Francis Mcdormand | A Screenwriters Perspective: Current and Past Movies.

A well-known fundamental rule of screenwriting. Show, do not tell. A huge exception to this rule is one of the 2022 Academy Award-nominated movies for best picture, “Women Talking”. This movie is almost entirely about dialogue, women talking about the same thing in a group or with each other. Within an Amish community, some women are being abused by men in their group. This entire story is about the women planning to leave this community and go somewhere else. Exactly where they plan to go, is not fully defined, but the phenomenon of this film is how little it is about and yet the screenwriter found a way to drag this on for a full two hours. The other phenomenon that a movie this boring and about almost nothing is one of the 10 Academy Award-nominated films for 2022.

The acting is solid throughout, with some very relevant women actors including Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Frances McDormand and Judith Ivey. All of them were able to read the script, then stay awake, and then decided to make this movie. This movie might just have more dialogue than any film ever made. Yes this is a new idea, a different perspective for movie making but for an audience, this can be difficult to sit through.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating of 90% is understandable for the effective acting, but for the overall movie-going experience, I give this one a 70% and recommend this one only for the most die-hard fans of the actors involved, not for the overly long and too boring story.

There is an old saying about, “You are not really an actor until you make it to Broadway, you are not really a great actor until you can act in a Shakespeare play”. For those of us who think that acting is easy, or if you think you can act, try and memorize or even understand any Shakespeare play. The new movie “The Tragedy of Macbeth” is all about admiring the acting skill of Denzel Washington and Francis McDormand, who are two multiple Academy Award winning actors. This film is not about enjoying the actual story, or understanding the scenes, or most of what the actors or saying and is in fact rather agonizing to sit through, because I for one had to leave before the end. This is a film that should be shown at an acting school within an Ivy League college, and not shown in theaters.

One has to admire Joel Cohen for adapting a very challenging Shakespeare play into a screenplay and shortening the story to try and fit it into almost 2 hours, but for me this is not enough to recommend as I would any normal movie.

The Rotten Tomatoes for this movie are a very high 93%, a rating I would agree with if it were an education class on acting, not a movie that is supposed to entertain an audience. This movie should be seen by big fans of Shakespeare, Denzel Washington or Francis McDormand – not for anyone who is looking for 2 hours of escape. Therefore I cannot recommend this movie, despite the fact that some Academy Award nominations might come from this film.