One more quote from Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez, whose new film “Babel” I haven’t seen yet but am looking forward to. In his interview in Venice magazine, this is what he says about dialogue (and maybe it’s no accident that apparently he and the film’s writer, Guillarmo Arriaga have been having some differences lately):
“Now, I have to say that, for me, I don’t really care too much about words. Cinema is a visual medium. And obviously good dialogue can reveal a lot about the characters, but the characters are what they do, not what they say. In my experience with actors, once you find the right emotion, once you set up the right emotion, and then you have the objective of that scene and what the character wants and how he wants to achieve it, the actors just add the words. It doesn’t matter if they make a mistake with one word, the emotion will be there. The emotion is like a huge river going into the ocean and the words are like little boats that will be floating wherever you want. The hard part isn’t about the words and language, the hard part is understanding the emotional range. The words I don’t give too much of a damn about as long as I felt it in my heart.”