One of my screenwriting students in UCLA Extension’s
Writers’ Program wanted to know if I’d seen Hell
or High Water. She wrote, “To me, it was the
quintessential demonstration of how to write implicit dialogue: subtext
delivers exposition. Scene after scene. Wow.”
Naturally, with that kind of endorsement from a student of the craft, I
had to check it out for myself. And yes – wow!
Hell or High Water is
a tough little indie, set mostly in Texas, about some roughnecks who set out to
rob banks, but whose motives are more complicated than they might first appear.
This is not exactly brand-new territory (in terms of either the plot or the landscape).
Bonnie and Clyde, for one, traveled through
much of the same physical and psychological terrain. But unlike Bonnie and Clyde, which featured a pair
of real-life Depression era outlaws, Hell
or High Water reflects life as we know it today. Though midland Texas, as shown in this film,
is still cowboy country, the social anxieties we see on screen could easily be
ripped from tomorrow’s headlines.
It’s a beautiful film to look at and to listen to. I’m not
exactly a fan of western music, but the score of Hell or High Water is augmented by haunting tunes that enhance the
wide open spaces we see on screen. And those parched landscapes, dotted with
dying little towns, pumping oil wells, and double-wide trailers, have their own
eerie beauty. The cinematography is the work of the very talented Giles
Nuttgens. His name wasn’t familiar to me, but I was pleased to discover he was
responsible for another marvelous indie with water in its title: Deepa Mehta’s
gorgeous glimpse of widowhood in the holy Indian city of Varanasi. Mehta’s Water revels in its liquid beauty. In Hell or High Water, there’s in fact a
lot less water than oil. Or beer. But
this is a visually stunning movie, all the same.
Now . . . about the screenwriting elements that so impressed
my student. The script is the work of Taylor Sheridan, who also wrote the
much-admired Sicario, another film
with a Southwestern setting. It’s probably because Sheridan is a working actor that
he so keenly grasps how to delineate character with the tiniest scraps of
dialogue. By the end of the film, we truly know these people through their behavioral
quirks and bad jokes. When we first meet the film’s two bankrobbing brothers
(played to a fare-thee-well by Ben Foster and the mesmerizing Chris Pine), their
faces are covered by ski masks and we’re not really sure which is which. It’s
not long, however, before we come to respect the gaping differences between
them, differences that will help shape the plot. Then there’s their opposite
number, the retirement-age Texas Ranger played by the always convincing Jeff
Bridges. Though L.A.-born, Bridges has long been identified with the Southwest,
from his breakthrough appearance in The
Last Picture Show (1971) to his Oscar-winning turn in Crazy Heart (2009). He has a genius for playing lived-in
characters, and this is one of his very best.
One aspect of Sheridan’s writing (aided by the direction of
David Mackenzie) that struck me as paticularly savvy is its tendency to
withhold information from the audience as long as possible. As the film moves
forward, we get only small hints about the rationale behind these particular
robberies. The payoff, when it comes, is that much more provocative because
we’ve put most of the pieces together ourselves. It helps us appreciate what a
man will do when he’s stuck between hell and high water.
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