Using Devices Other Than Dialogue To Tell Stories

I always thought Charles Bronson looked a little like Alfred E. Neuman.

Been a while! 10 days into the new year and still trying to sort my shit out. This may be an occurring thing.
I re-watched a couple of films this week: Sergio Leone's One Upon A Time In The West (great title) And George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road (also great title). I've loved both these films since the first time I saw them, and it occurred to me that I liked them both for similar reasons, even though they are both very different types of films.

One Upon A Time In The West is called the best western ever made for a reason - it's an incredibly atmospheric, emotional and sweeping epic that feels very authentic on a technical level. The Morricone score is breathtaking and haunting, and furthermore, the story is very simple to follow. Surprisingly so. This is something Mad Max has in common.
Charles Bronson's cowboy may not be as compelling as Clint Eastwood's Man-With-No-Name, but similarly to that character, what he doesn't say tells you everything. This is because he communicates through actions and music. His harmonica is how he makes his presence known, a haunting whistle that lingers through the thick Arizona air. This is is a naturalistic sound, but it carries through to the score, and the final showdown really delivers on the reveal of his mysterious character, and even more mysterious motives.
What's interesting is how music in this film is used to explore character. Noticeable themes are the harmonica, the establishing shot of the town, and the introduction of  Cheyenne. Contrastingly, the opening credits has no music whatsoever, only a creaky station that foreshadows the harmonica. This is one of the most atmospheric openings to a film ever.

After something like a slow-as-hell Spaghetti Western, Fury Road really helps remind you that your heart is not just for emotions, but also for pumping blood through your fucking veins at 100 mph!
As hands-down my favourite film of 2015, it's a much louder movie than West. It's a much louder movie than most action films coming out in recent years. It's also a masterpiece.
One of the things that makes it stand head and shoulders above the rest is, again, the way it doesn't allow itself to use dialogue as an expositional crutch. Max has always been a seldom-speaking character, because he's always been more of a gateway for the audience into this crazy Aussie Wasteland. Sure, he ends up in the middle of a conflict, that is only resolved with his help, but in Fury Road he takes a back seat. He spends almost half the film with a muzzle anyway.
The star of the show is Imperator Furiosa. Not only is she super cool to watch in action scenes, but all we have to go on her character by are her actions and reactions to the danger and the world. When the entire film is a chase scene, there isn't time to explain. This means that the story and character development is very self explanatory through what the audience experiences, as opposed to what they are told. We learn that Furiosa is a well-prepared risk-taker, as she is a warrior who has custom-built a war rig. We learn that she is strategic and smart, making deals and alliances, and expecting other characters to know their way around weaponry and equipment. She has her own reasons for rebelling, but is aware that she needs the help of others. as long as they don't compromise her mission.
Nobody tells you any of this. Nobody briefs the pursuit mission at the Citadel to explain to others (us) who she is. Everything to do with the plot is shown not only using impressive visuals, but also through the music. There are entire segments of this film where you can feel the emotion as it cuts to each character, back and forth through the action and the focus. You get a real sense of the desperation Furiosa feels to escape Immortan Joe, and there's a real sense of what's at stake. There were way too many disappointing action films last year that fell flat because of convoluted stories, too many pointless characters, distracting and detached action scenes and generally treating the audience like a bunch of toddlers.
There are differences between easy-to-follow films and easy viewing: Transformers: Age Of Extinction was designed to let you switch your brain off while your own in-built sense of brand recognition fills the gaps, whereas Fury Road is easy to follow because it's focused and to the point. One completely dulls your senses, and the other grabs you by the balls and engages you on an emotional level. It's probably not going to get better than that in Hollywood for a long, long time. Apparently, they want to remake The Raid into an American adaptation - if you ask me, America already has their Raid, and it's Fury Road.

When panels don't move, it can be easy to rely on dialogue and narration to tell the story as early comics did. Not that there's anything wrong with dialogue, but sometimes the lack of text on a page allows the art to speak for itself. Also, dialogue is fucking hard to write.
I've found it hard not to use dialogue when I've written comics. Some of my strips don't use any, and they've mostly worked as jokes. Silent comedy is an art form all by itself. You wouldn't think that this kind of storytelling translates well to comics, a medium well known for it's...lack of movement. Though really, the idea is the same - comics rely on the relationship between panels, just as film relies on the relationship between 24 frames every second. The only difference is how pacing and rhythm are used to convey what you see and don't see.
Watchmen - one of the most visually complex and interesting comics ever written and drawn - shows how complex stories can be told without using any expositional dialogue. The entire book is pretty much one big exercise in different narrative structures. The Comedian's funeral is  a very clever scene as it establishes everyone's relationship with this character via flashbacks, as opposed to characters explaining it. Moore and Gibbons can't use music, so they used pacing within panels, clever layouts, and different sorts of prose to establish Comedian's character even though he is dead. By the time he is buried, we understand what kind of a person he was to others, and the further into the murder the characters explore, the further we understand his own tragic moral struggles.
Scenes involving Rorschach go through pages of no dialogue, meaning all we have to go on it the sequence of panels. It's relatively simple stuff, like searching rooms and grunting. But through changes in environment, framing and colour palettes, we're allowed to emerge ourselves into the world and the mystery. As a reader, you need to do your part and invest time into looking out for visual clues and cues, reading obituaries and biographies, news reports, case studies, and even a comic within a comic.


This kind of storytelling really allows the audience to experience the story, as opposed to listening to it. It seems to be a rare skill to be able to achieve such an experience, though perhaps as deadlines for publishing and wrapping up productions get shorter and shorter, it's harder for creators to recieve the amount of time needed to explore narrative. Things like The Simpsons in the 90's took ages to write and ages to animate. Now, it's a lot quicker to animate, meaning people expect the content to be finished quicker too. This unfortunately seems to mean that the writing suffers. I mean what story premise would you rather watch: 'Springfield Gets a Monorail', or yet another 'What-IF-Future-Simpsons' episode with superior animation? That's probably not a fair comparison as The Simpsons is in a TV format while the others are films, but the point still stands - the more time you put into developing a fluid and varied narrative, the more fulfilled the audience experience will be.