From Issue 9, March 2002:

Personal Drama – the genre of success

by Phil Parker

What do the following films have in common: The Full Monty, Trainspotting, East is East, Billy Elliot and Bend it Like Beckham? They were successful at the box office, won audiences world-wide and were made by UK film companies.  These films are the epitome of the much-vaunted UK talent base and the standard bearers for a new successful industry. They are the handful of UK films made in the last five years that have managed to do this.  So what makes them successful when nearly five hundred other UK films in the same period have failed? Phil Parker explains…

It has been common to hear the assertion that The Full Monty, Trainspotting, East is East, Billy Elliot and Bend it Like Beckham are, in that classic Hollywood phrase, ‘one-offs’ i.e. not a genre but unique dramas that have no common basis and therefore cannot easily be analysed or generically developed.  In a more informed corner, some people will discuss the idea that four of the named films are aspirational, as if giving a young person or group of unemployed men a goal which they ultimately achieve is sufficient to make a successful film.

The desire to copy success is strong in the film business and yet films of this type appear and disappear as if mere chance and the odd quirk of history make some of them a success.  However, I believe they have something more in common than their working-class settings and the trappings of aspiration, which allows them to reach large audiences and cross national boundaries.

The reasons for the success of these films are both understandable and reproducible as long as we understand that they belong to one genre and use elements of style and comedy in a particular way.  So what is the basis of this unrecognised genre that can span the tragic heroes of The Full Monty and Trainspotting, the dark comic twists of East is East and the celebratory optimism of Billy Elliot and Bend it Like Beckham?

Looking for a Theme?

Let us begin with the oft-asked question at the start of the development process: ‘What is it (the film) about?’ or more precisely ‘What is it really about?’  The answer is not a spelling out of the plot or even the main character’s dilemma – though the latter may well be acceptable for a pitching session – but the theme.

In this context, theme is not the subject of these films, e.g. how men cope with unemployment or changed sexual roles/aspirations in contemporary Britain, both of which contribute significantly to more than one of these films. The key concept of theme here is the emotional underpinning of the narratives: the direct link between the subject of the film and the raw emotions of its audience.

In this analysis, theme is about the emotional basis on which an audience is unconsciously involved in a film because the film addresses a major emotional need within the individual lives of the audience. Such themes range from the fear of death, through the desire for love, to the morality of the individual. The strength of this level of theme is its reflection of universal human experiences that gives the narrative an ability to transcend cultural and historical limitations and thus have the potential to be a worldwide cinema success.

Seeking Validation

In this context, all five films in the list share a common bond, namely the theme of validation, which can be found in numerous other successful films of the last decade including American Beauty, Raise the Red Lantern, Amores Perros and Central Station.

The desire for validation exists within most human beings as they seek to belong to their society/community and arises from the simple reality that every human being is unique. No one else will live exactly the same life as any other and we all experience life from our own unique perspective.  Given the unique quality of each person’s life, there arises the question ‘Am I getting it right?’  This leads to a desire for validation of individual choices in a communal context and also in the context of watching films, one of the most popular communal experiences of the modern world.

Seeing other individuals struggling to get it right and being validated in their choice is the basis for an audience seeking to experience validation in a narrative/cinematic context.  It is clearly seen in The Full Monty where a group of unemployed men are seeking other ways to validate themselves having lost the validation of work.   One of the key elements of modern life has been the change in the role of work within industrial societies. Shifts in manufacturing and the increasing employment of women across the globe have made the role of work a subject of major concern in audiences’ lives.  This is especially true of men who have been challenged, and in many cases lost, their traditional roles without a clear set of replacement values and roles.  It is the bringing together of these two issues: the changing role of men and women and the need for validation that makes The Full Monty so successful.

The Full Monty is thematically about validation and not just about the changing roles of men in society. What reinforces the theme of validation is the use of validation to underpin all the characters’ individual stories as well as the main plotline. Gaz (Robert Carlyle) seeks validation as a father to his son Nathan (William Snape); Dave (Mark Addy) wants to be seen as attractive and so wants to lose weight; Lomper (Steve Huison) wants validation as someone other than the son who looks after his domineering mother; Gerald (Tom Wilkinson) wants to be more than the provider for his wife; and Horse (Paul Barber) wants to show he has still has ‘it’, i.e. is still an attractive man etc.  The presence of these secondary stories all focused on validation in its various forms, helped contribute to the film’s success.

It is the reinforcement of the main plotline’s theme in the characters’ individual stories that contributes to the overall dramatic unity.  This in turn underpins the escalating drama of the film as it progresses towards the final strip show by emotionally returning to the desire for validation in every scene, no matter whose story is being followed.

Another significant contribution to the theme of validation is the presence of a community within which validation is being sought.  In The Full Monty this is largely the group of men but the strip show is also about being recognised by the community as a whole.  The collective nature of the narrative is also clearly identifiable in each of the other four films: Billy Elliot – the family/the mining community/dance community; East is East, Bend it Like Beckham – the family/community/team, and the group/society in Trainspotting.

Does this mean that the theme of validation is the key to cinematic success? Oh, if it were only that simple! Validation is one of the key themes that underpins the genre to which all these films belong and it is the genre – known as Personal Drama – that fundamentally underpins their success. 

Personal Dramas

Personal Drama is one of the most difficult genres in which to work and perhaps the least understood. In its various forms it has been a staple of worldwide cinema for a long time and includes the work of such writers and directors as Mike Figgis, Woody Allen and Spike Lee, as well as Billy Wilder and I A Diamond in films such as The Lost Weekend and Sunset Boulevard, to works by Salles, Kieslowski and Kurosawa.

Given this diversity of examples, it is obvious that there are many types of Personal Drama and the theme of validation is only one of the key elements in understanding how it works as a genre.  Unfortunately there is not enough space here to examine all the various types and I will therefore concentrate on one, the Communal Drama, which has been behind the success of recent UK films. However, here is a list of the types of Personal Drama evident in cinema today with a few examples to illustrate the key differences. (For a fuller explanation see Parker The Art and Science of Screenwriting.)

The types of Personal Drama are:

The Inner Drama e.g. The Lost Weekend, Fisher King, Raging Bull, Shine, Being John Malkovich and A Beautiful Mind.

The Domestic Drama e.g. My Life as a Dog, Short Cuts, American Beauty; Jean De Florette and Secrets and Lies.

Rites of Passage e.g. Stand By Me, The Year My Voice Broke, Muriel's Wedding and On Golden Pond.

The Communal Drama e.g. Raise the Red Lantern, A Short Film About Killing, Thelma and Louise and The Firm.

The Epic Drama e.g. The Battle for Algiers, Lawrence of Arabia, The Last Emperor, Schindler’s List, The Killing Fields and La Reine Margot.

Given this diversity, it may appear at first that the theme of validation is the only common element to be found within such a diverse set of films.  However, there are six other common elements that form the basis of all these works within the genre of Personal Drama. These include the presence of another theme – the desire for order – that is also found within this group of narratives.

Common Elements

The common elements of the personal drama are:

1. A thematic desire for validation or a desire for order.

The desire for order is possibly best exemplified in films concerned with small groups of people dealing with the chaos of a war situation, as opposed to the epic war drama, which tends to focus on validation.  However, both types of narrative are Personal Dramas. 

2. A single isolated protagonist (or group) who undergoes or attempts a major transformation of themself or their world.

The nature of this isolation is dependent on the type of Personal Drama genre.  In A Beautiful Mind it is the nature of the protagonist’s mind which isolates them, while in Gandhi it is the protagonist’s vision of the right way to live life which isolates him from his world.

3. A distinct world with which the protagonist is at odds.

The creation of a distinct world is common to many films but in Personal Dramas it is critical to understanding the nature of the narrative.  This has already been identified above in the discussion on the validation of the community/family/team etc.  The critical element is a value system against which the protagonist/s are either judging themselves or are judged, as opposed to simply the existence of a distinctive world as evident in films such as LA Confidential or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

4. The central character/s have one of two distinct story types as their motivational framework. These are ‘The Quest’, (note: not the Vogler/Campbell plot line!), or ‘The Character Who Cannot be Put Down’.

(For more see Parker The Art and Science of Scriptwriting.) This can be seen in Lester’s desire not to be loser in American Beauty, and Songlian’s desire to achieve and maintain first wife status in Raise The Red Lantern.

5. The dramatic structure has a linear framework although often an episodic form.

While in many contemporary films, particularly Thrillers and Horror films, the time frame is deliberately kept short, often a day or two, in Personal Dramas the action often takes place over weeks, if not months or years.  This necessitates the use of an episodic structure within the overall linear development of the plot.

6. The central character's dramatic arc is enormous compared with the changes within the characters of other genres.

The protagonists of Personal Dramas do not only solve a crime, or fall in love with someone, as in many Thrillers or Romantic Comedies. They fundamentally change who they are in the world, and change the world itself, and in some cases, they die in the process.

7. The dominant style is naturalism but expressionism is also commonly used.

The dominant naturalistic style of the majority of American movies is one of a heightened reality, while a more realistic naturalism is the dominant style of most Personal Dramas in European films, and Asian Personal Dramas tend towards the expressionist, a style that can be seen emerging in the UK in work such as Trainspotting.

Cont. in Issue 9