DIRECTING DIALOGUES
I believe a film is a transformation of one man’s vision into a thousand men’s criticism. And the step where a director starts directing his/her dialogues to an actor is the first intervention of a second mind. What you want as a director is to be performed by another person. So the translation of thoughts has to be very precise and in its purest form. And the actor at the receiving end must have that same psyche to understand it. Most importantly it has to repeat correctly a thousand times throughout the entire process of the filmmaking, so as to get the closest of what the director had thought of.
So directing dialogue is very crucial and most importantly the actor must grab what the director does not only want you to understand but also want you to feel and read in-between the lines. Everything cannot be expressed in words. As an actor, we must feel, sense and react to some unspoken words as well. And if you successfully do it, you get a ‘wow’ from the director, and then you know that you both are connecting beyond words. That is why directors choose to repeat some actors in some vital roles, simply because they connect with each other, beyond words.
Secondly, I believe the notion of taking pauses in dialogues in new age Indian cinema is very badly managed. There are exceptions, as always but we are so much into visual drama, with overpowering musical effects that we don’t feel like putting in effort in dialogues and its delivery. I remember I read an article where Satyajit Ray was asked how he direct dialogues? And I would like to quote his lines, he said.
“All actors are afraid of pauses because they can’t judge their weight. So with Sharmila Tagore in The World of Apu, I would say — “Well, you stop at this point and then resume when I tell you to resume.” So she would just stop and look at a certain point that had been previously indicated, and then I’d say — “Yes, now go on,” and she would resume. So the pauses would be there as I would need them. Otherwise, actors are terribly afraid of pauses, and it’s only the greatest professionals who know the real strength, the power, of pauses. For all non-actors and for inferior professionals, they just can’t judge pauses at all. For me, pauses are very important: something happening, waiting for the words, and when the words come you have that weight. So the pauses have to be worked out constantly.
Once he has memorized the line, it’s the hardest thing for an actor to make it sound as if he is thinking and talking rather than just mouthing lines. Sometimes there are certain words that don’t come easily. You must have the pause before a certain word. Not everybody is a linguist with a great command of vocabulary, so you have to vary it with actors, and those pauses are very significant. Sometimes you just can’t think of a word so you just hesitate, you see, and somebody else supplies it for you. So my dialogue is written like that, with a very plastic quality, which has its own filmic character, which is not staged dialogue, not literary dialogue. But it’s as lifelike as possible, with all the hems and haws and stuttering and stammering.”
I believe a good director is also a good teacher. A teacher does not always mean that he will teach you a lesson. The capability of explaining something adequately is also an important attribute of a teacher. So a director who can explain, or shall I repeat a director who can resettle himself and his thoughts into the skin of his actor is going to get the best culmination.
