I want to discuss voice-over for a minute.
Any seminar-educated screenwriter will know that the gods frown on this particular stylistic affectation, and a lot of the time it’s for good reason. It elongates scenes on the page to oftentimes unmanageable length and rarely provides “new” information. Also, once you’ve caved in and integrated it, over-reliance is pretty much unthwartable.
Then again, used properly, there are ways voice-over can enrich the moviegoing experience. I’m thinking of one way specifically, and that is to have your voice-over performed by Ethan Hawke.
The wrong actor doing voice-over can torpedo the proceedings with a heavy thud (Harrison Ford leaps to mind). The right actor doing it can prick up your ears and speak right to your soul. That’s the risk. The most evocative voice-over I’ve ever heard in a movie, William Holden in Sunset Boulevard, might figure into this rule too, but Holden is dead. Therefore, among living actors, I think I’ll say affirmatively that no one can be trusted with bodiless dialogue like Mr. Hawke can.
The particular movie I’m thinking of is Andrew Niccol’s futuristic, so-sumptuous-you-just-knew-it-was-going-to-be-a-box-office-flop adventure Gattaca. Hawke plays a human-born young man in a world where most everyone is “grown” from optimal DNA. He is relegated to a life of tedious manual labor before his expected young death, when his real dream is to fly off into space with the explorers. A juicy role, to be sure, and it’s no wonder the hot young actor found the challenge appetizing. He gets to deal with real adult problems while clinging to that boyhood astronaut dream that most of us grow out of by the time we start shaving.
Gattaca takes place in a complicated otherworld. Furthermore, there are all kinds of personal backstory nuggets (rivalry with a DNA-enhanced brother, to name the most resonant) that are sprinkled throughout the first act. How does the movie get this information across? Simple. Ethan tells us. In wordy, detailed voice-over.
Robert McKee would be fuming. And maybe the lines didn’t work on the page, but Hawke’s delivery not only sells the exposition – it actually makes the movie for me. There’s such earnest longing in his voice. Such unaffected simplicity and soulfulness that you just want him to keep talking. The visuals are gorgeous too, but this movie would touch me if my eyes were closed. When I told myself I shouldn’t be enjoying the “wrong” technique, I discovered how truly damaging screenwriting principles can be. I’m glad Niccol and Hawke went with their guts here and took their movie from good to terrific.
It all comes back to what I consider the first and only rule of screenwriting: your head’s your compass, but your heart is your barometer. And the atmosphere matters more than the destination.
Ethan Hawke was one of my favorite actors growing up. You never knew what chances he was going to take. He did Hotspur on Broadway, and fought back at the people who told him Americans can’t do Shakespeare. I thought it was cool that instead of trying to produce or run for governor, he used his success to try novel-writing! I haven’t read his books and don’t much care if they’re any good; I don’t think Taylor Lautner will ever even try.
As Hawke becomes older, I’d imagine he finds fewer and fewer roles that suit his puppy-dog earnestness (although, as I’ve said, I don’t actually like puppy dogs so Ethan wins that one), but he provided me with a decade’s worth of movies that may as well have been made for me. Dead Poets Society, Before Sunrise, Gattaca and even his less than impressive modern Hamlet and Great Expectations are my bread and butter. And if you want to come at me with the whole “movies are images and not words” argument, go back and listen to the boy’s voice a second time.
