that scene goes from brilliant to dull real quick. Fargo wouldn’t be the same, and Frances McDormand probably wouldn’t have won an Academy Award.
No Country For Old Men is no exception to the rule.
The punchy dialect drives the film and gives the vast landscapes texture. Also texure-giving is Javier Bardem’s haircut, which lies somewhere in the terrifying chasm between Dorothy Hamill and Prince Valiant.
Throughout the movie,you aren’t always sure if what Tommy Lee Jones just said made any sense, but it doesn’t matter–you’re in Texas in 1980, and of course that’s what he would’ve said. His language rings true to his character, his land, and his story.
A century prior, Joel Chandler Harris grew up listening to the slaves around him and learned their dialect as they told him stories. As someone with a stutter and a stammer, I imagine the respect he had for the smooth-talking storytellers on the plantation was immense.
Either way, he–like the Coen Brothers–understood that the heart of a good story was the way it was told. Thus, the Uncle Remus Tales use dialect through and through.
Some say dialect is offensive and others say it’s preservation. I say it’s moot–it’s good storytelling, and we wouldn’t have this blog without it.
As usual Flannery O’Connor says it best: “The sound of our talk is too definite to be discarded with impunity, and if the writer tries to get rid of it, he is liable to destroy the better part of his creative power.”
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