Wednesday

Text messages in films are becoming increasingly more common. What do you think of them? When it is required of the plot for a character to read anything – a letter, an email, a sign – the whole momentum of the film seems to slow down. Only very occasionally does it work – when the thing being read is so important that we are carried through it quickly. Most of the time they are quite an obstacle, especially when the film-maker decides to have the message read aloud, by the character (internally or aloud), by a narrator, or worst of all by the person who wrote it. Often such recitals get in the way of the film’s style, or the character’s naturalism. I don’t really see a remedy, however. Text messages, and mobile phones, are integral to the latest Bond film from the first scenes to the last. They are a new device opening up a whole new range of scenarios to the film-maker. For me, there is still something a little strange about James Bond reading a text message, but maybe that’s just me. (More to be said about this later concerning the film The Prestige.)