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<\/a>I think it all boils down to what the given story is trying to achieve. \u201cSteve Jobs\u201d and \u201cThe Social Network\u201d don\u2019t strive for realism when it comes to speech, but they each have beating emotional hearts\u2014Steve\u2019s denial about being a parent and Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s contentious relationship with his friend Eduardo Saverin, respectively. The same goes for \u201cThe Fault in Our Stars,\u201d which deals with death, grief, and the innate human desire to leave a mark on the world. You can bring out those sophisticated themes without having dialogue that necessarily bears a great resemblance to real speech.<\/p>\n
And then there\u2019s the mumblecore movement, films that luxuriate in all the mundanity and awkwardness of real life. Dialogue is filled with \u201cum\u201ds and \u201cuh\u201ds and \u201ckind of\u201ds and \u201csort of\u201ds. There are often no scripts, leaving actors to struggle to find the words that make the most sense to them. It\u2019s like a modern form of the neorealist films that populated Italy after World War II. These are movies that purposely portray the day-to-day lives of people who feel real, with little sensationalist conflict.<\/p>\n Mumblecore movies are still fairly overlooked when it comes to mainstream filmgoers, though, possibly because they\u2019re anti-climactic by design (just like the Italian neorealist films). It\u2019s only natural that movies like \u201cDrinking Buddies\u201d fly under the radar, even when they have stars like Jake Johnson, Anna Kendrick, and Olivia Wilde. Crowds have the rightful desire to want to be entertained, or at least engaged. Sometimes unconventional endings\u2014like the romantic leads never actually acting on their desire in \u201cDrinking Buddies\u2014leave you unsatisfied. Sometimes I feel like happy endings are underrated, not overrated. There\u2019s nothing inherently wrong with the guy and the girl ending up together in the end if that\u2019s the ending that feels right for the story.<\/p>\n Still, I think part of film\u2019s gradual evolution should be a greater willingness to challenge audience expectations and force people to ask themselves why some movies feel so unoriginal. Maybe sometimes a movie doesn\u2019t have to have a satisfying, conclusive ending to be worth watching. Sometimes giving a disarmingly accurate portrayal of life is enough.<\/p>\n I wrote about this before<\/a>, writing about \u201cBoyhood\u201d and \u201cThe Strange Little Cat.\u201d \u201cBoyhood\u201d has no conventional plot, conflict, or arc; it\u2019s just an authentic portrayal of a boy growing up, and it\u2019s enormously affecting despite lacking a climax or conventional path of rising and falling action. \u201cThe Strange Little Cat\u201d is far more challenging, instilling mundane reality with a sense of mysteriousness. There\u2019s almost a sense of spirituality in the movie the way characters tell minor stories about things that have happened to them over the course of their day. The movie makes every seemingly insignificant anecdote seem indicative of some higher power, some nebulous force we can only barely sense and never comprehend. As I wrote in my article, \u201cSometimes it seems like we always think of life in such broad terms. When we watch our movies or TV and read our books, we look for commentary on big, important concepts like love, hate, God, war, success and failure. It makes sense that we\u2019d want a movie to give us a new perspective on something important, but too often, that makes us forget everything else. Things like a stranger\u2019s foot or the white side of an orange peel may seem inconsequential, but they become important through the sheer amount of space and time they take up in our lives.\u201d<\/p>\n Another unconventional portrayal of reality is Lars von Trier\u2019s \u201cMelancholia,\u201d the first half of which is dedicated to a psychological exploration of Justine (Kirsten Dunst) on her wedding day. Justine has depression, and despite her loving, patient husband and the perfection of her wedding, she just can\u2019t<\/em> be happy. She collapses, sobs, wanders away from the wedding into the cold night, and has sex with a random guest.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n