The 2010 Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Language Film was El Secreto de sus Ojos (The Secret in Their Eyes) and I recently saw it for the first time. A few months ago I blogged about a scene from Wait Until Dark which did an exceptional job of moving the story forward entirely through action and revealing an important story point without relying on dialogue to do it. Here is a link to that post:
http://monumentscripts.com/2012/02/13/an-awesome-example-of-storytelling-sans-dialogue/
The scene I’m going to focus on for El Secreto de sus Ojos is slightly different however, because it is one intense scene that changes the course of the story and tells the audience a lot about what’s going on in the story and the emotions of the characters without using a word of dialogue, where Wait Until Dark was a sequence of events that led to a startling realization.
This is a scene that is all about power and who is perceived to have it.
The film is about a cop named Esposito who has retired and is writing a book about a case that has haunted him for 30 years for various reasons. A young woman was raped and murdered by a young man named Gomez , and he was investigating the crime with his superior, a woman judge named Hastings. Esposito falls in love with Hastings, but is too afraid to express his true feelings to her. She has the same feelings for him, but couldn’t wait for him, and all these years later is now married to someone else and has a family of her own.
The film’s Pinch occurs halfway through when Esposito figures out where to find Gomez, and arrests him during a brilliantly shot scene that takes place in a soccer stadium during a match. Hastings later uses Gomez’s sexual peccadilloes against him and gets him to confess to the crime and it looks like the case is closed.
But nothing is ever that easy.
Sometime later, the victim’s widower sees Gomez on television in a security detail and calls Esposito to ask him what’s going on. Esposito and Hastings then go to see Romano, who used to be a cop who worked with them, but now works for a top government agency. He had Gomez released as an informant and had his sentence commuted as a way to settle an old score with Esposito. He tells them both that there’s nothing they can do about it and sends them away defeated.
Here is where it gets intense.
Esposito and Hastings get into the elevator to leave. Just as the door is about to close, a hand blocks it and it opens, revealing Gomez. He’s dressed in a suit, and looks to all the world to be a professional, well-groomed member of society. He stands with his back to both of them as the elevator closes. After a beat, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his gun. He loads a clip, cocks the gun and admires it for a moment before putting it back in his pocket. All three just stand there for 15 interminable seconds as the only sound is that of the gears of the elevator moving along. Finally the doors open and Gomez exits. He turns and looks at them and smiles and raises his eyebrows as the doors close.
The whole scene takes just under a minute with nary a word of dialogue. However, the scene speaks volumes. Gomez has gone from murderer/rapist to government enforcer. Whereas Esposito and Hastings formerly had all of the power over him, Gomez is now showing them that the tables have turned, and he is the one who has the real power now. All the two of them can do is stand behind him and hope that he doesn’t shoot them, because he is telling them through his actions that he could shoot them in cold blood right now if he wanted to and nothing would happen to him. But he’s not going to. Instead, by smiling and raising his eyebrows to them, he’s showing them that he’d rather let them live knowing that he’ll always have that power over them, no matter what.
Again, I’m not bagging on dialogue. I love scenes with crisp, biting dialogue that is cleverly written. I love dialogue that gives insight into character. But I always find myself more effectively moved when a writer can add a scene to a script that reveals an important moment in the story without resorting to dialogue to get it done.
Anyone can tell a story with dialogue. The strongest writers show a story with action.
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