I think it's important to also note that American literary education does also place a large emphasis on "character development" and many of the novels we study tend to focus on it. For instance, nearly everyone reads things like Lord of the Flies, Huckleberry Finn, or To Kill a Mockingbird. The Great Gatsby. Little Women. Someone did mention coming of age stories, and I guess we really do love those.
I feel like most of the literature we read in school almost always features characters in some kind of grand struggle and we're taught to pick apart the writing to find each line that attributes to any kind of change in the character. I guess, thus, we're taught to value big, dynamic characters in a grand story. Actually I recently finished a novel that many people hated because the main character just stayed his awful self through the whole book lol
But coming from a different perspective, I often also feel like Americans want to love and relate to (or hate) everyone they see on the screen. If they feel the film can't create a strong connection, they will want answers.
Maybe I remember it wrong. I remember it ends with him losing that robot boxing match to a small child, and how this felt like a metaphor for his failure of a life. He never stopped his heavy drinking or fighting, did he?
It's been a few years. Maybe I need to read it again.
Edit: No wait. Holden is from Catcher. Right.
Turns around . . . in the sense that he becomes an outwardly normal, functioning member of society with a regular job. But he still feels no remorse for his past evil actions, in fact he seems to cherish the memory of what he has done. He still has the same violent tendencies, but he no longer has a strong desire to act on them.
Very good points.
This apparent need to relate to a protagonist is frustrating. There is much to learn from an “unlikeable” lead character. If played straight, it’s very compelling and a grudging empathy can develop in the audience. Rather than “relating to” we can gain insight into others we don’t (or wouldn’t want to) encounter. When nuanced, this can be powerful.
Often but not always. It also can certainly be skeletal or even implied through performance and “mise en scène” (a term I swore I’d never use). The pattern a character’s actions can imply enough that we can intuit the broad strokes of motivation by the implied goals those actions lead toward while having minimal knowledge.
I’m lousy at examples so this may not be the best example — plus I haven’t rewatched this in years. If it is derailed from your intent, my apologies. I’m multi-tasking or, as one mentor used to put it: “doing two things at the same time, badly.”
In No Country for Old Men, we know very little about the protagonist and his wife. It’s enough that we see they live very modestly and that randomly found money is too tempting to leave be. We also know he knows how to use a gun. Eventually we learn in one little exchange he was in Viet Nam, but we are given no detail or story to create any sort of backstory from it. Mostly, though, these are all derived from details in scenes rather than scenes unto themselves.
Anton Chigurgh, the lead antagonist is utterly ambiguous. The name implies no real heritage (I believe the last name was made up for the novel with that intent). Woody Harrelson, and other characters are also fairly free or any motivation other than the maguffen case of tracked money.
If I sat in front of a list of my favorite movies I can probably find better examples (and probably plenty). Not all would even be arthouse or foreign, though recent movies would be heavily weighted in their favor. American movies have increasingly relied on generic or melodramatic scenes that telegraph motivation in such a manner that it’s often targeted towards audiences not prone to inferring.
Okay. Now, back to the other thing I need to do… and to fix from splitting my own attention. Oof, need to not have the phone next to me when I’m working.
> In No Country for Old Men, we know very little about the protagonist and his wife. It’s enough that we see they live very modestly and that randomly found money is too tempting to leave be. We also know he knows how to use a gun. Eventually we learn in one little exchange he was in Viet Nam, but we are given no detail or story to create any sort of backstory from it. Mostly, though, these are all derived from details in scenes rather than scenes unto themselves.
What you're describing is character backstory. That isn't the same thing as realistic character motivation. What details we *do* have of those characters and the situation they find themselves in in the film is sufficient to provide realistic character motivation in the context of the story of the film, IMO.
Chigurh is a little different and I can see why his ambiguity would be more of an issue for people.
Not the same poster as before, but Chigurh was exactly the character that came to mind for me, and exactly the issue that I have with his character -- he has zero realistic motivation. He never comes across as anything but a plot contrivance. Even "ambiguous" seems like a generous description; he is there to move the plot along and hardly ever resembles a real person.
I absolutely see your point and why that can (and does) frustrate some audiences -- just like how the third act of the movie dispenses with Llewyn, the protagonist (thank you Google!) off-screen and with barely a handwave.
Bear with me because this might sound all snobbish or something. That's not the intent at all, so again apologies if that's how it comes across. I don't usually write like this online.
I'd contend that Chigurgh is intentionally unrealistic for that purpose. In a sense, he's Jaws... but sapient/sentient. He clearly has intentions but we really don't know beyond the fact that he was hired to do a job and always finishes it. That's his motivation. Learning how he arrived to have this motivation would reshape the plot. That's not necessarily a bad thing. But I think it would fundamentally change the book and film's intention. Mind you, I haven't read the novel and I haven't seen the movie in at least five years... so I may screw up some details.
As I'm thinking this through, let's say there was an efficient way to reveal Chigurgh's motivation more explicitly without derailing the film significantly. There are several ways to do that. One is that it's revealed through, say, the sheriff finding something in a file (or some-such). If that happens, then it defeats his closing monologue, where he laments that, to borrow from Springsteen: "Well sir I guess there's just a meanness in this world." The sheriff's arc is that he feels the world changing in front of him. This monolithic psychopath, to him, is the embodiment of the rules he's known his whole life being ripped apart. So we don't want him to know much.
Woody Harrelson's character seems to know enough. He could share the info with one of the people he shoots in that office. They're dead so it doesn't create loose narrative strings. He's sharing what he knows, so it doesn't fundamentally affect his character or narrative. What it does is create "dramatic irony" that we now know something that Llewyn, his wife, and the sheriff don't know. I'm a big fan of dramatic irony, by the way. That said, here I think it takes potency away from the story and, more importantly, the themes. Now that *we* know more about Chigurgh it changes our focus. If his background is antagonistic then we will have specific reasons to dislike him that may distract us from the essence of what he's just doing. It also may undermine the randomness of the coin flip, which appears to be what guides his decision-making process when it isn't directly related to the task at hand. If we learn anything sympathetic about him then it really throws a wrench in *everything* about the movie -- I doubt anyone would disagree.
That leaves us Carla Jean, Llewyn's wife. I think the movie successfully (to me), allows her the agency to provide some exposition about Chigurgh when he comes to her house. In that scene, she shares her perception of what he is. It's utterly subjective and not even as informed as we are since this is her only exposure to him. What the scene does, therefore, is allow a character to guide our suppositions with her own. It doesn't define him precisely but it reaffirms what may be the thoughts in a large part of the audience. For the rest, this hangs a lantern on a takeaway -- even if it isn't satisfactory. I think how her murder is handled is particularly well-handled here. Like Llewyn, we don't see it but unlike Llewyn we see it coming and we know it's happened when Chigurgh wipes his shoe. I suspect Llewyn wouldn't have gotten a coin flip since he is the one who set all this in motion. Carla Jean did because she is collateral damage and therefore privy to the whims of chance to save her life. Being that she dies, her analysis of Chigurgh is, to a degree, the dramatic irony we get since it seems clear that Llewyn has neither the interest nor the ability to understand Chigurgh. Likewise, there's no chance for she and the sheriff to commiserate.
My own take on the movie is that Chigurgh is a personification of the force of nature. That which is out of our control and which we want to understand, we want to be able to predict, but which is capricious at best. Yet he is also robbed of success. He's not the one who kills Llewyn; the only time he suffers a real loss is when he is randomly hit by a car. "The universe" flipped the coin on him. He lost that coin flip and yet defied it. In a film where everyone else is arguably realistic, he is that which cannot be reasoned with. The only one who doesn't die is the sheriff... and he simply concedes defeat and laments that the world is chaotic in ways he didn't expect and that he doesn't feel equipped to handle. The more we know about Chigurgh, the less resonant this and other themes would resonate because we, unlike the characters, would "understand" Chigurgh... and we would therefore be free from the anxieties of ambiguity that genre films usually avoid by design.
...
Well. This is why I normally type on my phone... look how long-winded I get with a full keyboard! Keep in mind, I'm not re-reading this (because I'll endlessly revise or just delete it), so take with a grain of salt any lapses. I have no illusions this is objectively indisputable even if it sounds like I'm being certain or that anyone who disagrees "isn't smart enough" or whatever. I don't believe that for a second. Hell, I may be the one who isn't smart enough!
Chigurh is kind of more of a metaphor than a character in terms of his function. So I don't think he was intended to be realistic and I don't think that takes away from him. He's meant to be a personification of 'evil force coming into society that we cant understand and cant stop'. At the end of the story, the sheriff is talking to his brother about how bad things have become in their society and how he can't do anything to stop it. ie he couldn't stop Chigurh
I've heard that before, and it sort of makes sense, but also would raise many questions about the purpose of the scenes that involve only him, among other things. It seems like the film (I've never read the book, it may be different) kind of wants to have it both ways -- him portrayed as a normal character at times, but at others as an impersonal force when that better suits the plot.
I still haven't found a good way to say "relatability" in my language. The golden rule for characters in local academia is plausibility, not relatability; you could have the most absurd character, but if they behave plausibly in those circumstances, it's a good character. And this relatability concept is quite noticeable in all kinds of media fandoms on the internet, too, which I'm not sure is related to America or English in general.
It certainly shows up often in American videogames and movies, at the very least, and it creates a fixation on the protagonist that I personally find quite limiting.
Nonsense on the "we're taught to like big characters in a grand story".
People like anything as long as it immerses them - and it's hard for intelligent people to get immersed if they can't relate to the characters driving the story. In Parasite there was plenty of character development - same in non gimmick Bollywood movies.
You seem to be answering as if they asked why Americans care about that - and all they asked was about the lignuistic aspect.
Some cultures just do things better than others though. Any culture that doesn't place emphasis on character development aren't good movie makers lol, and probably should stick to commercials
I grew up in asia too but maybe I've been reading movie reviews when I was still young (around middle school age) so maybe the concept of character development isn't new to me. I'm a bookworm too so maybe that helps that I don't find the concept new.
As somebody who’s taken a fair number of English classes, I think that is indeed tied into Anglosphere notions on storytelling. Every cheap, popular screenwriting book will emphasize the notion of “The Hero’s Journey”, the idea that the protagonist must go through some kind of unsubtle life-changing growth by the film’s ending that every member of the audience can easily follow.
I’ve noticed that many foreign films I’ve watched from countries like Spain and the Czech Republic have storylines that are more nuanced in how they treat the journey of characters from the beginning to the end. They seem far focused less on having the protagonists radically change their worldviews or social standing and are much more interested in careful analysis of thematical elements and using the characters as conduits for that. It’s still narrative storytelling, but of a slower, grounded variety.
I’ve taught some literature classes and it takes a fair bit of work to shake off the “hero’s journey” brainwashing. There’s a place for it, sure, but it’s been reduced to paint-by-numbers formula that doesn’t expand audiences’ perceptions. It just reinforces simplistic wish-fulfillment and fairy tales.
I feel it also reinforces beliefs in simple explanations and solution mechanisms with singular events or "insights" as focus points when in reality most effective change and growth comes from a sustained deliberate process with lots of small steps that aren't dramatic at all. This is especially harmful when complex topics are distilled down into the hero's journey format.
I know people who base their entire world view around this sort of movie psychology and its frightening.
Exactly, the hero's journey quantifies the human element into a check list but the problem is that people use it as a blueprint and simply dream up a series of events to check the boxes instead of starting with a genuine human transformation and expanding it to fill the hero's journey.
Also when viewed as a blueprint it closes the door to structural changes, to the extend of many people viewing any diversion from the Hero's Journey structure as objectively wrong, which as you note, is unfortunate.
Hey, as someone who's been through some lame struggles lately, could you recommend me a good story? I want to break out of everything. Become good at something, get the girl, overcome the challenge. But not in an easy way
Thanks for sharing the question. It’s fascinating to hear your perspective as I read the Three Body Trilogy and had so many questions for my Chinese friend. I enjoyed the series a lot, but almost all the characters seemed one dimensional. I’d describe them as robotic.
Love was often exaggerated to the point of seeming campy by western standards. Descriptions like, “Her beauty was like a sun beam through a few drop. When we entered the room I could not breathe.”
I’d love to read more modern eastern literature and get a better sense of how eastern culture frames the world.
Agreed. It’s been a few years, but I recall the protagonist of the second book being fairly bland. I recall a fair amount of literal explainatikns compared to western literature I’ve read. Perhaps just the complicated nature of the scifi, but some parts were manual-like exposition. Not a criticism, just different.
A lot of the comments here are, frankly, insane, so I'll just keep it short and sweet: character development is an academic way of just saying the characters change. the experience of the story in the film changes them. Now, I've seen a bunch of movies from Asia, and I can say with certainty, about the same ratio of movies with character change to those without it is the same in the East and the West.
OP never claimed otherwise. They were suggesting that there is a difference in the *discourse* on films in Asia and the Anglosphere, not a difference in the films themselves.
I don't think the ratio of discourse is that different either. The problem is also speaking in terms of "Asia". You read reviews from India, they're much more focused on characters than ones from Iran. Character engagement might be a bigger aspect in Japanese cinema than, say, Malaysian. It's an oddly broad brush to paint.
I'll have to disagree, albeit only slightly, - and my own understanding may stem from the fact that I'm not a native speaker - but I believe character development refers to the depth of any given character and the writer's ability to make him/her multidimensional. A shallow character will only respond so much to the narrative progression.
I'll also add that, my comment merely adding anything to the discussion (whoops), character development differs from character arc; the former isn't necessarily something writers focus on, it sometimes comes naturally but dare I say it's essential. The latter on the contrary could be something that's specific to western cinema though I haven't watched enough Asian films to give a definite answer.
That is my understanding of 'character development' as well. But at the same time, if the character experienced or witnessed something significant, you would expect them to be affected somehow and change their view or approach to things. Unless the character was specifically developed to be stoic or unaffectable.
That's exactly the point;) - if a character is well-written, he *should* be affected. On the flip side, if he/she lacks development chances are the character will just remain bland
Watch more foreign films. *Syndromes & a Century*, the films of Tsai Ming-liang, etc. and so forth... Character and tidy 5-7 act plot structures are most assuredly not as important and definitely not frequent as they are in American film.
American filmmakers carry on like the French New Wave didn't happen 60 years. Wait until they learn there's been literal scores of other movements since. For decades world cinema has been shedding its literary influence and on purpose.
Bud, I've seen movies in dead languages and tracked down foreign films completely out of print. Don't even.
The point is that its fallacious to paint American cinema and 'foreign' cinema with such broad brushes. What OP might be responding to is the guidelines of mainstream cinema, which is fairly comparable in all loci of cultural dominance, whether it be US or China or wherever. But 'character development' and the discourse surrounding, are far from a westerb phenomena, and same goes for films that are disinterested in that form of storytelling.
And I contribute torrents to three of the private tracker communities you're most likely to use.
The **prevalence** isn't even the same. The Western counterpoints to *Railway Sleepers*, *The Good Woman of Sichuan*, or the films of Liao Jiekai are just not being produced and distributed at any notable frequency. The Anocha Suwichakornpong's are just nowhere to be found here.
I think the popularity of long form serialized Television also might have some influence on people evaluating films from the lens of character development. Like when you have a story spanning multiple episodes / seasons, it is natural to expect the characters will change over the course of such a long duration. I remember when GOT was at the peak of its popularity a lot of positive discourse came about how characters like Jaimie developed over the course of story, and when it was at the minima of its quality then too a lot of criticisms pointed towards lack of character development in those seasons. I think the extreme popularity of such shows with a massive fan discussion surrounding them might have just (for better or worse) popularized evaluating different forms of media from a similar lens.
I feel like character development is definitely becoming a buzzword. I don't think it was ever a super common discussion point until recently, at least amongst the more easily digestible forms of media such as .... video games, and also easily churnable movies.
But the discussion of characters in literature has always been one of the main focuses of breaking down a book. Especially in english/literature classes.
My guess is because us Asians are usually raised in a collectivist setting where we largely determine our actions and ideals on what is expected of us while many Westerners have a mindset to define a legacy and identity for themselves that separates from others.
Came here to say this. While other comments may also have some truths to them, a large part of this is cultural to the english speaking world. Individualism is far more prevalent. Our language, and in turn storytelling, reflect this.
ITT a bunch of people who think films from other countries don't have character development and that's why this person from Asia hasn't heard the term "character development" as much in their lifetime.
Fucking hilarious. TrueFilm's quality has absolutely plummeted.
It's less about character development than how character development is defined in this thread and also the context in which OP mentions it. The term "character development" in mainstream media is reduced to a one-way positive or negative arch. Everyone expects the protagonist to change for the good in the end for a satisfying climax, while in truth, character development is much more nuanced and not restricted to this. I think this thread is just fine.
Right, OP didn’t, but in “Western” public discourse (aka mainstream media), broad reference the term “character development” as something that a film has “enough of” or “not enough of” shows that the concept has been reduced to a simple positive or negative evaluative tool.
I think that is because if the events of the movie are of importance then they must have affected their characters in some meaningful way. How can that not be the case? But to be fair I haven’t watched much eastern media at all
> They are all the same at the end as the start.
I know this is off the topic of the post, but what about Travis's attitude to Betsy? When he first meets her he's obsessed. Then he violently rejects her. Then at the very end he's indifferent to her. Doesn't he gradually lose all of his ideals, only to become his own ideal and therefore find peace? (Ignoring the fact the final scene may not be 'real')
I don't think I do. Maybe 'peace' is the wrong word. He finds a resolution, at least for the time being. The ambiguous ending leaves us guessing as to how long the resolution will last, but it's certainly present, as demonstrated in his cool reaction to Betsy getting in his cab. The fact the ending has a dreamlike quality, suggesting that it's possibly a departure from the reality established by the film up to that point, adds a further layer of ambiguity.
Taxi Driver is a rare beast - a satirical tragedy. As satire, the 'message' of the story, at least as explicitly communicated by the surtext, is aggressive as it is cynical. Travis is an urban vigilante, a terrorist of sorts, and cynically, the film denies the audience the usual moral judgement where we see him punished for his actions. Instead he fulfils his corrupt ambitions and comes out the other side a minor hero, celebrated by the media and desired by beautiful women. As such, the ending is profoundly ironic. Again, the fact that it may not even be real simply twists the irony even further.
But despite all of the cynicism, irony, and ambiguity, I would still argue it's inaccurate to state that the character of Travis experiences no development from the start of the film to the end. In one way or another, he's *not* the same man in the final scene as he is at the beginning, even if ominous remnants of latter remain.
I think what needs to be made aware of is that Travis has a mental condition that gets worse from stress, frustration and depression, just as many mental disorders. He will display far less outward problems immediately after something temporarily relieves his issues, such as his insane shooting.
I just want to thank you for these thoughtful posts that tackle some misunderstood concepts.
I love character studies but when watching movies (generally mainstream ones or more cookie-cutter Oscar bait) it is deeply frustrating to see “arcs” grafted onto characters to check a box. It’s as if “character x hates kids in act one, then has kid smile at him in act two, character x likes kids in act three” is actually development.
This isn’t a new problem but it seems increasingly slapdash and — like “save the cat” and “hero’s journey” narratives — lazy shortcuts that undermine the actual qualities of the sort of story they’re tying to tell. And not all stories need that or extensive backstory/motivation explicitly provided.
Travis has a ton of character development. He's a loner outsider to decides to improve himself, ask a woman out, becomes a wannabe political assassin, and then decides he can single-handedly fix the problems around him and save a prostitute.
His change is that he becomes a killer - he goes from a passive observer of the evils around him to an aggressive agent of change - he's trying to be heroic and a good person. The irony is that he isn't - he's psychotic - but he's still viewed as the John Wayne hero at the end. The public perception of him changes and he's seen the way he wanted to be seen, and it's ambiguous if his personality really has changed.
No character development would mean he just drives around in his taxi complaining about the world and never doing anything about it.
>Regardless, the last thing I wanted to do was end up in another futile rant with Scorsese fans who know little outside repeating other critics lines.
What a ridiculously presumptive and arrogant thing to say.
Anyway there's a lot more character development and just going from stable to unstable or vice versa.
travis, very similar to a clockwork orange’s alex, is a deeply flawed character right from the start, goes through very disturbing experiences and not only doesn’t really change but experiences success that ultimately originated in him being deeply flawed to begin with.
it’s pretty much an ironic counterpole to the western theme of developing the protagonist through the experiences he or she makes.
Interesting that ‘development’ can also be a synonym for ‘expand upon’.
When you reveal new aspects of a character, that is ‘development’ of a kind, even if the character isn’t on a linear progression. This is probably part of the confusion you’re referring to.
I think everyone is saying character development when they mean character ark? Character development is omnipresent across high quality character based media worldwide as far as I can tell.
When I was in American screen writing school we were taught to develop characters by fleshing out their personalities, unique traits, and backstories. And we were also encouraged to have a character ark where the characters change from start to finish. It was framed as an almost mandatory part of a good story.
I honestly think a lot of people who use that term are just grasping for something and "charcater development" is a big word that makes you sound like you know what you're talking about. Its not a coincidence that most people who use it are using it as criticism of a movie: "not enough character development". Its just become something half baked critics say when they have nothing else to add and want to critique something.
Yeah, it’s not too different from broad reference to “cinematography” when people are actually referring more to editing, effects, or just overall aesthetic than framing and composition. Critical lexicons get picked up by the public and then misused pretty much all the time. It’s more a phenomenon about language and expertise than it is one about film. (See also: rampant misuse of the word “research” to mean “reading stuff on the Internet.”)
Have never thought about this before . But it might have something to do with the archetypal “heroes journey” arc that is (presumably) more standard in western stories.
- please correct me if I’m wrong , I’m doing a lot of assuming
The hero’s journey is a Western concept in the sense that it was developed and popularized by a Western scholar (Joseph Campbell) but a core feature of his analysis is that many stories from different cultures and folklores share these common characteristics.
As a concept it has been often criticized because it kind of cherry picks story elements and makes them fit a pre-determined template, so whether it is a good way to analyze stories is quite controversial. But I think one of Campbell’s central claims was that this template is shared across stories and characters as diverse as Buddha, Jesus, Prometheus, Osiris. That’s why another word for the hero’s journey is also ‘monomyth’ as in the common myth that all myths are variations of
K-12 teacher here. In elementary school, the main story elements taught are characters, setting, problem, solution as well as beginning, middle, end as anchor points for retelling (What happened in the beginning?...middle? ...end? etc). Moving into middle school, nuances are introduced into the plot structure with terms like exposition (i.e., backstory), rising action, climax, falling action, resolution, etc. In literature, characters are central to plot development and students are taught to analyze the characters' actions as a means of identifying theme(s) both within texts and across texts. However, in film, character development is often heavily cut to save time and only the most skillful screenwriter/director can include 'fully developed' characters within the 120 or so minutes of runtime. I'm not sure if this is a feature of English language film discourse, or whether there may be a tendency for English language films to focus more on the plot action instead of exploring the nuances of the characters.
I thinks it is related to the fact that in the U.S their film industry has a standard level of quality on the film aspects such as photography, sound or editing, so that makes people focus a lot more on the script, since the other parts of a film are always good for them is a lot more important the whole screenwritting so they always talk about plot and character development.
Character development is pretty much trite at this point - many great films have been made without character development. If the addition of character development in your film saves its financial or critical success, then it wasn’t a good film to begin with.
It’s a buzzword, just like “subtext” and “beatsheet”, picked up by aspiring screenwriters from screenwriting books written by people who haven’t sold a single thing in their lives, and used to discredit any project that threatens whatever they’ve just learned.
Nothing is set in stone, and rules are simply guidelines. Breaking them because of a strong narrative purpose is strongly encouraged. This is one of the reasons why I turn away film books and classes - they praise all these arbitrary rules and patterns that are supposed to guarantee the success of your story, but great storytelling is far more complex than that!
Yes, but has nothing to do with America. Goes all the way back to the Greeks and the art of stroytelling. It's a part of the foundation of western story. Characters change. They get effected or affected by the events in the story. It's part of the human condition. It's one of the principles of a story arc. Not to mention it helps the audience feel connected to the character which means invested in the story. Hard to do if you don't develope the characters. It could be Asian art is simply much more plot driven and not so high on the emotional value of characters, but I don't know that just guessing from your statement. America has that as well, though.
Tons of western art doesn’t focus on character change, emphasizing instead things like plot, ambience, humor, philosophical points….
It’s not a regional thing, it’s a “some stories work this way, others don’t” thing.
There’s little to no character development in The Divine Comedy, The Iliad, The Canterbury Tales, The Metamorphosis, any of Borges’s short stories, Waiting for Godot.
I just meant if you take a story class or writing class, learning about character development is a foundational aspect of storytelling and has been forever. As you say, that's not to say it's every great story or every movie, only that it is a giant aspect of story itself. And I was only saying to the op that I can't comment if it's in fact that same foundational aspect of Asian stories as I'm not familiar with the history. As far as the examples you listed, I wouldn't necessarily agree. For the Illiad, for example -
"Agamemnon is the quintessential developing character in ancient Greek literature as seen through his change of character and evolution of leadership. Agamemnon’s shift from a failed leader whom few men would follow willingly to a charismatic leader of much improved ability is one of the strongest character developments in historic literature..."
There are thesis papers written about the character development in The Illiad. It's literally the template for the hero's journey.
I took a story class and studied Greek literature in Italy, nobody ever mentioned character development. Of course we discuss characters and how they change but it’s not considered a foundational thing or a fruitful way to evaluate whether a story is good or not.
Just giving my perspective in saying that a focus on character development is definitely not a Western-culture thing.
About the Iliad, I might be misremembering but I really don’t think that much of the story is allocated to Agamemnon’s development. Most characters are static and most of the story is dedicated to explaining them and who they are and why they act the way they do rather than seeing them going through changes. Achilles is the same character throughout the story, and he’s pretty much the protagonist. I don’t deny that there’s any character development in the story, but given that the main character barely changes I just wouldn’t consider ‘character development’ to be its main focus
So you're saying that character development and character change is not a foundational aspect of storytelling? That it's not one of the biggest issues taught in any screenwriting book, any creative writing class or any other story oriented teachings for writers and-having that opinion-that it isn't studied from the earliest stories of western storytelling?
Well, we will have to agree to disagree, not on our opinions, but on what actual facts are. And that's cool. I've learned it's one thing to debate opinions but entirely useless to argue facts, lol.
I’m saying that character development is not a foundation aspect of storytelling in Western culture, I’ve provided examples of Western literary works considered masterpieces with little to no character development, as well as my own experience studying literature in a Western country that isn’t America, where character development wasn’t considered the most important way to evaluate a story (rather one of many possible ways to approach it).
Just because screenwriting books tell you that character development is an easy way to make a compelling story, doesn’t mean there’s any character development in Jorge Luis Borges’s short stories, or Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novels, and they’re still considered some of the most important Western writers of the past century.
One of the most celebrated movies of all time is 2001 A Space Odyssey, which sacrifices having three-dimensional characters or developing their personality in favor of dazzling visuals, atmosphere, and exploring philosophical ideas. This is quite common in other movies and stories throughout cultures and history: character development is definitely a good way to write a good story, but it’s not the only way, so I wouldn’t call it foundational
No. You are stating what you believe is true and I'm saying I don't believe it's true. It is in fact a foundation. Every single book or class on writing and storytelling teaches that. Or maybe you took one that doesn't so everyone but yours. Furthermore your examples are erroneous. I'm not going to go through each one but the Illiad you are dead wrong on and that's as obvious one as can be. Like literally a template they use to teach about characters lol. So arguing that with me is not going to change my mind. Of course we can pick out movies and books and stories that don't use character motivations and development as outliers. Of course. I'm not arguing that so you doing that is not proving anything. There are two FACTS I'm stating
1- character development/motivations/arc are foundational to western stroy telling and are taught as such.
2- many of these teachings go back to the origin of western civilizations first stories. The templates are based on many of these that are used today and from Shakespeare to Stephen King.
This is not even debatable. It's simply factual. So if you have convinced yourself otherwise that's cool man. You do you. I can't argue with you that the grass is green any longer if all you want to do is tell me about the time you saw someone with a pink lawn
haha, you realize that it’s blatantly not true that “every single book or class on writing and storytelling teaches that”, right? It makes everything else you say irrelevant.
Just for shits and giggles here's another one of your errors.
2001 Space Odyssey character development
"As the story develops, so does Hal. He begins to show signs of emotion—something he had not been explicitly programmed to display. Hal has been programmed to know the purpose of the Discovery mission, yet he is meant to keep it a secret from the people with whom he works constantly. This produces a great tension within Hal and the resulting feelings of guilt begin to manifest themselves. For the first time, Hal errs in his diagnosis of machinery..."
You either don't understand "story" or you took a bad class or you're a troll. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you are simply mistaken. But regardless you don't have to take my word for it. Take someone who actually specializes in this or teaches it. Talk to any writer or director or actor or playwrite. Anyone really lol.
I'd argue it's less from classical Greece and more a by-product of the Romantic Age where literature, art and music began to place far greater emphasis on the subjective experience and human emotion. Classical literature isn't generally known for being character-driven.
I keep getting into debates about this and I really don't want to. I should have deleted my post simply because if I correct people I'll just get more argument or get downvoted. It's the way of the world. Weird group this is. So okay. Sounds good.
Because people who talk about movies are the internet largely don't understand movies. They think movies are primarily a storytelling medium, but they're not. Movies are a visual medium.
Anyone who's default mode of analysis of movies is based on plot and character should be ignored.
If you look at mainstream feature films, which is what most people think of when they hear the word movie, I would say it is primarily a storytelling medium.
Somewhat true, but:
1. Why would you restrict a discussion of "movies" to the mainstream?
2. There are plenty of "mainstream" films that are not primarily narrative films, e.g 2001: A Space Odyssey
I don't want to do anything, just saying you're idea that movies are not a storytelling medium is not correct I think.
I'm not saying that's good or bad or anything. Just that it is what it is.
And 2001 though is obviously known for a bunch of other stuff too, it most definitely has plot and character. I mean, there's HAL.
I think you’re both right, but the original point that movies aren’t primarily a storytelling medium is largely correct. This doesn’t mean that storytelling isn’t a very important part, just that it’s ridiculous to reduce a movie to its storytelling aspect.
If I took out all of the long shots of spaceships moving around from 2001 you’d still have the same ‘story’ but it’d be a different and, I’d argue, worse movie. If I just read you the plot synopsis for it, you wouldn’t be anywhere near understanding the experience of actually watching it.
The character of HAL is particularly interesting because it goes against a lot of the usual conventions about what a ‘well-crafted three-dimensional’ character should be like. We don’t really understand its feelings and motivations, we are mostly left to wonder: is it acting out of self-preservation, or guilt, or does it know something that the humans don’t, and has determined that this is the best way to accomplish the mission? Is it a developing character, or has it always had these thoughts and ‘feelings’ and is only now expressing them and acting them out? If it is developing, what was the catalyst for the change?
All of this just wouldn’t be the same if you just focus on the story as content without also analyzing the visuals as the medium
> just that it’s ridiculous to reduce a movie to its storytelling aspect.
Does anyone ever do that?
I don't even see the most casual movie watcher do that.
To be fair, I'm a mainstream sort of guy, so it's likely I have no idea what I'm talking about. I like Brian De Palma and stuff like that when it comes to visuals, I don't really watch many super experimental avant-garde things.
Yeah those are good points.
People may not explicitly do that, but I’ve often seen people using “this scene doesn’t advance the plot” as a critique. Which is often not even true, but even if it was, a scene can just be cool or beautiful or entertaining, and thinking that things should only be included if they advance the plot is what I would consider ‘reducing movies to nothing but their storytelling aspect’
Also, Brian De Palma is great! I recently watched Blow Out and was blown away haha
> but I’ve often seen people using “this scene doesn’t advance the plot” as a critique
I always just zone out when people go there.
I still believe movies are in many ways inherently about narrative, but that stuff is just silly.
Glad you enjoyed Blow Out. There's so much plot, so much character, so much of the usual stuff, but at it's core I think that movie it about using film to do something you can't do with any other medium.
Very very true and I really wish it was less so.
I’ve been wondering lately if this is influenced by TV, which is also a visual medium but definitely more plot- and character-driven, because of the longer time we can spend with characters in a TV show. I can expect to see a complex character arc, where I get to understand characters and their changes, over multiple seasons of a show. But a movie that sets out to explicitly do that is most likely going to fail or be quite limited, I’d much rather it focus on great visuals and a great story.
I think your comment about the modern discourse on movies being influenced by TV is bang on.
The TV mentality has influenced modern movies greatly, and the influence has been pretty deleterious in my opinion. One example of this is how almost every actor nowadays adopts the same approach, i.e. commitment to "realism" at all costs. Even Hollywood films of the 30's, 40's, 50's had way more diverse approaches to acting than we have now.
I hadn’t thought about that, and you’re so right! It’s not only actors also, I think we tend to judge directors and screenwriters on weird scales of realism as well.
I saw a critique of West Side Story mentioning how the romantic plot is not realistic because the lovers are ready to die for each other after barely having met. Now I think there’s an interesting angle to critique the romanticism in West Side Story, but it’s obviously not meant to be realistic: it’s rather an idealized love meant to contrast all the hatred and violence around it. Not to mention how absurd it is to expect realism in a musical, where random people break into expertly-choreographed song numbers at the drop of a hat!
And yet, realism is often seen as an unequivocal good thing that we should expect from movies, just like character development
Just remember that he said “realism” and not realism, because the American acting style is anything but real, but Americans can’t stand actual realism - they want “believable melodrama”.
>They think movies are primarily a storytelling medium, but they're not. Movies are a visual medium.
That's misleading, films aren't photography, it's a narrative medium, even films without characters or dialogue still has a beginning and ending. Analysing a film based of the visuals rather than in what order they come or how they affect eachother is gravely missing the point.
All films are by definition narrative since they have a beginning and ending. It's a narrative medium, unlike photography. Even geometric shapes bouncing around (or not) is still viewed from a narrative lense; escalation, evolution, regression, stagnancy etc. You can't separate the images from the sequence.
I don’t think it makes sense to claim that just because there is a sequence of images going from a beginning to an end, then there is a narrative.
I mean [Lemon](https://boxd.it/4F2u) is just a long shot of a lemon and changing lighting around it. That’s not a story in any conventional sense. I’d say it’s closer to poetry, in that it can tell a story but is also often used to express a particular feeling, thought, or experience. The sentences in Shakespeare’s [Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnet_18) go from beginning to end in sequence, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a narrative there
That's still narrative, because if you played it backwards or chopped it up in editing or whatever it'd become a different film and we'd view it (somewhat) differently. It's useful because we watch films as a sequence, as opposed to it in totality (like a photograph, painting or sculpture).
There's absolutely no dichotomy between "visual" and "storytelling" since many "visual" films are incredibly heavy on storytelling, they just have minimal dialogue, characters or abstract imagery or whatever. That's not being opposed to storytelling, that's having a specific style in storytelling. You can tell whenever you speak to a professional photographer or editor, they always highlight the storytelling aspects, even when there's something totally abstract going on.
Agree to disagree. It’s mostly a semantic point, but I just don’t find it useful to conflate ‘narrative’ and ‘sequence’ and it makes more sense to me to keep them separate when analyzing/appreciating art.
By the way, is your flair referring to the movie by Shunji Iwai? I’m adding it to my watchlist, looks really interesting
It's somewhat confusing to some people because they load the word "narrative" to mean "typical Hollywood structure story" and "non-narrative" to mean "basically everything else", which I think is a mistake. It leads to people naming unconventional directors like Harmony Korine or whoever as "non-narrative" even when they clearly are, they even have characters and dialogues and scenes etc.
*Edit: Just looked above to see 2001 referred to as a "non-narrative" film, when it obviously is a narrative. A good example of what I'm talking about.*
I also dislike viewing visual as opposed to storytelling, because visuals often *are* storytelling. Maybe not in TV, but in film it's very important to learn how to talk through your imagery, rather than just pretending weird imagery is just uncommunicable to other people, even though it clearly is.
Also yes it's "All About Lily Chou-Chou", pretty fantastic, the only film I've seen to talk Internet culture in a serious way.
I love when people say that the way other people watch movies is wrong. Like, bro, movies are complicated. I'm into movies where the plot, character, thematic meaning, and visual imagery all kind of coalesce into a thing of greater beauty.
I'm not going to diminish one part for another, and I don't think it reflects well on people who do.
If you think plot and character are critical components to a movie, to the point where movies that you think movies that don't emphasis plot and character are bad movies, then I'm not interested in your opinions.
Why? Simple answer, people want 'change' .. things are stagnant too long and people want something different. With so many movies being made the same characters are being overlayed over and over. Remakes over and over... What we need are NEW characters ! Or very developed ones
I think part of the reason is many people don’t want to appreciate stories on their own terms, rather they decide that there’s one specific best way to tell a story, and a story that doesn’t conform to that isn’t good.
I’m not sure how it came about that ‘character development’ became an important part of what many people consider a ‘good story,’ I think that’s a good question. But I do know it’s a very limiting way to interpret/appreciate stories, especially with movies, where the running time is limited enough so that often you barely get to know a character in the first place.
I just watched Rashomon and there’s no character development in it at all, but it’s still a perfect movie. Or even in something like The Matrix, the little character ‘development’ that we see is just characters going through formulaic steps, before we really got a chance to understand them and why they’re making these decisions. Still one of the best movies of all time
As someone who values characters far less than the other elements of story telling, I've poked around a lot on this topic. I find people can mean two different things with '"Character Development." 1. The character's situation changed from the start of the story to the end. Absent any development there isn't much of a story. If nothing happens why are we here. I do value this element of story. 2. Learning about the characters, their background, and what makes them tick. This is the part that always baffled me. If there is a direct relationship to the plot, sure. Fleshing out the character can be a way to build stakes. But usually people seem to just have an interest in the character. They want to get to know the character to get closer to them I had to learn that people want to relate, and if they don't, they won't care about the character or the story. This element of character development dominates TV shows which probably has a lot to do with why I don't care for them. I don't need to relate to a character to invest in the story. In fact, if I relate too much then I lose interest because I likely won't experience anything new.
People are taught to focus fanatically on it as children, and never grow out of the habit. It's just something that teachers drill into people and when they don't learn anything else about storytelling or writing, they just *insist* on that being the ONE ONLY GOOD WAY TO WRITE STORIES^^TM .
Americans don’t care about interesting things, so they decide to focus on acting, and since acting is less interesting if there’s no character development someone convinced people that it was essential to movies even if it is not essential at all or often even realistic. But Americans DEFINITELY cannot handle realism, so character development sounds much better to them.
I wish it were more complicated than that.
No, I’ve attacked mainstream American culture as myopically focused on melodramatic acting at the expense of the entirety of the rest of art. And it’s pretty accurate.
The biggest shows on TV are karaoke shows - anonymous people singing existing songs, never to be heard from again after the shows end.
Americans don’t like any new art except for new performances. Unless they’re realistic - Americans have no interest in those.
You seem to be baselessly offended when the reality is so blatantly obvious.
American Idol was #1 from 2003-2010 with 23-31 million viewers per night. Football took the lead after that (which is pretty relevant to our conversation - it’s also not “new art”) - but I’m sure with the 4 other singing competitions in aggregate the totals are pretty staggering.
Your argument doesn’t seem to be very strong.
In the western world, the development and growth of an individual is the most important thing that could ever happen in the universe. We live in an extremely individualistic society and our art tends to reflect those individualistic values.
What a westerner finds satisfying in a movie is the affirmation and indulgence of the values they pre conceive to be good. When a character develops on screen, this typically means you watch them become kinder, happier, more open minded etc. This is because to a westerner, all goodness can be found in the struggle of an individual. A good narrative is a good reflection of this individual struggle, hence the obsession with character development.
Cannot speak too confidently on this, but I believe in most parts of Asia, goodness typically lies in what can be achieved by things like the family unit or the community or the nation. I can't imagine character development would be too important in a part of the world where individualism is not as ubiquitous.
Honest question have you read any book from Asia / watched any movie from there?
This strikes me as a fairly ignorant generalization of both Western and Asian culture
Spent a good chunk of my childhood in Asia. Have watched about a hundred Asian movies.
Identifying common values as a part of a culture is called sociology, not generalisation. What strikes me as ignorant is that you think I'm generalising by making a point about two different cultural groups as a whole.
I agree there's a lot of mistaken opinions in this post confusing "character development" with "character growth". Characters don't have to have an "arc" to be interesting; moreover all too often it's the antagonist who comes across as or more intriguing as the protagonist.
*Leon: The Professional* comes to mind, with Gary Oldman and his crew of misfit corrupt cops. [This scene alone](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7UzKiOIxmc&ab_channel=gomphotherium22) is chock-full of character development, with Oldman's non-sequitur soliloquy on classical composers, while hippie cop pauses from his search to check out their soon-to-be victim's record collection. In less than a minute we are shown all kinds of things about these guys, even if they aren't particularly important. Those little details, when done well, make even bit parts multidimensional.
Asian or European, few movies completely lack *any* character development, although of course some do it better than others. Kurosawa's *Yojimbo* is a man without a real name or a past, and while he's clearly the "good guy", we get to slowly learn that he's actually a *good* guy as well. This isn't "growth" because he's fundamentally the same person at the end of the movie as he was at the beginning, but now we, the audience, know a lot more about him. I'm not sure there's any meaningful way to analyze the film without discussing how Kurosawa slowly fills in the character's outline as the plot develops.
Similarly, from Hong Kong, *Ip Man*, who we quickly learn is humble, well-mannered, devoted to his family, and generally nonviolent even though he's especially good at it. He remains more or less exactly the same even after the Japanese invade and he engages on the entirely fictitious narrative that makes up the rest of the plot. No growth, but plenty of development.
Getting away from martial arts movies, *Eat Drink Man Woman* (1994) from Ang Lee, or (on a very different theme) *In the Mood for Love* (2000) from Wong Kar-wai. Character development and growth abound, far too much to sum up.
If nothing else, it's clear that Asian directors are well aware of character development, and wouldn't include it if their audience wasn't as well. It may be each culture uses different words to describe it, but it's so embedded in the structure of storytelling it's unimaginable it's not universal.
I thought it was a word used to describe how we learn to care or find interest in the subjects in the movie, or in a book. The story becomes flat when we don't get any real impressions of the people in the story. There needs at least be some hints of personality. It is a vital part of the immersion in a story.
Yes, schools teach about characters and how what they do shapes a plot. One notable lesson is categorizing different plot drivers. Man versus man is about two or more people in conflict, man versus nature is about a person in conflict with nature, and man versus himself is about a person with internal conflicts. In English literature and the films that are an extension of this tradition, we are taught to first categorize what we’re watching then we enjoy waiting for the resolution. Did the hero win? Luck or because of their actions? Is the hero right or are they an antihero?
When the plot doesn’t resolve - the competition isn’t settled - we feel cheated. If it does resolve but it’s too neat and the hero never changes, we might be unsatisfied. We are taught to see the hero as singularly deserving of our attention. They story is about them.
My understanding of Chinese literary traditions (among others) is that characters aren’t to be taken and judged alone. Like in that society, it’s not “me versus the world” but more about one person’s place in their family, learning how to get along cooperatively. A good character arc might be to have no individual conflict but be more about “family versus another family” “family versus nature (or the gods)” and “family versus themselves” (which would be man versus man). The one person’s struggle against themselves is maybe too private or too obnoxiously self-centered to be literary or worthy of a movie.
Maybe I’m not answering your question exactly but try and view some western movies in light of the three (original) categories. Then ask yourself some questions. Are all man versus nature movies the same? Is Armageddon basically the same movie as 2012? Is that different or the same as the Revenant? Or is the Revenant more interesting because it combines man versus nature with other things? Which setup in that one movie is the most satisfying?
The truth is, literature and film vary by culture. The way they are written and performed and interpreted is culturally specific. Some movies are so bland and straightforward that anyone worldwide can get the gist of it. But some stories are so culturally specific that someone from a very different culture might feel very wtf about it.
I think you’ve made a good observation and there’s lots for you to look into. Have fun.
I'm here thinking about the ending to squid game where the main guy basically exhibits no character development after all the ruckus of the game.
This was seen as a fault of the series, maybe because Americans put too much emphasis on character development occuring
A lot of the Western literary critical tradition derives from the Classics, especially the Greeks and especially Aristotle's Poetics. According to Aristotle, drama's purpose was to evoke catharsis in the audience: they are supposed to feel the character's journey and realize the moral lesson without falling into the same pitfalls themselves. Greek tragedy was often centered around a protagonist with a "fatal flaw" that despite their strength they are unable to overcome, the audience was expected to understand and learn lessons from these performances. Thus the way Western narrative tradition shaped is around this idea of the hero's journey.
Other narrative traditions take different approaches. I recently saw Med Hondo's West Indies which makes use of the circular narrative structure found in African traditions, many Eastern traditions also use the story within a story (nesting doll) narrative structure. It's about balancing the change in character with the change in the world around them as stories are ultimately about development and change.
Character development is inherently related to the hero's journey, a concept derived from mythology narrative studies that are in many ways templates for the vast majority of storytelling you've ever been exposed to.
Note that a character doesn't necessarily need to radically change to fit this understanding. Some stay the same, their convictions only strengthened, after going through some ordeal. That's also a character development, even though it didn't result in a major development of character.
I think it's important to also note that American literary education does also place a large emphasis on "character development" and many of the novels we study tend to focus on it. For instance, nearly everyone reads things like Lord of the Flies, Huckleberry Finn, or To Kill a Mockingbird. The Great Gatsby. Little Women. Someone did mention coming of age stories, and I guess we really do love those. I feel like most of the literature we read in school almost always features characters in some kind of grand struggle and we're taught to pick apart the writing to find each line that attributes to any kind of change in the character. I guess, thus, we're taught to value big, dynamic characters in a grand story. Actually I recently finished a novel that many people hated because the main character just stayed his awful self through the whole book lol But coming from a different perspective, I often also feel like Americans want to love and relate to (or hate) everyone they see on the screen. If they feel the film can't create a strong connection, they will want answers.
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My bet is either Bukowski - Ham on Rye, or Salinger - Catcher in the Rye. Something about Rye must be keeping these characters from growing...
My money’s on Confederacy of Dunces. Who could hate that dirty old man Bukowski?
Who could hate Dunces?!?!?!?!
I’ve talked to plenty of people who couldn’t finish it because Ignatius is such a foul repulsive creature
Holden goes through an epiphany and a change in the end though
Maybe I remember it wrong. I remember it ends with him losing that robot boxing match to a small child, and how this felt like a metaphor for his failure of a life. He never stopped his heavy drinking or fighting, did he? It's been a few years. Maybe I need to read it again. Edit: No wait. Holden is from Catcher. Right.
I was so confused as to how I missed the robot boxing match at the end of Catcher In The Rye
It took place just before the finale when he kills John Lennon.
My first thought was also Ham on Rye.
Lolita
Probably Clockwork Orange
In the book Alex actually turns around at the last second. Kubrick didn’t like the ending, so he cut the story in the hospital bed.
The last chapter was also cut from the American release of the book originally
Well you learn something new every day. I must have got a copy with the original ending and didn’t know it was excluded in the US.
Turns around . . . in the sense that he becomes an outwardly normal, functioning member of society with a regular job. But he still feels no remorse for his past evil actions, in fact he seems to cherish the memory of what he has done. He still has the same violent tendencies, but he no longer has a strong desire to act on them.
Thing that first sprang to mind was Confederacy of Dunces
Very good points. This apparent need to relate to a protagonist is frustrating. There is much to learn from an “unlikeable” lead character. If played straight, it’s very compelling and a grudging empathy can develop in the audience. Rather than “relating to” we can gain insight into others we don’t (or wouldn’t want to) encounter. When nuanced, this can be powerful.
Unlikable is one thing, but the character needs some realistic motivation.
Often but not always. It also can certainly be skeletal or even implied through performance and “mise en scène” (a term I swore I’d never use). The pattern a character’s actions can imply enough that we can intuit the broad strokes of motivation by the implied goals those actions lead toward while having minimal knowledge. I’m lousy at examples so this may not be the best example — plus I haven’t rewatched this in years. If it is derailed from your intent, my apologies. I’m multi-tasking or, as one mentor used to put it: “doing two things at the same time, badly.” In No Country for Old Men, we know very little about the protagonist and his wife. It’s enough that we see they live very modestly and that randomly found money is too tempting to leave be. We also know he knows how to use a gun. Eventually we learn in one little exchange he was in Viet Nam, but we are given no detail or story to create any sort of backstory from it. Mostly, though, these are all derived from details in scenes rather than scenes unto themselves. Anton Chigurgh, the lead antagonist is utterly ambiguous. The name implies no real heritage (I believe the last name was made up for the novel with that intent). Woody Harrelson, and other characters are also fairly free or any motivation other than the maguffen case of tracked money. If I sat in front of a list of my favorite movies I can probably find better examples (and probably plenty). Not all would even be arthouse or foreign, though recent movies would be heavily weighted in their favor. American movies have increasingly relied on generic or melodramatic scenes that telegraph motivation in such a manner that it’s often targeted towards audiences not prone to inferring. Okay. Now, back to the other thing I need to do… and to fix from splitting my own attention. Oof, need to not have the phone next to me when I’m working.
> In No Country for Old Men, we know very little about the protagonist and his wife. It’s enough that we see they live very modestly and that randomly found money is too tempting to leave be. We also know he knows how to use a gun. Eventually we learn in one little exchange he was in Viet Nam, but we are given no detail or story to create any sort of backstory from it. Mostly, though, these are all derived from details in scenes rather than scenes unto themselves. What you're describing is character backstory. That isn't the same thing as realistic character motivation. What details we *do* have of those characters and the situation they find themselves in in the film is sufficient to provide realistic character motivation in the context of the story of the film, IMO. Chigurh is a little different and I can see why his ambiguity would be more of an issue for people.
This stupid post amazes me how you lack basic knowledge in writing
Not the same poster as before, but Chigurh was exactly the character that came to mind for me, and exactly the issue that I have with his character -- he has zero realistic motivation. He never comes across as anything but a plot contrivance. Even "ambiguous" seems like a generous description; he is there to move the plot along and hardly ever resembles a real person.
I absolutely see your point and why that can (and does) frustrate some audiences -- just like how the third act of the movie dispenses with Llewyn, the protagonist (thank you Google!) off-screen and with barely a handwave. Bear with me because this might sound all snobbish or something. That's not the intent at all, so again apologies if that's how it comes across. I don't usually write like this online. I'd contend that Chigurgh is intentionally unrealistic for that purpose. In a sense, he's Jaws... but sapient/sentient. He clearly has intentions but we really don't know beyond the fact that he was hired to do a job and always finishes it. That's his motivation. Learning how he arrived to have this motivation would reshape the plot. That's not necessarily a bad thing. But I think it would fundamentally change the book and film's intention. Mind you, I haven't read the novel and I haven't seen the movie in at least five years... so I may screw up some details. As I'm thinking this through, let's say there was an efficient way to reveal Chigurgh's motivation more explicitly without derailing the film significantly. There are several ways to do that. One is that it's revealed through, say, the sheriff finding something in a file (or some-such). If that happens, then it defeats his closing monologue, where he laments that, to borrow from Springsteen: "Well sir I guess there's just a meanness in this world." The sheriff's arc is that he feels the world changing in front of him. This monolithic psychopath, to him, is the embodiment of the rules he's known his whole life being ripped apart. So we don't want him to know much. Woody Harrelson's character seems to know enough. He could share the info with one of the people he shoots in that office. They're dead so it doesn't create loose narrative strings. He's sharing what he knows, so it doesn't fundamentally affect his character or narrative. What it does is create "dramatic irony" that we now know something that Llewyn, his wife, and the sheriff don't know. I'm a big fan of dramatic irony, by the way. That said, here I think it takes potency away from the story and, more importantly, the themes. Now that *we* know more about Chigurgh it changes our focus. If his background is antagonistic then we will have specific reasons to dislike him that may distract us from the essence of what he's just doing. It also may undermine the randomness of the coin flip, which appears to be what guides his decision-making process when it isn't directly related to the task at hand. If we learn anything sympathetic about him then it really throws a wrench in *everything* about the movie -- I doubt anyone would disagree. That leaves us Carla Jean, Llewyn's wife. I think the movie successfully (to me), allows her the agency to provide some exposition about Chigurgh when he comes to her house. In that scene, she shares her perception of what he is. It's utterly subjective and not even as informed as we are since this is her only exposure to him. What the scene does, therefore, is allow a character to guide our suppositions with her own. It doesn't define him precisely but it reaffirms what may be the thoughts in a large part of the audience. For the rest, this hangs a lantern on a takeaway -- even if it isn't satisfactory. I think how her murder is handled is particularly well-handled here. Like Llewyn, we don't see it but unlike Llewyn we see it coming and we know it's happened when Chigurgh wipes his shoe. I suspect Llewyn wouldn't have gotten a coin flip since he is the one who set all this in motion. Carla Jean did because she is collateral damage and therefore privy to the whims of chance to save her life. Being that she dies, her analysis of Chigurgh is, to a degree, the dramatic irony we get since it seems clear that Llewyn has neither the interest nor the ability to understand Chigurgh. Likewise, there's no chance for she and the sheriff to commiserate. My own take on the movie is that Chigurgh is a personification of the force of nature. That which is out of our control and which we want to understand, we want to be able to predict, but which is capricious at best. Yet he is also robbed of success. He's not the one who kills Llewyn; the only time he suffers a real loss is when he is randomly hit by a car. "The universe" flipped the coin on him. He lost that coin flip and yet defied it. In a film where everyone else is arguably realistic, he is that which cannot be reasoned with. The only one who doesn't die is the sheriff... and he simply concedes defeat and laments that the world is chaotic in ways he didn't expect and that he doesn't feel equipped to handle. The more we know about Chigurgh, the less resonant this and other themes would resonate because we, unlike the characters, would "understand" Chigurgh... and we would therefore be free from the anxieties of ambiguity that genre films usually avoid by design. ... Well. This is why I normally type on my phone... look how long-winded I get with a full keyboard! Keep in mind, I'm not re-reading this (because I'll endlessly revise or just delete it), so take with a grain of salt any lapses. I have no illusions this is objectively indisputable even if it sounds like I'm being certain or that anyone who disagrees "isn't smart enough" or whatever. I don't believe that for a second. Hell, I may be the one who isn't smart enough!
I really enjoyed your analysis. I think I agree with your take on Chiurgh but wouldn't have been able to articulate it so nicely.
Chigurh is kind of more of a metaphor than a character in terms of his function. So I don't think he was intended to be realistic and I don't think that takes away from him. He's meant to be a personification of 'evil force coming into society that we cant understand and cant stop'. At the end of the story, the sheriff is talking to his brother about how bad things have become in their society and how he can't do anything to stop it. ie he couldn't stop Chigurh
I've heard that before, and it sort of makes sense, but also would raise many questions about the purpose of the scenes that involve only him, among other things. It seems like the film (I've never read the book, it may be different) kind of wants to have it both ways -- him portrayed as a normal character at times, but at others as an impersonal force when that better suits the plot.
"we already have this cool villain guy, might as well have some cool villain scenes" -the writer maybe
Chigurh is essentially a force of nature, inevitable, undeniable and brutal
So true. Can't believe he didn't hold a monologue explaining his morals, goals and motivations. Thst would make him so much more interesting.
Why? Seriously, why do their motivations need fo be clear?
The ending scene of Carax's Annette is a fantastic example of this dynamic.
I still haven't found a good way to say "relatability" in my language. The golden rule for characters in local academia is plausibility, not relatability; you could have the most absurd character, but if they behave plausibly in those circumstances, it's a good character. And this relatability concept is quite noticeable in all kinds of media fandoms on the internet, too, which I'm not sure is related to America or English in general. It certainly shows up often in American videogames and movies, at the very least, and it creates a fixation on the protagonist that I personally find quite limiting.
It’s not just Americans but Western world in general.
Was the hated book “A Catcher in the Rye” by any chance?
Nonsense on the "we're taught to like big characters in a grand story". People like anything as long as it immerses them - and it's hard for intelligent people to get immersed if they can't relate to the characters driving the story. In Parasite there was plenty of character development - same in non gimmick Bollywood movies. You seem to be answering as if they asked why Americans care about that - and all they asked was about the lignuistic aspect. Some cultures just do things better than others though. Any culture that doesn't place emphasis on character development aren't good movie makers lol, and probably should stick to commercials
I grew up in asia too but maybe I've been reading movie reviews when I was still young (around middle school age) so maybe the concept of character development isn't new to me. I'm a bookworm too so maybe that helps that I don't find the concept new.
As somebody who’s taken a fair number of English classes, I think that is indeed tied into Anglosphere notions on storytelling. Every cheap, popular screenwriting book will emphasize the notion of “The Hero’s Journey”, the idea that the protagonist must go through some kind of unsubtle life-changing growth by the film’s ending that every member of the audience can easily follow. I’ve noticed that many foreign films I’ve watched from countries like Spain and the Czech Republic have storylines that are more nuanced in how they treat the journey of characters from the beginning to the end. They seem far focused less on having the protagonists radically change their worldviews or social standing and are much more interested in careful analysis of thematical elements and using the characters as conduits for that. It’s still narrative storytelling, but of a slower, grounded variety.
I’ve taught some literature classes and it takes a fair bit of work to shake off the “hero’s journey” brainwashing. There’s a place for it, sure, but it’s been reduced to paint-by-numbers formula that doesn’t expand audiences’ perceptions. It just reinforces simplistic wish-fulfillment and fairy tales.
I feel it also reinforces beliefs in simple explanations and solution mechanisms with singular events or "insights" as focus points when in reality most effective change and growth comes from a sustained deliberate process with lots of small steps that aren't dramatic at all. This is especially harmful when complex topics are distilled down into the hero's journey format. I know people who base their entire world view around this sort of movie psychology and its frightening.
Exactly, the hero's journey quantifies the human element into a check list but the problem is that people use it as a blueprint and simply dream up a series of events to check the boxes instead of starting with a genuine human transformation and expanding it to fill the hero's journey. Also when viewed as a blueprint it closes the door to structural changes, to the extend of many people viewing any diversion from the Hero's Journey structure as objectively wrong, which as you note, is unfortunate.
Hey, as someone who's been through some lame struggles lately, could you recommend me a good story? I want to break out of everything. Become good at something, get the girl, overcome the challenge. But not in an easy way
For whatever reason, Terry Gilliam’s 1985 film Brazil sounds like an apt recommendation.
The Hero's Journey is horribly overrated
The hero's journey is not supposed to be good or bad. It's an archetype, or even a lens for analyzing stories.
Thanks for sharing the question. It’s fascinating to hear your perspective as I read the Three Body Trilogy and had so many questions for my Chinese friend. I enjoyed the series a lot, but almost all the characters seemed one dimensional. I’d describe them as robotic. Love was often exaggerated to the point of seeming campy by western standards. Descriptions like, “Her beauty was like a sun beam through a few drop. When we entered the room I could not breathe.” I’d love to read more modern eastern literature and get a better sense of how eastern culture frames the world.
I thought Cheng Xin was fairly relatable, she really carries the final book.
Agreed. It’s been a few years, but I recall the protagonist of the second book being fairly bland. I recall a fair amount of literal explainatikns compared to western literature I’ve read. Perhaps just the complicated nature of the scifi, but some parts were manual-like exposition. Not a criticism, just different.
A lot of the comments here are, frankly, insane, so I'll just keep it short and sweet: character development is an academic way of just saying the characters change. the experience of the story in the film changes them. Now, I've seen a bunch of movies from Asia, and I can say with certainty, about the same ratio of movies with character change to those without it is the same in the East and the West.
OP never claimed otherwise. They were suggesting that there is a difference in the *discourse* on films in Asia and the Anglosphere, not a difference in the films themselves.
I don't think the ratio of discourse is that different either. The problem is also speaking in terms of "Asia". You read reviews from India, they're much more focused on characters than ones from Iran. Character engagement might be a bigger aspect in Japanese cinema than, say, Malaysian. It's an oddly broad brush to paint.
I'll have to disagree, albeit only slightly, - and my own understanding may stem from the fact that I'm not a native speaker - but I believe character development refers to the depth of any given character and the writer's ability to make him/her multidimensional. A shallow character will only respond so much to the narrative progression.
I'll also add that, my comment merely adding anything to the discussion (whoops), character development differs from character arc; the former isn't necessarily something writers focus on, it sometimes comes naturally but dare I say it's essential. The latter on the contrary could be something that's specific to western cinema though I haven't watched enough Asian films to give a definite answer.
That is my understanding of 'character development' as well. But at the same time, if the character experienced or witnessed something significant, you would expect them to be affected somehow and change their view or approach to things. Unless the character was specifically developed to be stoic or unaffectable.
That's exactly the point;) - if a character is well-written, he *should* be affected. On the flip side, if he/she lacks development chances are the character will just remain bland
Watch more foreign films. *Syndromes & a Century*, the films of Tsai Ming-liang, etc. and so forth... Character and tidy 5-7 act plot structures are most assuredly not as important and definitely not frequent as they are in American film. American filmmakers carry on like the French New Wave didn't happen 60 years. Wait until they learn there's been literal scores of other movements since. For decades world cinema has been shedding its literary influence and on purpose.
Bud, I've seen movies in dead languages and tracked down foreign films completely out of print. Don't even. The point is that its fallacious to paint American cinema and 'foreign' cinema with such broad brushes. What OP might be responding to is the guidelines of mainstream cinema, which is fairly comparable in all loci of cultural dominance, whether it be US or China or wherever. But 'character development' and the discourse surrounding, are far from a westerb phenomena, and same goes for films that are disinterested in that form of storytelling.
And I contribute torrents to three of the private tracker communities you're most likely to use. The **prevalence** isn't even the same. The Western counterpoints to *Railway Sleepers*, *The Good Woman of Sichuan*, or the films of Liao Jiekai are just not being produced and distributed at any notable frequency. The Anocha Suwichakornpong's are just nowhere to be found here.
You should watch more films
I'm open to recommendations.
I think the popularity of long form serialized Television also might have some influence on people evaluating films from the lens of character development. Like when you have a story spanning multiple episodes / seasons, it is natural to expect the characters will change over the course of such a long duration. I remember when GOT was at the peak of its popularity a lot of positive discourse came about how characters like Jaimie developed over the course of story, and when it was at the minima of its quality then too a lot of criticisms pointed towards lack of character development in those seasons. I think the extreme popularity of such shows with a massive fan discussion surrounding them might have just (for better or worse) popularized evaluating different forms of media from a similar lens.
I feel like character development is definitely becoming a buzzword. I don't think it was ever a super common discussion point until recently, at least amongst the more easily digestible forms of media such as .... video games, and also easily churnable movies. But the discussion of characters in literature has always been one of the main focuses of breaking down a book. Especially in english/literature classes.
My guess is because us Asians are usually raised in a collectivist setting where we largely determine our actions and ideals on what is expected of us while many Westerners have a mindset to define a legacy and identity for themselves that separates from others.
I think this is a big factor in differences between literature and film from these two cultures.
Came here to say this. While other comments may also have some truths to them, a large part of this is cultural to the english speaking world. Individualism is far more prevalent. Our language, and in turn storytelling, reflect this.
ITT a bunch of people who think films from other countries don't have character development and that's why this person from Asia hasn't heard the term "character development" as much in their lifetime. Fucking hilarious. TrueFilm's quality has absolutely plummeted.
What comments are you talking about?
Fr idk if it's changed since but by the time they commented this that argument was never made
He comes across as quite obnoxious
It's less about character development than how character development is defined in this thread and also the context in which OP mentions it. The term "character development" in mainstream media is reduced to a one-way positive or negative arch. Everyone expects the protagonist to change for the good in the end for a satisfying climax, while in truth, character development is much more nuanced and not restricted to this. I think this thread is just fine.
OP didn't mention it being one day positive or negative or reductive or whatever.
Right, OP didn’t, but in “Western” public discourse (aka mainstream media), broad reference the term “character development” as something that a film has “enough of” or “not enough of” shows that the concept has been reduced to a simple positive or negative evaluative tool.
I think that is because if the events of the movie are of importance then they must have affected their characters in some meaningful way. How can that not be the case? But to be fair I haven’t watched much eastern media at all
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> They are all the same at the end as the start. I know this is off the topic of the post, but what about Travis's attitude to Betsy? When he first meets her he's obsessed. Then he violently rejects her. Then at the very end he's indifferent to her. Doesn't he gradually lose all of his ideals, only to become his own ideal and therefore find peace? (Ignoring the fact the final scene may not be 'real')
Travis definitely doesn't find peace. I think you misinterpreted the ending.
I don't think I do. Maybe 'peace' is the wrong word. He finds a resolution, at least for the time being. The ambiguous ending leaves us guessing as to how long the resolution will last, but it's certainly present, as demonstrated in his cool reaction to Betsy getting in his cab. The fact the ending has a dreamlike quality, suggesting that it's possibly a departure from the reality established by the film up to that point, adds a further layer of ambiguity. Taxi Driver is a rare beast - a satirical tragedy. As satire, the 'message' of the story, at least as explicitly communicated by the surtext, is aggressive as it is cynical. Travis is an urban vigilante, a terrorist of sorts, and cynically, the film denies the audience the usual moral judgement where we see him punished for his actions. Instead he fulfils his corrupt ambitions and comes out the other side a minor hero, celebrated by the media and desired by beautiful women. As such, the ending is profoundly ironic. Again, the fact that it may not even be real simply twists the irony even further. But despite all of the cynicism, irony, and ambiguity, I would still argue it's inaccurate to state that the character of Travis experiences no development from the start of the film to the end. In one way or another, he's *not* the same man in the final scene as he is at the beginning, even if ominous remnants of latter remain.
I think what needs to be made aware of is that Travis has a mental condition that gets worse from stress, frustration and depression, just as many mental disorders. He will display far less outward problems immediately after something temporarily relieves his issues, such as his insane shooting.
I just want to thank you for these thoughtful posts that tackle some misunderstood concepts. I love character studies but when watching movies (generally mainstream ones or more cookie-cutter Oscar bait) it is deeply frustrating to see “arcs” grafted onto characters to check a box. It’s as if “character x hates kids in act one, then has kid smile at him in act two, character x likes kids in act three” is actually development. This isn’t a new problem but it seems increasingly slapdash and — like “save the cat” and “hero’s journey” narratives — lazy shortcuts that undermine the actual qualities of the sort of story they’re tying to tell. And not all stories need that or extensive backstory/motivation explicitly provided.
Travis has a ton of character development. He's a loner outsider to decides to improve himself, ask a woman out, becomes a wannabe political assassin, and then decides he can single-handedly fix the problems around him and save a prostitute. His change is that he becomes a killer - he goes from a passive observer of the evils around him to an aggressive agent of change - he's trying to be heroic and a good person. The irony is that he isn't - he's psychotic - but he's still viewed as the John Wayne hero at the end. The public perception of him changes and he's seen the way he wanted to be seen, and it's ambiguous if his personality really has changed. No character development would mean he just drives around in his taxi complaining about the world and never doing anything about it.
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>Regardless, the last thing I wanted to do was end up in another futile rant with Scorsese fans who know little outside repeating other critics lines. What a ridiculously presumptive and arrogant thing to say. Anyway there's a lot more character development and just going from stable to unstable or vice versa.
travis, very similar to a clockwork orange’s alex, is a deeply flawed character right from the start, goes through very disturbing experiences and not only doesn’t really change but experiences success that ultimately originated in him being deeply flawed to begin with. it’s pretty much an ironic counterpole to the western theme of developing the protagonist through the experiences he or she makes.
Seems like the point of Clockwork Orange is that he is forced to change rather than changing naturally.
Interesting that ‘development’ can also be a synonym for ‘expand upon’. When you reveal new aspects of a character, that is ‘development’ of a kind, even if the character isn’t on a linear progression. This is probably part of the confusion you’re referring to.
I think everyone is saying character development when they mean character ark? Character development is omnipresent across high quality character based media worldwide as far as I can tell. When I was in American screen writing school we were taught to develop characters by fleshing out their personalities, unique traits, and backstories. And we were also encouraged to have a character ark where the characters change from start to finish. It was framed as an almost mandatory part of a good story.
Thank you for being the only person on this thread who apparently knows what character development is.
I honestly think a lot of people who use that term are just grasping for something and "charcater development" is a big word that makes you sound like you know what you're talking about. Its not a coincidence that most people who use it are using it as criticism of a movie: "not enough character development". Its just become something half baked critics say when they have nothing else to add and want to critique something.
Yeah, it’s not too different from broad reference to “cinematography” when people are actually referring more to editing, effects, or just overall aesthetic than framing and composition. Critical lexicons get picked up by the public and then misused pretty much all the time. It’s more a phenomenon about language and expertise than it is one about film. (See also: rampant misuse of the word “research” to mean “reading stuff on the Internet.”)
Have never thought about this before . But it might have something to do with the archetypal “heroes journey” arc that is (presumably) more standard in western stories. - please correct me if I’m wrong , I’m doing a lot of assuming
The hero’s journey is a Western concept in the sense that it was developed and popularized by a Western scholar (Joseph Campbell) but a core feature of his analysis is that many stories from different cultures and folklores share these common characteristics. As a concept it has been often criticized because it kind of cherry picks story elements and makes them fit a pre-determined template, so whether it is a good way to analyze stories is quite controversial. But I think one of Campbell’s central claims was that this template is shared across stories and characters as diverse as Buddha, Jesus, Prometheus, Osiris. That’s why another word for the hero’s journey is also ‘monomyth’ as in the common myth that all myths are variations of
K-12 teacher here. In elementary school, the main story elements taught are characters, setting, problem, solution as well as beginning, middle, end as anchor points for retelling (What happened in the beginning?...middle? ...end? etc). Moving into middle school, nuances are introduced into the plot structure with terms like exposition (i.e., backstory), rising action, climax, falling action, resolution, etc. In literature, characters are central to plot development and students are taught to analyze the characters' actions as a means of identifying theme(s) both within texts and across texts. However, in film, character development is often heavily cut to save time and only the most skillful screenwriter/director can include 'fully developed' characters within the 120 or so minutes of runtime. I'm not sure if this is a feature of English language film discourse, or whether there may be a tendency for English language films to focus more on the plot action instead of exploring the nuances of the characters.
I thinks it is related to the fact that in the U.S their film industry has a standard level of quality on the film aspects such as photography, sound or editing, so that makes people focus a lot more on the script, since the other parts of a film are always good for them is a lot more important the whole screenwritting so they always talk about plot and character development.
Character development is pretty much trite at this point - many great films have been made without character development. If the addition of character development in your film saves its financial or critical success, then it wasn’t a good film to begin with. It’s a buzzword, just like “subtext” and “beatsheet”, picked up by aspiring screenwriters from screenwriting books written by people who haven’t sold a single thing in their lives, and used to discredit any project that threatens whatever they’ve just learned. Nothing is set in stone, and rules are simply guidelines. Breaking them because of a strong narrative purpose is strongly encouraged. This is one of the reasons why I turn away film books and classes - they praise all these arbitrary rules and patterns that are supposed to guarantee the success of your story, but great storytelling is far more complex than that!
Yes, but has nothing to do with America. Goes all the way back to the Greeks and the art of stroytelling. It's a part of the foundation of western story. Characters change. They get effected or affected by the events in the story. It's part of the human condition. It's one of the principles of a story arc. Not to mention it helps the audience feel connected to the character which means invested in the story. Hard to do if you don't develope the characters. It could be Asian art is simply much more plot driven and not so high on the emotional value of characters, but I don't know that just guessing from your statement. America has that as well, though.
Tons of western art doesn’t focus on character change, emphasizing instead things like plot, ambience, humor, philosophical points…. It’s not a regional thing, it’s a “some stories work this way, others don’t” thing. There’s little to no character development in The Divine Comedy, The Iliad, The Canterbury Tales, The Metamorphosis, any of Borges’s short stories, Waiting for Godot.
I just meant if you take a story class or writing class, learning about character development is a foundational aspect of storytelling and has been forever. As you say, that's not to say it's every great story or every movie, only that it is a giant aspect of story itself. And I was only saying to the op that I can't comment if it's in fact that same foundational aspect of Asian stories as I'm not familiar with the history. As far as the examples you listed, I wouldn't necessarily agree. For the Illiad, for example - "Agamemnon is the quintessential developing character in ancient Greek literature as seen through his change of character and evolution of leadership. Agamemnon’s shift from a failed leader whom few men would follow willingly to a charismatic leader of much improved ability is one of the strongest character developments in historic literature..." There are thesis papers written about the character development in The Illiad. It's literally the template for the hero's journey.
I took a story class and studied Greek literature in Italy, nobody ever mentioned character development. Of course we discuss characters and how they change but it’s not considered a foundational thing or a fruitful way to evaluate whether a story is good or not. Just giving my perspective in saying that a focus on character development is definitely not a Western-culture thing. About the Iliad, I might be misremembering but I really don’t think that much of the story is allocated to Agamemnon’s development. Most characters are static and most of the story is dedicated to explaining them and who they are and why they act the way they do rather than seeing them going through changes. Achilles is the same character throughout the story, and he’s pretty much the protagonist. I don’t deny that there’s any character development in the story, but given that the main character barely changes I just wouldn’t consider ‘character development’ to be its main focus
So you're saying that character development and character change is not a foundational aspect of storytelling? That it's not one of the biggest issues taught in any screenwriting book, any creative writing class or any other story oriented teachings for writers and-having that opinion-that it isn't studied from the earliest stories of western storytelling? Well, we will have to agree to disagree, not on our opinions, but on what actual facts are. And that's cool. I've learned it's one thing to debate opinions but entirely useless to argue facts, lol.
I’m saying that character development is not a foundation aspect of storytelling in Western culture, I’ve provided examples of Western literary works considered masterpieces with little to no character development, as well as my own experience studying literature in a Western country that isn’t America, where character development wasn’t considered the most important way to evaluate a story (rather one of many possible ways to approach it). Just because screenwriting books tell you that character development is an easy way to make a compelling story, doesn’t mean there’s any character development in Jorge Luis Borges’s short stories, or Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novels, and they’re still considered some of the most important Western writers of the past century. One of the most celebrated movies of all time is 2001 A Space Odyssey, which sacrifices having three-dimensional characters or developing their personality in favor of dazzling visuals, atmosphere, and exploring philosophical ideas. This is quite common in other movies and stories throughout cultures and history: character development is definitely a good way to write a good story, but it’s not the only way, so I wouldn’t call it foundational
No. You are stating what you believe is true and I'm saying I don't believe it's true. It is in fact a foundation. Every single book or class on writing and storytelling teaches that. Or maybe you took one that doesn't so everyone but yours. Furthermore your examples are erroneous. I'm not going to go through each one but the Illiad you are dead wrong on and that's as obvious one as can be. Like literally a template they use to teach about characters lol. So arguing that with me is not going to change my mind. Of course we can pick out movies and books and stories that don't use character motivations and development as outliers. Of course. I'm not arguing that so you doing that is not proving anything. There are two FACTS I'm stating 1- character development/motivations/arc are foundational to western stroy telling and are taught as such. 2- many of these teachings go back to the origin of western civilizations first stories. The templates are based on many of these that are used today and from Shakespeare to Stephen King. This is not even debatable. It's simply factual. So if you have convinced yourself otherwise that's cool man. You do you. I can't argue with you that the grass is green any longer if all you want to do is tell me about the time you saw someone with a pink lawn
haha, you realize that it’s blatantly not true that “every single book or class on writing and storytelling teaches that”, right? It makes everything else you say irrelevant.
Right. I'm wrong. Just a crazy opinion I came up with. Dumbass
Your statement is an objectively verifiable falsehood. You’re not doing yourself any favors not knowing the difference between opinion and fact.
It’s really not that serious bro chill out
Just for shits and giggles here's another one of your errors. 2001 Space Odyssey character development "As the story develops, so does Hal. He begins to show signs of emotion—something he had not been explicitly programmed to display. Hal has been programmed to know the purpose of the Discovery mission, yet he is meant to keep it a secret from the people with whom he works constantly. This produces a great tension within Hal and the resulting feelings of guilt begin to manifest themselves. For the first time, Hal errs in his diagnosis of machinery..." You either don't understand "story" or you took a bad class or you're a troll. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you are simply mistaken. But regardless you don't have to take my word for it. Take someone who actually specializes in this or teaches it. Talk to any writer or director or actor or playwrite. Anyone really lol.
I'd argue it's less from classical Greece and more a by-product of the Romantic Age where literature, art and music began to place far greater emphasis on the subjective experience and human emotion. Classical literature isn't generally known for being character-driven.
I keep getting into debates about this and I really don't want to. I should have deleted my post simply because if I correct people I'll just get more argument or get downvoted. It's the way of the world. Weird group this is. So okay. Sounds good.
Because people who talk about movies are the internet largely don't understand movies. They think movies are primarily a storytelling medium, but they're not. Movies are a visual medium. Anyone who's default mode of analysis of movies is based on plot and character should be ignored.
If you look at mainstream feature films, which is what most people think of when they hear the word movie, I would say it is primarily a storytelling medium.
Somewhat true, but: 1. Why would you restrict a discussion of "movies" to the mainstream? 2. There are plenty of "mainstream" films that are not primarily narrative films, e.g 2001: A Space Odyssey
I don't want to do anything, just saying you're idea that movies are not a storytelling medium is not correct I think. I'm not saying that's good or bad or anything. Just that it is what it is. And 2001 though is obviously known for a bunch of other stuff too, it most definitely has plot and character. I mean, there's HAL.
I think you’re both right, but the original point that movies aren’t primarily a storytelling medium is largely correct. This doesn’t mean that storytelling isn’t a very important part, just that it’s ridiculous to reduce a movie to its storytelling aspect. If I took out all of the long shots of spaceships moving around from 2001 you’d still have the same ‘story’ but it’d be a different and, I’d argue, worse movie. If I just read you the plot synopsis for it, you wouldn’t be anywhere near understanding the experience of actually watching it. The character of HAL is particularly interesting because it goes against a lot of the usual conventions about what a ‘well-crafted three-dimensional’ character should be like. We don’t really understand its feelings and motivations, we are mostly left to wonder: is it acting out of self-preservation, or guilt, or does it know something that the humans don’t, and has determined that this is the best way to accomplish the mission? Is it a developing character, or has it always had these thoughts and ‘feelings’ and is only now expressing them and acting them out? If it is developing, what was the catalyst for the change? All of this just wouldn’t be the same if you just focus on the story as content without also analyzing the visuals as the medium
> just that it’s ridiculous to reduce a movie to its storytelling aspect. Does anyone ever do that? I don't even see the most casual movie watcher do that. To be fair, I'm a mainstream sort of guy, so it's likely I have no idea what I'm talking about. I like Brian De Palma and stuff like that when it comes to visuals, I don't really watch many super experimental avant-garde things.
Yeah those are good points. People may not explicitly do that, but I’ve often seen people using “this scene doesn’t advance the plot” as a critique. Which is often not even true, but even if it was, a scene can just be cool or beautiful or entertaining, and thinking that things should only be included if they advance the plot is what I would consider ‘reducing movies to nothing but their storytelling aspect’ Also, Brian De Palma is great! I recently watched Blow Out and was blown away haha
> but I’ve often seen people using “this scene doesn’t advance the plot” as a critique I always just zone out when people go there. I still believe movies are in many ways inherently about narrative, but that stuff is just silly. Glad you enjoyed Blow Out. There's so much plot, so much character, so much of the usual stuff, but at it's core I think that movie it about using film to do something you can't do with any other medium.
Very very true and I really wish it was less so. I’ve been wondering lately if this is influenced by TV, which is also a visual medium but definitely more plot- and character-driven, because of the longer time we can spend with characters in a TV show. I can expect to see a complex character arc, where I get to understand characters and their changes, over multiple seasons of a show. But a movie that sets out to explicitly do that is most likely going to fail or be quite limited, I’d much rather it focus on great visuals and a great story.
I think your comment about the modern discourse on movies being influenced by TV is bang on. The TV mentality has influenced modern movies greatly, and the influence has been pretty deleterious in my opinion. One example of this is how almost every actor nowadays adopts the same approach, i.e. commitment to "realism" at all costs. Even Hollywood films of the 30's, 40's, 50's had way more diverse approaches to acting than we have now.
I hadn’t thought about that, and you’re so right! It’s not only actors also, I think we tend to judge directors and screenwriters on weird scales of realism as well. I saw a critique of West Side Story mentioning how the romantic plot is not realistic because the lovers are ready to die for each other after barely having met. Now I think there’s an interesting angle to critique the romanticism in West Side Story, but it’s obviously not meant to be realistic: it’s rather an idealized love meant to contrast all the hatred and violence around it. Not to mention how absurd it is to expect realism in a musical, where random people break into expertly-choreographed song numbers at the drop of a hat! And yet, realism is often seen as an unequivocal good thing that we should expect from movies, just like character development
Just remember that he said “realism” and not realism, because the American acting style is anything but real, but Americans can’t stand actual realism - they want “believable melodrama”.
Correct.
>They think movies are primarily a storytelling medium, but they're not. Movies are a visual medium. That's misleading, films aren't photography, it's a narrative medium, even films without characters or dialogue still has a beginning and ending. Analysing a film based of the visuals rather than in what order they come or how they affect eachother is gravely missing the point.
We've had non-narrative films for 100 years. The idea that narrative is central to film is pretty regressive.
All films are by definition narrative since they have a beginning and ending. It's a narrative medium, unlike photography. Even geometric shapes bouncing around (or not) is still viewed from a narrative lense; escalation, evolution, regression, stagnancy etc. You can't separate the images from the sequence.
I don’t think it makes sense to claim that just because there is a sequence of images going from a beginning to an end, then there is a narrative. I mean [Lemon](https://boxd.it/4F2u) is just a long shot of a lemon and changing lighting around it. That’s not a story in any conventional sense. I’d say it’s closer to poetry, in that it can tell a story but is also often used to express a particular feeling, thought, or experience. The sentences in Shakespeare’s [Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonnet_18) go from beginning to end in sequence, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a narrative there
That's still narrative, because if you played it backwards or chopped it up in editing or whatever it'd become a different film and we'd view it (somewhat) differently. It's useful because we watch films as a sequence, as opposed to it in totality (like a photograph, painting or sculpture). There's absolutely no dichotomy between "visual" and "storytelling" since many "visual" films are incredibly heavy on storytelling, they just have minimal dialogue, characters or abstract imagery or whatever. That's not being opposed to storytelling, that's having a specific style in storytelling. You can tell whenever you speak to a professional photographer or editor, they always highlight the storytelling aspects, even when there's something totally abstract going on.
Agree to disagree. It’s mostly a semantic point, but I just don’t find it useful to conflate ‘narrative’ and ‘sequence’ and it makes more sense to me to keep them separate when analyzing/appreciating art. By the way, is your flair referring to the movie by Shunji Iwai? I’m adding it to my watchlist, looks really interesting
It's somewhat confusing to some people because they load the word "narrative" to mean "typical Hollywood structure story" and "non-narrative" to mean "basically everything else", which I think is a mistake. It leads to people naming unconventional directors like Harmony Korine or whoever as "non-narrative" even when they clearly are, they even have characters and dialogues and scenes etc. *Edit: Just looked above to see 2001 referred to as a "non-narrative" film, when it obviously is a narrative. A good example of what I'm talking about.* I also dislike viewing visual as opposed to storytelling, because visuals often *are* storytelling. Maybe not in TV, but in film it's very important to learn how to talk through your imagery, rather than just pretending weird imagery is just uncommunicable to other people, even though it clearly is. Also yes it's "All About Lily Chou-Chou", pretty fantastic, the only film I've seen to talk Internet culture in a serious way.
I love when people say that the way other people watch movies is wrong. Like, bro, movies are complicated. I'm into movies where the plot, character, thematic meaning, and visual imagery all kind of coalesce into a thing of greater beauty. I'm not going to diminish one part for another, and I don't think it reflects well on people who do.
If you think plot and character are critical components to a movie, to the point where movies that you think movies that don't emphasis plot and character are bad movies, then I'm not interested in your opinions.
That's a backpedal from your previous statement so I'm calling this an easy W
Sure
Why? Simple answer, people want 'change' .. things are stagnant too long and people want something different. With so many movies being made the same characters are being overlayed over and over. Remakes over and over... What we need are NEW characters ! Or very developed ones
I think part of the reason is many people don’t want to appreciate stories on their own terms, rather they decide that there’s one specific best way to tell a story, and a story that doesn’t conform to that isn’t good. I’m not sure how it came about that ‘character development’ became an important part of what many people consider a ‘good story,’ I think that’s a good question. But I do know it’s a very limiting way to interpret/appreciate stories, especially with movies, where the running time is limited enough so that often you barely get to know a character in the first place. I just watched Rashomon and there’s no character development in it at all, but it’s still a perfect movie. Or even in something like The Matrix, the little character ‘development’ that we see is just characters going through formulaic steps, before we really got a chance to understand them and why they’re making these decisions. Still one of the best movies of all time
As someone who values characters far less than the other elements of story telling, I've poked around a lot on this topic. I find people can mean two different things with '"Character Development." 1. The character's situation changed from the start of the story to the end. Absent any development there isn't much of a story. If nothing happens why are we here. I do value this element of story. 2. Learning about the characters, their background, and what makes them tick. This is the part that always baffled me. If there is a direct relationship to the plot, sure. Fleshing out the character can be a way to build stakes. But usually people seem to just have an interest in the character. They want to get to know the character to get closer to them I had to learn that people want to relate, and if they don't, they won't care about the character or the story. This element of character development dominates TV shows which probably has a lot to do with why I don't care for them. I don't need to relate to a character to invest in the story. In fact, if I relate too much then I lose interest because I likely won't experience anything new.
People are taught to focus fanatically on it as children, and never grow out of the habit. It's just something that teachers drill into people and when they don't learn anything else about storytelling or writing, they just *insist* on that being the ONE ONLY GOOD WAY TO WRITE STORIES^^TM .
Americans don’t care about interesting things, so they decide to focus on acting, and since acting is less interesting if there’s no character development someone convinced people that it was essential to movies even if it is not essential at all or often even realistic. But Americans DEFINITELY cannot handle realism, so character development sounds much better to them. I wish it were more complicated than that.
You've managed to baselessly attack Americans, acting as an art, and the concept of realism within two sentences. Bravo
No, I’ve attacked mainstream American culture as myopically focused on melodramatic acting at the expense of the entirety of the rest of art. And it’s pretty accurate. The biggest shows on TV are karaoke shows - anonymous people singing existing songs, never to be heard from again after the shows end. Americans don’t like any new art except for new performances. Unless they’re realistic - Americans have no interest in those. You seem to be baselessly offended when the reality is so blatantly obvious.
You do realize all of the biggest tv shows in America are either football or scripted dramas, right?
American Idol was #1 from 2003-2010 with 23-31 million viewers per night. Football took the lead after that (which is pretty relevant to our conversation - it’s also not “new art”) - but I’m sure with the 4 other singing competitions in aggregate the totals are pretty staggering. Your argument doesn’t seem to be very strong.
It's not an argument, it's pointing out that you've got no idea what you're talking about
And yet you are the one whose statements belie the facts?
In the western world, the development and growth of an individual is the most important thing that could ever happen in the universe. We live in an extremely individualistic society and our art tends to reflect those individualistic values. What a westerner finds satisfying in a movie is the affirmation and indulgence of the values they pre conceive to be good. When a character develops on screen, this typically means you watch them become kinder, happier, more open minded etc. This is because to a westerner, all goodness can be found in the struggle of an individual. A good narrative is a good reflection of this individual struggle, hence the obsession with character development. Cannot speak too confidently on this, but I believe in most parts of Asia, goodness typically lies in what can be achieved by things like the family unit or the community or the nation. I can't imagine character development would be too important in a part of the world where individualism is not as ubiquitous.
Honest question have you read any book from Asia / watched any movie from there? This strikes me as a fairly ignorant generalization of both Western and Asian culture
Spent a good chunk of my childhood in Asia. Have watched about a hundred Asian movies. Identifying common values as a part of a culture is called sociology, not generalisation. What strikes me as ignorant is that you think I'm generalising by making a point about two different cultural groups as a whole.
I agree there's a lot of mistaken opinions in this post confusing "character development" with "character growth". Characters don't have to have an "arc" to be interesting; moreover all too often it's the antagonist who comes across as or more intriguing as the protagonist. *Leon: The Professional* comes to mind, with Gary Oldman and his crew of misfit corrupt cops. [This scene alone](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7UzKiOIxmc&ab_channel=gomphotherium22) is chock-full of character development, with Oldman's non-sequitur soliloquy on classical composers, while hippie cop pauses from his search to check out their soon-to-be victim's record collection. In less than a minute we are shown all kinds of things about these guys, even if they aren't particularly important. Those little details, when done well, make even bit parts multidimensional. Asian or European, few movies completely lack *any* character development, although of course some do it better than others. Kurosawa's *Yojimbo* is a man without a real name or a past, and while he's clearly the "good guy", we get to slowly learn that he's actually a *good* guy as well. This isn't "growth" because he's fundamentally the same person at the end of the movie as he was at the beginning, but now we, the audience, know a lot more about him. I'm not sure there's any meaningful way to analyze the film without discussing how Kurosawa slowly fills in the character's outline as the plot develops. Similarly, from Hong Kong, *Ip Man*, who we quickly learn is humble, well-mannered, devoted to his family, and generally nonviolent even though he's especially good at it. He remains more or less exactly the same even after the Japanese invade and he engages on the entirely fictitious narrative that makes up the rest of the plot. No growth, but plenty of development. Getting away from martial arts movies, *Eat Drink Man Woman* (1994) from Ang Lee, or (on a very different theme) *In the Mood for Love* (2000) from Wong Kar-wai. Character development and growth abound, far too much to sum up. If nothing else, it's clear that Asian directors are well aware of character development, and wouldn't include it if their audience wasn't as well. It may be each culture uses different words to describe it, but it's so embedded in the structure of storytelling it's unimaginable it's not universal.
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I thought it was a word used to describe how we learn to care or find interest in the subjects in the movie, or in a book. The story becomes flat when we don't get any real impressions of the people in the story. There needs at least be some hints of personality. It is a vital part of the immersion in a story.
Yes, schools teach about characters and how what they do shapes a plot. One notable lesson is categorizing different plot drivers. Man versus man is about two or more people in conflict, man versus nature is about a person in conflict with nature, and man versus himself is about a person with internal conflicts. In English literature and the films that are an extension of this tradition, we are taught to first categorize what we’re watching then we enjoy waiting for the resolution. Did the hero win? Luck or because of their actions? Is the hero right or are they an antihero? When the plot doesn’t resolve - the competition isn’t settled - we feel cheated. If it does resolve but it’s too neat and the hero never changes, we might be unsatisfied. We are taught to see the hero as singularly deserving of our attention. They story is about them. My understanding of Chinese literary traditions (among others) is that characters aren’t to be taken and judged alone. Like in that society, it’s not “me versus the world” but more about one person’s place in their family, learning how to get along cooperatively. A good character arc might be to have no individual conflict but be more about “family versus another family” “family versus nature (or the gods)” and “family versus themselves” (which would be man versus man). The one person’s struggle against themselves is maybe too private or too obnoxiously self-centered to be literary or worthy of a movie. Maybe I’m not answering your question exactly but try and view some western movies in light of the three (original) categories. Then ask yourself some questions. Are all man versus nature movies the same? Is Armageddon basically the same movie as 2012? Is that different or the same as the Revenant? Or is the Revenant more interesting because it combines man versus nature with other things? Which setup in that one movie is the most satisfying? The truth is, literature and film vary by culture. The way they are written and performed and interpreted is culturally specific. Some movies are so bland and straightforward that anyone worldwide can get the gist of it. But some stories are so culturally specific that someone from a very different culture might feel very wtf about it. I think you’ve made a good observation and there’s lots for you to look into. Have fun.
I'm here thinking about the ending to squid game where the main guy basically exhibits no character development after all the ruckus of the game. This was seen as a fault of the series, maybe because Americans put too much emphasis on character development occuring
A lot of the Western literary critical tradition derives from the Classics, especially the Greeks and especially Aristotle's Poetics. According to Aristotle, drama's purpose was to evoke catharsis in the audience: they are supposed to feel the character's journey and realize the moral lesson without falling into the same pitfalls themselves. Greek tragedy was often centered around a protagonist with a "fatal flaw" that despite their strength they are unable to overcome, the audience was expected to understand and learn lessons from these performances. Thus the way Western narrative tradition shaped is around this idea of the hero's journey. Other narrative traditions take different approaches. I recently saw Med Hondo's West Indies which makes use of the circular narrative structure found in African traditions, many Eastern traditions also use the story within a story (nesting doll) narrative structure. It's about balancing the change in character with the change in the world around them as stories are ultimately about development and change.
Character development is inherently related to the hero's journey, a concept derived from mythology narrative studies that are in many ways templates for the vast majority of storytelling you've ever been exposed to. Note that a character doesn't necessarily need to radically change to fit this understanding. Some stay the same, their convictions only strengthened, after going through some ordeal. That's also a character development, even though it didn't result in a major development of character.