Never Tell Me The Odds

The Major in the Minor:

Someone said somewhere that God is in the details. I've always tried to understand the significance of what that means. I'm not sure if I do, but I keep trying... When I think of a particular story, certain minor details, the presence or lack of which does not have a direct impact on the actual denouement of the story, interestingly enough, surface in my mind as its defining moments. To me these minor details have assumed an iconic status to such a degree as to have ingrained themselves in my mind and become impossible to be dissociated from the bigger picture of the story they are part of.

These minor details usually have to do with character specifics -- of a person or a place. Or, with a particular choice of storytelling style.

In Alfred Hitchcock's suspense classic "Psycho", Arbogast, the private detective, finds out during his interview with Norman Bates that the latter lied to him about the missing girl, Marion, checking in the motel. Arbogast points to the motel guest book and produces a sample of the girl's handwriting matching that of a recent log, signed under a different name. Norman feigns feeble memory and laments the difficulty of keeping track of time when one is stuck taking care of an out-of-the-way motel such as this one... Displaying surprise bordering on disbelief, he cranes his neck in a bird-like fashion over the guest book to inspect Marion's entry while vigorously chewing gum. In the background an ominous predatory stuffed bird hangs from the wall, a silent observer of Bates's twisted little game...

In Alexandre Dumas's relentless tale of revenge "The Count of Monte Christo", the much wronged and long-suffering Edmond Dantes, who has returned in the disguise of the mysterious and exotic titular character to exact vengeance on his old enemies, is depicted as someone who never eats in the presence of others even when he hosts lavish dinner parties, especially if some of the guests fall into the former category. Dumas goes out of his way to point out this eccentricity of the Count's... It is a minor detail which however defines the character's theme best, thus becoming essential in retrospect. This singular character choice speaks volumes about the Count's determination, borderline misanthropic mistrust and all-consuming hunger for revenge...

In Brian De Palma's prohibition era crime drama "The Untouchables", it is Al Capone's right hand gangster and executioner Frank Nitti's immaculate and stylish white suit (designed by Giorgio Armani) which is symbolically at odds with the nature of his character -- a vile, slippery, arrogant and murderous villain, generally the type that an audience can't wait to watch him plunge to a horrible death; especially, after he kills the old cop, Jim Malone, and brags about it to the latter's friend and colleague, Eliot Ness, who has just arrested him in a rooftop chase... No doubt, as everyone will agree, any great villain who can deliver a slimy line such as "...your friend died screaming like a stuck Irish pig. Now you think about that when I beat the rap" deserves to wear something really sharp before getting pushed over from a tall building...

In Homer's timeless tale of adventure and enduring love "The Odyssey", the clever but unlucky Odysseus gets trapped with some of his men in the cave of a blood-thirsty, man-eating, one-eyed giant Cyclops, who can't really be reasoned with as he yields the power of life and death over our protagonist and his comrades. Odysseus perceives the gravity of the situation and knows he has to buy more time for him and his men. He tries to outwit the Cyclops, who is far from being an intellectual match for our hero, by entertaining him with wine and clever talk. Amused, the Cyclops promises Odysseus a present and asks him about his name. The latter, having figured out the inebriated giant's intellectual capacity, replies "My name is Noman." The Cyclops's present: a promise to Odysseus to be the last one eaten from his party... Later, Odysseus and the remaining men blind the giant in his sleep. The latter, in his pain makes so much noise that he wakes up other Cyclopses in the neighborhood, who come around outside his cave to inquire if any man is trying to kill him. The blind and raging Cyclops yells back that Noman is trying to kill him. They take him for mad and go back to their caves... It becomes clear that Odysseus has cleverly been setting up the Cyclops for his comeuppance. Here, the sense of triumph of the intellect over brute force is amplified by the cleverness of Odysseus's humiliating punishment of the evil Cyclops...

In one of the final scenes of Roman Polanski’s taut psychological horror “Rosemary’s Baby”, a paranoid and distraught Rosemary, in a Vidal Sassoon short hair style, clutches a particularly big kitchen knife and mutters to herself as she walks down a hallway in her apartment... The size of the knife in her hand is in contrast with her fragile and unhealthy skeleton-like figure. It emphasizes the disturbing effect of her emaciation...

In another Hitchcock movie, the romantic thriller "Rear Window", Grace Kelly's character, Lisa Fremont, is introduced as she sneaks up and kisses the napping Jefferies, Jimmy Stewart's voyeuristic photographer, who with a broken leg is confined to a wheel chair by his window. The shot of Lisa bending down to kiss Jeff is processed in an unusual way that gives it the feel of slow motion... The effect is that the moment of the kiss becomes beyond erotic. It somehow manages to make their relationship more nuanced for us in a few seconds...

In Roman Polanski's bleak neo-noir film "Chinatown", the protagonist, private eye J.J. Gittes, in the course of snooping around, gets a nasty cut on his nose as a warning to mind his business. From the next scene on, J.J. Gittes struts around with a nose bandage for a good portion of the rest of the movie... The symbolism of the nose bandage in Gittes's case is clear. Gittes is someone who pokes his nose in other people's business and suffers for it, but he's not about to hide, in fact he gets a certain pleasure making a defiant display out of it, for everyone to see: He's just trying to make an honest living...

In Hitchcock's classic movie of romance and suspense "North By Northwest", our protagonist, Roger Thornhill, has to escape from a hospital room where he's locked against his will. The only way out is through the window which is several stories high. He has to walk down the outside ledge, avoid falling to his doom, use the next door window to get in and exit through that room. As Roger steps into the room, however, the patient bedding in there, a young and attractive woman, who happens to be nearsighted, hears him enter and awakes. As she turns on the light, she screams in terror: "Stop!" Then she puts on her glasses to have a better look. Roger is unperturbed and moves on towards the exit. Once the woman sees how handsome Roger is (Oh, my god, it's Cary Grant!), and that he is on his way out, she repeats: "Stop" -- only this time her tone is quite different. She sounds inviting and swooning, willing to make up for her initial silly mistake... Roger replies on his way out: "Eh-eh-eh!" And with that, he jokingly acknowledges the gravity of her mistake as if he's just caught her in some unforgivable act...

In Stanley Kubrick's black comedy "Lolita", it is Quilty's ping-pong antics with which he barrages the homicidal Humbert Humbert while the latter desperately attempts to get him to understand who he is and why he is about to murder him, that introduce the character of the former as a manic prankster who views everything as some sort of a cartoonish game. Even in the gravest of circumstances Quilty loves to toy around with people and pull their strings regardless of the effect that may have on them... To him, people are just like the characters in one of his plays, easy to manipulate into dramatic dilemmas that can be viewed in comedic terms. Well, that is until Humbert Humbert goes bonkers and zeros in on him. Now the prankster must pay...

In Steven Spielberg's "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom", the titular character and his sidekick, Short Round, get trapped inside a "squash room" with the ceiling slowly coming down. To rescue them, the character of the showgirl, Willie, who's on the outside, must reach into a crevice full of bugs in order to pull the lever that will stop the ceiling from crushing the heroes... When she finally overcomes her utter disgust and reaches in, her hand disappears into a mass of swarming insects. We know this character has just achieved some sort of an arc...

Regardless of a story’s impact and endurance in the collective consciousness of our culture, there are certain minor details about it that in our minds encompass the essence of its characters or the storyteller’s style. In retrospect, these minor details are of importance, but by calling them “minor” I only want to convey their lack of immediate influence over the course and resolution of the story. These minor details tend to be distinguishable on a subjective level. In a particular story, the minor details that define it for you may very well be different from those that define it for me. But they are there, waiting to be found by you and me...

# posted by Luben : 11:00 PM