With Locke, the
2014 Sundance & 2013 Venice Film Festival selection now screening
in select theaters, director Steven Knight (writer of Eastern
Promises and Dirty
Pretty Things) presents a
narrative experiment most filmmakers would dare not attempt outside
of the confines of film school. One location, one on-screen actor,
and a real-time narrative composed almost entirely of conversations
via telephone. Often such premises amount to mere gimmickry that end
up stumbling on their own limitations and fail to provide the
audience a narrative as satisfying as a traditional film. However,
considering its self-imposed limitations, Locke
is a rousing success: tense, compelling, emotional, and with more
than enough drama to make the audience forget they are doing little
more than staring at the face of the same actor for nearly ninety
minutes. Locke
provides an exceptional example for study by developing screenwriters
simply because, by stripping away all extraneous elements, Locke
puts front and center the raw skeleton that makes up an effective
dramatic narrative.
The setup:
Ivan Locke (Tom Hardy in a near one-man show) is a married father of
two on the eve of the most important project of his professional
career. Locke's single marital indiscretion comes back to haunt him
when he learns that the child he fathered on the one-night stand
seven months previous will be born that very night. Driven by a
commitment to personal responsibility instilled by the memories of
his own deadbeat father, Locke decides to drive straight to London,
putting both his family and his career at risk, so he might be there
when the child is born. On that eighty-five minute drive, Locke fights to
keep his entire life from unraveling through an endless series of
phone calls with his family, his work, and the mother of his new
child.
Locke presents a
noteworthy piece of storytelling in that by stripping itself of the
extraneous elements found in most cinematic stories, it exposes the
absolute essentials of a compelling cinematic narrative:
- An internally-conflicted character,
- a crisis,
- a commitment to a plan of action by the character in response to that crisis, and
- a constant supply of escalating hurdles the character must overcome to resolve the situation.
Structurally, the story is executed
through three narrative threads: a) Conversations to and from home in
which Locke confesses his infidelity and fights to keep his marriage
from falling apart. b) Conversations to and from his work partners in
which Locke tries to make certain the construction project in which
he has poured his heart and soul does not come to ruin. c)
Conversations to and from the soon-to-be mother of his new child, a
pitiful woman Locke does not love yet feels accountable for.
These three threads intertwine to
construct a single effective narrative for two reasons. First, all
three threads revolve around the shared theme of personal
responsibility.
Second, the execution of these
threads collectively follow a simple and essential structural pattern
that every screenwriter should recognize and emulate. To explain:
In my book Screenwriting Down
to the Atoms, as well as articles on this blog, I use a Frankenstein analogy to describe the
story structure found in the traditional feature film, particularly
as used in Acts 2A & 2B. (Read the original article HERE) Over the
first half of the story, the protagonist takes well-intended actions
in an attempt to ameliorate the story problem. But, in the process, his
or her actions only end up making the situation worse. The
protagonist unwittingly creates a monster. (Or a “monstrous
situation,” if that makes it easier.) At the story's midpoint, the
monster comes to life, putting the protagonist's fate in far greater
peril than it was in before. Over the second half of the story, the
protagonist must fight back against that monster and defeat it if he
or she ever hopes to rise above it in the end to achieve the Story
Goal.
Ivan Locke
begins his story trying to do the right thing. He wants to act
responsibly towards his wife, his job, and the mother of his new
child. Of course, the reactions Locke receives to his actions could
not be farther from his ideal wishes. People react in ways that make
the situation worse. Locke tries to respond, but this only triggers
more reactions which aggravate things further. When watching the
film, note that for every phone call Locke makes or receives, ONE
thing (and one thing ONLY) is added to the mountain of sh*t Locke
finds himself being buried under. This, my friends, is what we call
escalation. In every good story, the story problem, as threatening as
it may seem, seems fairly simple in the beginning. But then, as
characters act and react, the problem grows and complicates into an
increasingly monstrous situation. Finally, the weight of the mountain
becomes too heavy for Locke to bear. He must become proactive and
fight back. He must find a way out of sh*t mountain. But the monster
he has created is a vicious beast, and continues to throw
complication after complication Locke's way. With these complications,
Locke must continue to summon all his strength and battle through.
Though Locke does not receive a perfect happy ending, he is rewarded
for his efforts with a personal victory that makes his struggle
against the monster worthwhile.
This is the same story
structure found in any tense, well-plotted film. Every major event
adds one more complication to the story situation, continually
developing and escalating the original premise into an increasingly
complex situation. The plot buries the protagonist under a mountain
and then forces the protagonist to fight their way out. Through the simple
method of one complication per phone call, Locke
successfully produces a steadily-evolving and structurally-sound narrative, creating compelling drama from the most confined of
premises.
