A Few, Slightly Random Thoughts on Communication

I've been a fan of Richard Linklater from the first surreal moments of Waking Life. I've been wanting to see "Before Sunset" for a long time now, and yesterday, I happened to wander past it at the CD Warehouse. Now I know, for any filmmaker, watching a film in 4:3 full screen is close to blasphemy, and VCD quality is hideous, but it didn't matter.

I haven't been entranced by a film in a while, and it was a great feeling. Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke travel through joy and awkwardness to anger and the stripping away of pretense; all in 77 minutes of non-stop dialog. It's even cooler to watch when you know that the actors, along with Linklater wrote the script together, collaborating mostly by email. And as is usual with a Linklater script, there are some pretty heady ideas thrown into the mix, but there's is a careful attention to human speech, and the conversation very rarely feels unnatural.


I really don't mean to review the film though; it, along with Rebecca Miller's heartbreaking and bittersweet The Ballad of Jack and Rose got me thinking about communication. The tension of The Ballad is created by the lack of communication, perhaps created by the fear that there were no words to describe the need characters felt. I'd like to think of myself as a good communicator, but so often I feel like I have nothing to say. And even if I do, it is with all the wrong words, though I have been improving lately. But when I write, I feel like everything generally works together just the way I want it.

I started weaving a story, just for fun, in my mind, about a couple who have completely given up on verbal communication, relying on the written word for everything. They discovered years ago that it was so easy to misunderstand speech, but through writing, they can easily convey their deepest emotions, their anger, their pain, their love, their deepest romantic feelings.

It would be sad, I think, but I wonder if, in a way, it would be more fulfilling...I suppose it might be more peaceful, less confusing. I feel like I can express myself, my inner self only through writing. It seems like when I talk, a lot of me gets lost in translation; lost in the conversion from firing synapses to thick and leaden and confused tongue.