I really didn’t understand “tone” until I started directing. It’s not something you would calculate as a casual moviegoer. When I went to the theaters, I wasn’t concerned about the balance between realism, stakes, humor, pain, or the character’s arcs. The film was either good or not, believable or not, fun or not, painful or not, realistic or not.
As a filmmaker, I pay attention to tone, I clock the cocktail of elements in a film like Little Odessa and how it translates to the screen, the budget, and the business model. Certain films with characters, emotions, stakes, and an ending like Little Odessa where every one you love dies are labeled “difficult”.
When you direct a "difficult” film, the budget is lower, you have to grind out your days, you pray to go to festival, and hope that you may one day sell your film at a loss with back end to some distributor that promises your film will be seen. The best possible scenario is that other studios and producers watch your film, believe in your talent, bless you with a bigger budget, and off you go into the rest of your career. Then, if you were able to negotiate enough back end on your film, people will then go back and discover your first film in a Criterion Closet.
Let’s call this genre of film Russian-Jewish Brooklyn Mob Cinema. On the far left side where the tone is realist and the stakes are excruciatingly high I’d put Eastern Promises, Little Odessa, and The Yards. James Gray is the Don Dada of this shit and these films have zero comedy and painful endings, while presenting a bleak view of existence from the POV of the immigrants in the Brighton Beach-Coney Island area.
To the left of center, I’d place Anora.
While it follows the plot structure of a film like Pretty Woman, it doesn’t have a happy ending, the POV is heightened for laughs at times and the working woman’s dilemma is softened for the audience’s pleasure in moments, but I’d say it is decidedly bleak. The film’s characters aren’t always aware it’s bleak and the film doesn’t bemoan that it’s bleak, but all the pieces are there for the audience to put it together and there are specific moments like the ending where the person we viewed as a “decent guy” the entire film ends up committing the ultimate sin.
I would argue that Anora is the most critically successful film in this genre considering it swept the major categories at the Oscars last year. For the academy at least, it hit the perfect balance of realism, humor, and a propulsive plot.
When I first started writing, I would just put myself in the mind of the main character, I would scribble a list of locations/scenes, and let them play it out. Nowadays, I think about genre, tone, and where on the spectrum a film needs to sit for it to be financed. Otherwise, I just have a fire script that never gets to leave my computer.
But tuesday night, I sat down for Caught Stealing and was thoroughly impressed.