Movies and the 'Passive Protagonist'…

How the Shibboleths of Filmmaking Education Shut Down the Filmmaker.

Screen capture from The Quiet Girl. Writer-Director: Colm Bairéad. Cinematography: Kate McCullough. Character Cáit played by Catherine Clinch

Upon watching Colm Bairéad’s remarkable feature debut The Quiet Girl, its central, almost silent young protagonist powerless to act in the face of the situation in which she finds herself, I was struck by what so many filmmaking educators would construe as the film’s fatal flaw: it follows the story of a passive protagonist!

Admittedly, central character Cait at one brief point runs away from temporary guardian Sean in his cowshed while later, of her own volition, she fills a bucket from a well, but that’s about the limit of her agency. According to the story-by-rote instructors, this movie isn’t supposed to work, but…

It does! Brilliantly!

The Quiet Girl is compelling, profound, moving, and in the opinion of many, one of this year’s finest movies. And yet, for most of its length there’s barely a force of antagonism for Cáit to battle—her hostile father is neither seen nor heard from for most of the film and Sean is initially distant rather than confrontational.

Another current cinematic triumph is Lukas Dhont’s wrenching Close, co-written by Dhont and Anjelo Tijssens. From half-way through its devastating story young protagonist Léo—played with unflinching truthfulness by Eden Dambrine—is powerless to act in the face of his shocking sense of guilt.

Alice Rohrwacker’s 2018 Happy as Lazzaro was yet another example of a deeply telling film centered around a passive protagonist. Lazzaro is the village simpleton, innocent, unchanging, a prey helpless against forces of antagonism of which he is barely so much as aware. And yet… his oblivious presence proves transformative to those in the world around him.

So again… the film works!

And what of Ari Aster’s hapless Hereditary family, at a loss to act against the diabolical conspiracy that ultimately destroys it? Powerful forces of antagonism militate against the characters in this case but the doomed Grahams, in failing to grasp the nature or extent of their plight, have little clue about how to deal with the elements marshalled against them. 

Indeed, none of the protagonists of these films attempt to rise above their circumstances—another precept of so many movie-maker teachers when it comes to character and story.

Look, don’t get me wrong! Coming into the faculties of American film schools in which I have over the years taught, I’ve encountered many wise and generous colleagues, entering with them in working companionships that now, as an independent educator, I miss. I’m all the better for these experiences, as are their students for so much of their teaching.

But there’s a thrust in the pedagogy of many film schools, a culture of certainty, absolutism, and unbending rules that serves a misplaced wish of many students for easy answers, an approach tailored also to meet and satisfy accreditation bodies that tend to demand clearly definable ‘goals’ and ‘outcomes’. The no passive protagonist rule is one piece among the decrees of this mindset, the protagonist must attempt to rise above their circumstances prescription another. (Perhaps these imperatives are rooted too in America’s adversarial individualism—more a manifestation of day-to-day cultural assumptions than any inevitable aspect of cinematic narrative.)

And there’s yet more forbidding instruction handed down:

The protagonist must change.

Every scene must move the story forward.

Every scene must embody conflict.

The protagonist must face an obstacle in every scene.

It’s all about ‘rising tension’.

You can’t write a screenplay unless you know Three-Act Structure.

A movie must be of a single genre.

Why this need for safety in certainty? Is drama about certainty? Masterly director Alexander Mackendrick said that drama is anticipation mingled with uncertainty. Can we then be certain about the means of creating this? Why should we be? Surely, what is important is not to build a film on the rigid foundations of received ‘wisdom’ so much as finding the means—whatever those might prove to be—of making it work on its own terms.

A story, a character can possess us with its truth, its force, its need to be told. Why deny this identity, this necessity by imposing extraneous tenets on what may be a work’s fragile evolution. Let it breathe! Let it speak for itself! Let it come to life! Let it show you how it has to work!

Chaining up story and character with inflexible canons serves only to shut them—and you the filmmaker—down.

The same might be said for a film’s directing. When it comes to educators’ approaches to this boundless art, we hear again so many pithy maxims:

It all happens on set. (No! It happens some time before that, in what is known as prep but I call formulation, and afterwards too–in the cutting room. Kieslowski said the most important stages are screenplay, casting, and editing—no mention of the set…)

Shoot and cut according to film grammar. (No! Do this according to the language of the film you are making.) Grammar is not language, language is not grammar.

Always match angles and shot sizes. (That’s grammar, not language.)

Don’t return to the same shot size. (Whaaaaaat?)

Never cut from a moving to a static shot. (Nonsense taught me on the BBC Director’s Course. Help!)

Don’t cut from a wide shot to a close-up without intervening sizes. (Ditto.)

No more! In stating the platitudes there’s a danger you will find them sticking.

What’s behind this habit? 1. Reductionism is easy. 2. We seek simplicity but reductionism is dogma, not simplicity. 3. Teachers need to justify themselves—and many do that by repeating fixed instructions. 4. Those in positions of power in film production want ready-made criteria in order to help them  assess the worth of projects. 5. Students see knowing the rules as a means of entry into the club of the knowing. 6. They see thinking for themselves as a barrier (as it so often is.) 7. No one has to actually think at all.

Once we’ve accepted and absorbed simple rules and regulations, we may feel we’ve arrived. But it’s not about arriving, it’s about striving. Not about knowing but finding and asking the questions. Not about switching off but switching on…

Maybe you should not seek to finish being a student so much as begin to be one. A student of the art of filmmaking, of story, of the screen—the conduit between story and audience. A student of the art of your film, of each one.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson said (if I may quote a non- and indeed pre-filmmaker): Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path, and leave a trail. 

Peter Markham January 2023