When in dramaturgical doubt …
Many a film could benefit from a dramaturgical manoevre that we had the honour of witnessing yesterday, on some cinema screen (we won’t disclose what film it was, as we don’t want to spoil your future viewing pleasure): just have the two protagonists, engaged in a near endless fight with each other, pull out mass destruction weapons from within or behind their bodies and let them destroy the entire planet together with each other. Of course this all goes back to Monty Python’s 16 ton weights dropped at random throughought their “Flying Circus” skits whenever they ran out of ideas.
But when it cures the disease, you don’t question the origins of the medicine. Think of how many unsatisfying movie endings could have been avoided this way. Think Ingrid Bergman hurling a miraculous glowing bullet at Humphrey Bogart who retorts with a huge cannon, and boom, up goes the planet. Think E.T. throwing back one little bomb down to earth, while his cute little earthling buddy sends off another and the two meet in a veritably galactic blast that takes with itself not just earth, but also all that alien ugliness. Think of Freed Willy catapulting a nice shiny bomb into the air with his tail, and off goes mother earth with all her poisoned waters.
When in dramaturgical doubt: why not just blow up the planet, and that’s that. What better way to show the global impact of the personal, the private, and the intimate?
We expect to see more such dramaturgical ingenuity in the near future.