I keep thinking of one scene in The Shape of Water, and I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere, so maybe we see what we want to see. It's when the car salesmen talks to (not with) Michael Shannon. The crispness and repetition is undeniably influenced by David Mamet. When that unequivocally stands out, what does that say about the rest of the movie?
In this era of the latest Avengers blockbuster, which was preceded by Black Panther (and deservedly so apparently), you see an emulation that's really a salute to dialogue master Mamet. He's a distinctive voice, especially when it comes to movie dialogue. Recall when Jack Lemmon said he liked the screenplay of Glengarry Glen Ross better than the play, as did I. Or, there's the dialogue of The Insider, by Eric Roth and Michael Mann. Whatever the effects, I don't hear many movies quoted these days. The reasons why must be many. Maybe it's the swarm of effects. Maybe the rapid-fire scenes that aren't reduced to their essence. Or, best guess, we're so caught up in mass-market commodities on such a grand scale, we all stream or see so many different things that we don't really connect through the movies anymore. The short conversation usually starts and soon stops with, "Have you seen that?"
In this era of the latest Avengers blockbuster, which was preceded by Black Panther (and deservedly so apparently), you see an emulation that's really a salute to dialogue master Mamet. He's a distinctive voice, especially when it comes to movie dialogue. Recall when Jack Lemmon said he liked the screenplay of Glengarry Glen Ross better than the play, as did I. Or, there's the dialogue of The Insider, by Eric Roth and Michael Mann. Whatever the effects, I don't hear many movies quoted these days. The reasons why must be many. Maybe it's the swarm of effects. Maybe the rapid-fire scenes that aren't reduced to their essence. Or, best guess, we're so caught up in mass-market commodities on such a grand scale, we all stream or see so many different things that we don't really connect through the movies anymore. The short conversation usually starts and soon stops with, "Have you seen that?"
