May 24, 2023: Great American Screenplays: Affliction and A Simple Plan

[I hadplanned to feature this week a pre-Memorial Day serieson blockbuster films. But with the ongoing and very necessary WGAstrike, I’ve decided to share instead a handful of older posts which havefocused on films with particularly perfect screenplays. I’d love your thoughtson these as well as your nominees for other great screenplays and writing—in anymedium—for a crowd-sourced weekend post of solidarity!]

On winter’s and America’s possibiliities and limits in two dark andpowerful films.

When you think about it, snow andthe American Dream have a lot in common. (Don’t worry, I’m not talking aboutrace. Not this time, anyway.) Both are full of possibility, of a sense ofchildlike wonder and innocence, conjuring up nostalgic connections to ourfamilies and our childhoods as well as ideals of play and community and warmth(paradoxical for snow I know but definitely true for me—snow always makes methink of hot chocolate and fires in the fireplace). Yet as we get to be adults,both also suggest much more realistic and limiting and even threateningdetails, of dangerous conditions and losses of power and the cold that can setin if we can’t afford to heat our home. And once we have kids of our own, the coexistence of those twolevels is particularly striking—seeing their own excitement and innocenceand thorough focus on the possibilities, and certainly sharing them, but alsoworrying that much more about whether we can get them through the drifts, drivethem safely where they need to go, keep them warm.

 I might be stretching the connection to itsbreaking point, but the link might help explain why so many films that explorethe promises and pitfalls of the American Dream seem to do so amidst asnow-covered landscape. Near the top of that list for me are twocharacter-driven thrillers from the late 1990s: Paul Schrader’s Affliction (1997) and Sam Raimi’s A Simple Plan (1998). Both are basedon novels—the former a work of literary fiction by the late great RussellBanks, the latter a page-turning thriller by ScottSmith—but both, to my mind, are among those rare examples of films thatsignificantly improve upon the source material; partly they do so throughamazing screenplays (Smith interestingly wrote the screenplay based on his ownbook, and I would argue changed it for the better in every way), but mostlythrough inspired and pitch-perfect casting: Afflictioncenters on a career-bestperformance from Nick Nolte, but his work is definitely equaled by JamesCoburn (in an Academy-Award winning turn), Sissy Spacek, Mary Beth Hurt, andWillem Dafoe; while Simple is trulyan ensemble piece, with BillyBob Thornton and Bill Paxton both doing unbelievable work but greatcontributions as well from Bridget Fonda, Brent Briscoe, Chelcie Ross, and GaryCole. And in both, again, the snowy setting—small-town New Hampshire in Affliction, small-town North Dakota in Simple, but they might as well be nextdoor—is a central presence and character in its own right.

The multiple, interconnectingplot threads of both films are complex, rich, and intentionally suspenseful andmysterious, and I’m most definitely not going to spoil them here. But I willsay that both are, at heart, stories of the dreams and weaknesses, the idealsand failures, that we inherit from our parents, and how as adults (andespecially perhaps as adults struggling with the responsibilities of family andparenthood) we try to live up to and beyond the dreams and ideals but arepulled back by and ultimately risk becoming ourselves the weaknesses andfailures. It is perhaps not much of a spoiler either (just look at the titles!)to note that both films, while offering their characters and audiences glimpsesof possibility and hope, bring them and us to extremely bleak final images,worlds where the snow storms may have passed but where the silence andlifelessness they have left behind are all we can see and all we can imagine.And both do so, most powerfully, by bringing their protagonists back to theirchildhood homes, sites (in these cases) at one and the same time of those mostinnocent ideals and of some of the strongest influences in turning those idealsinto something much darker and colder.

When it comes towintry or especially holiday fare, these two definitely aren’t It’s a Wonderful Life, which certainlyconnects its own bleakmiddle section very fully to a world of snow and storm but which of course ends with its protagonist inthe warmest and most hopeful possible place (and in a home that has becomeagain the source of such ideals). But either could make a pretty evocative snowday double feature with that equally great film of the American Dream and itslimits. Nextgreat screenplay tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other great screenwriting you’d nominate?