"I really think the biopic thing so rarely works, because people's lives don't have a dramatic shape that can be satisfying"
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Bill Condon's quote provides an important point of view on biopics, suggesting that they typically stop working to provide an engaging narrative. His observation depends upon the principle that realities normally do not have the neat, significant arcs that are important for storytelling. To unload this, one needs to consider the essence of storytelling itself: stories generally are constructed to include a beginning, a middle, and an end, typically featuring a clear conflict, climax, and resolution. This structure, although somewhat simple, supplies a psychological and intellectual fulfillment to audiences.
On the other hand, real lives are unpleasant, non-linear, and frequently without clear resolutions. People's experiences are filled with contradictions, unsettled tensions, and continuous struggles. As such, translating these into a film's fairly limited time frame of 2 or 3 hours presents a noteworthy challenge. Filmmakers are frequently required to select specific events and characteristics to stress while leaving out others, leading to a representation that can oversimplify or misshape complicated facts. This selective storytelling may serve the story, however it can likewise misrepresent the person's real life, reducing multi-faceted human lives into formulaic plot gadgets or stereotypes.
What Condon points out is that in pursuit of the traditional remarkable shape, the biopic category may jeopardize credibility and fact for the sake of drama. This produces a stress in between historic precision and interesting storytelling. In essence, the movie might focus on captivating the audience over consistently depicting the subtleties and complexities of a genuine person's life.
Furthermore, Condon's critique discreetly means an audience's desire for neat stories that culminate in neat resolutions-- a yearning that reality hardly ever satisfies. Biopics frequently attempt to meet this narrative expectation, which can inherently make them more fiction than reality. Hence, if a filmmaker desires to represent a life in all its multi-layered truths, they must find innovative narrative strategies that embrace, rather than flatten, the complexities of human presence.
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