I recently saw the “Jesse James” film starring Brad Pitt. It looks fantastic and Pitt, Casey Affleck and all the others do a terrific job. So why is the movie so annoying? It’s the voice-over. Leaving aside its pretentious tone, half the time it’s telling us things we are seeing on the screen.
I know the picture has a lot of fans and there are aspects of it I really liked, but that voice-over drove me nuts and several friends said it really bothered them, too.
The moral of the story isn’t that you shouldn’t use voice-overs but that if you do use them, they should add something that the viewer can’t get from what's on the screen.
Also, consider the fact that we like to figure things out, so telling us everything isn’t necessarily a good idea. For a brilliant example of leaving things for the audience to fill in themselves, see the film “Savages.” It’s a bit grim but beautifully written and for days afterward leaves you thinking about what wasn’t spelled out.
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