Hyperdrama

Although particular filmmakers have been affiliated with hyperdrama— Luis Bunuel throughout his career, from Spain to Mexico to France—the genre is more often affiliated with humorists, such as Charlie Chaplin and the Marx Brothers. Modern Times (1936) is a fable about industrialization and its explicit tendency to mechanize and dehumanize. The many set-pieces in the film have an internal logic, but they are so fabulist in their content that realism is actually beside the point. A similar quality infuses the majority of Chaplin s work. 

At its heart, hyperdrama is a story told in service of a moral lesson. Character, plot, tone, all serve that overriding purpose. The moral lesson might be focused on personal behavior, for example. The main character in Bunuel s The Criminal Mind of Archibald Cruz is convinced that he committed a crime (murder) as a child. We know that he did not. However, he conducts his life and relationships in an aura of guilt and in the expectation that if he becomes too close to anyone, in a love relationship for example, he will again become a murderer. The moral lesson of Bunuel s film is that we are all prisoners of our childhood experiences, whether they are negative or positive. How useful or not this imprisonment is goes to the core of Bunuel s goal in this film. 

The engine at the heart of the hyperdrama is the moral lesson. This quality distinguishes the form from other genres. 

In melodrama, the main character provides the direct means to identify with the outcome of the narrative. In hyperdrama, identification with the main character is less important. The main character is only the means or vehicle for the narrative. Consequently, we experience the character more as an observer rather than the stronger role of participant. We view the main character s alienation and depression in Frankenheimer s Seconds, but do we feel deeply about his fate In a melodrama we would here we do not. We remain detached from Lauzon s Leolo, a young boy so alienated from his family that he creates a new identity (Italian instead of French-Canadian) rather than be identified with it. As he says, "I dream and therefore I am not [a member of this family]." He is detached, and so too are we. 

In Boorman s Excalibur we observe Arthur, the idealistic and cuckolded king, but we do not identify with him. We position ourselves far more easily with Merlin the magician, a man above the worldly and otherworldly goings-on of Excalibur. We understand, and even like, the character of Forrest Gump, but do we identify with him I think not. In hyperdrama, the main character is the important vehicle for the story, but no more than that. 

The journey is substantial, and therefore the amount of plot tends to be considerable. In a sense, the degree of plot in hyperdrama is so great that it makes the main character either a superhero or a "supervictim."... 

The tone of hyperdrama has to embrace both the ritualistic and the fantastic—the opposite of realism. Even the poetic tone of the Western is insufficient to capture the tone in hyperdrama. Hyperdrama is a form that simulates the children s fairy tale, and as such it has to be filled with an excess (without the pejorative connotations of the word) that embraces the fantastic. "Operatic" is a description that comes to mind "florid" is another. The key is essentially an over-the-top tone that allows a story to seem plausible in which anything goes. Ridley Scott s Legend is a good example of this "anything goes" tone, and so are Boorman s Excalibur, Schlondorff s The Tin Drum, and Frankenheimer s Seconds. 

In a sense, the tone of hyperdrama is as far from the realism of melodrama as you can imagine, plus a bit farther. Even the more formal examples of the style are over the top they have a greater aura of ritual than of anarchy. Kubrick s A Clockwork Orange, Herzog s Aguirre, the Wrath of God, and Von Trier s Breaking the Waves exemplify this dimension of tone in hyperdrama. 

The authorial voice is quite muted in melodrama and overarching in docu-drama, but in hyperdrama it is powerful and passionate. After all, the goal of hyperdrama is the moral lesson, with the main character the vehicle for that lesson. In fact, the goal of the writer in hyperdrama is to convey that voice despite the viewer s involvement with the story. That is not to say we do not care for Dorothy in The Wizard ofOz. Rather we are much more aware of the writer s views on childhood, play, and the importance of the imagination. At its heart, the film is about the importance of hope in a child s life this is what we take away from the experience of The Wizard of Oz. 

The writer views himself or herself as a moralist, exploring moral choices and issuing cautions or recommendations for how we the audience should proceed in the world. This is above all the goal of the writer in hyperdrama. In order to do so, the writer looks for the most elemental means—simplicity of character, a basic conflict, and an imaginative journey, which together will make the point for the audience. 

Because of the serious intent of the writer in hyperdrama, issues of the day have to be used in a particular way. 

As in the case of the earlier genres, it is useful to look at a few case studies in order to understand hyperdrama in a fuller sense. The two case studies we will use are Volker Schlondorff s The Tin Drum (1929) and John Frankenheimer s Seconds (1964). 

The Tin Drum has a great deal of plot, as one would expect in a hyperdrama. But it also has many character scenes. The character layer, however, is never developmental. Oscar is principally the child, and the adults seem transient in his world they exit, or they die. Only the grandmother provides any continuity for Oscar. 

There are many stories that can be framed in terms of a moral tale, but not every story can carry the excessive elements of hyperdrama. Stories that are factual, or too recent in terms of their relationship to a specific historical or cultural event, are difficult to render as hyperdrama. 

This, however, still leaves many options. Stories about children often lend themselves to the moral tale. They also lend themselves to excess and fantasy. A good example here is Peter Brook s Lord of the Flies. Novels such as Orwell s Animal Farm have their filmic equivalent in George Miller s Babe in the City. Stories about animals, such as the above mentioned, are naturals for hyperdrama. So too are stories set as fables. Even a film like Warren Beatty s Heaven Can Wait becomes hyperdrama when issues of birth, rebirth, angels, and Heaven become active elements of the narrative. Finally, stories about mythical figures or periods, such as Vincent Ward s The Navigator, work well as hyperdrama. In these stories, the characters are either archetypal or they are metaphors serving the moral tale that is at the heart of the narrative. 

Character in hyperdrama has to be a vehicle for the story rather than a source of identification for the viewer. We have to stand apart from the character. Consequently, it s not important that we care deeply about the character. But it is important for us to understand the character and why the individual does what he or she chooses to do. 

If you think of the story form of the fairy tale, it will help you fashion your story as hyperdrama. 

The story is narrated by someone. It is told as a cautionary tale, a life lesson, so that the child will see in the fate of the character a warning to him or herself. But that tale has to be told in such a way as to grip the child s imagination. Also, the resolution has to contain the message, the moral, and the reason for the telling. Always, the teller, the narrator, is outside the story (as we are), looking in. This is the approach so often used in children s fairy tales, and it is useful in conceptualizing a story in the hyperdrama form. 

Think for a moment of children s fairy tales—the stories of the Brothers Grimm, of Hans Christian Andersen, of noses that grow long when lies are told, of children too innocent or naive not to follow a pied piper—and you have the driving force behind the hyperdrama. The fairy tale is a life lesson, a moral tale wherein the moral is the driving force for the telling of the story. A narrator or storyteller takes us through the cautionary tale. 

The catalytic event provides the narrative with the elasticity it needs to make the moral lesson effective. Without it, the narrative would flatten or be too realistic for hyperdrama. 

The short film is actually a more natural form for hyperdrama. The long film, with its complexity of character and relationships, is more immediately compatible with realism. The short film, with its relationship to the short story, the poem, the photograph, and the painting, is a more metaphorical form, and thus it adapts easily to hyperdrama. 

The purpose of the narrative, a moral tale, dictates an imaginative, non-naturalistic treatment of the subject. This is the first observation we can make about hyperdrama and the short film. 

Plot is very important in hyperdrama. It provides the scale of the story. Unlike in other genres, it is critical to the success of the narrative. In the short film, the plot will have far more effect than character. The resulting sketchiness of the characters helps the metaphorical presentation of the narrative. 

The plot of The Story of the Red Rose is Sirah s search for a way to create a red rose. It involves a journey that leads her from love to self-sacrifice and death. The moral is implied that only through self-sacrifice and love can true beauty (the red rose) be created. As we expect in hyperdrama, the plot far outweighs the characterizations of Sirah, the scientist-human, and the Infanta. 

Hyperdrama requires such excess to assure the foregrounding of the moral (the voice of the author) over any identification with the character in the narrative. 

Perhaps the most we can say about these characters is to see them as obsessed, to understand their behavior as habitual (they reject themselves a good deal of the time), and consequently, to care about their fate, rather than to see ourselves in them. These observations make us curious as to the reasons for their desire and the consequent self-abnegation. Unlike in hyperdrama, where the character serves a moral purpose or goal, no such purpose is obvious for the characters in experimental narrative. They are abstract... 

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