The Write Stuff

While it should be clear by this point that most of the year's best screenplays were penned for small, indie films--and that is not an accident--there were a couple of big studio movies that also featured good writing. Akiva Goldsman's script for A Beautiful Mind certainly stood out from the typical Hollywood dross. A movie about schizophrenic mathematical genius John Forbes Nash Jr. could easily have fallen into disease-of-the-week platitudes, but Goldsman avoided affected piousness by conceiving the film as an unorthodox mystery story with a surprise kick. He may have simplified Nash's sexual life and his tortured marriage, but he found an ingenious strategy for dramatizing what schizophrenia might actually feel like to someone suffering from it. Goldsman also deserves credit for having created intellectual characters who sounded believable, an exercise that foils most Hollywood filmmakers. The performances by Russell Crowe and Jennifer Connelly have earned well-deserved accolades, but if they'd been reduced to uttering the banal blather that usually comes out of big-screen big-brainers, they'd never have had a chance.

I was also surprised and impressed by Training Day, a brutal action movie that has been justly praised for its stunning central performance by Denzel Washington as a satanic cop who's steeped in corruption. But Washington wouldn't be getting the praise without a boost from the script by David Ayer. Like such very different movies as In the Bedroom and Monsters Ball, Training Day benefited from Ayer's own firsthand experience. He grew up on the mean streets of South Central Los Angeles, and he seems to have an intuitive understanding of the complicated, decadent dynamics that connect cops, gang members and drug dealers in an unholy alliance. He also has an ear. The seductive, scatological monologues he wrote for Washington are brilliant. Apart from the dialogue that revs up Training Day, Ayer devised an intricate plot that unravels in one 24-hour period. Seemingly casual moments planted early on turn out to be absolutely crucial to the denouement. Most people assume that action movies are socked home by the director, the editor, the stunt coordinator and special effects team, but Training Day reminded us that good action movies also depend on complex characterizations, richly colloquial dialogue and well-structured stories.

Studios are wedded to tired formulas because they want to attract the broadest possible audience. Training Day and A Beautiful Mind were the rare exceptions among the big-budget, numbingly obvious Hollywood pictures of 2001. But let's be grateful for these and the other small miracles. After all, in a lackluster year, we were treated to a few screenplays that provided the foundation for some graceful, pleasingly mature screen entertainment.

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