My wife and I are both sharp, intelligent people and quite capable of following a complicated Shakespeare play at the theatre.
Somehow though, it has now become de rigueur for directors to try to confuse their viewers. I have lost count of the films and series which we have had to abandon because, by the third episode we cannot fathom the plot. This is hardly helped when episodes are a week apart.
Twenty to twenty-five years ago, we had a lengthy phase of actors who mumbled their lines. This was considered to be 'most artistic - authentic, even'.
Happily, this disappeared for a couple of decades but is now back with a vengeance and there is much more besides. The list below cannot be accidental:
1) Scenes with fuzzy bodies moving around in near total darkness.
2) Actors who resemble each other - with the same kind of clothing, hair colours and styles to (deliberately?) make identification nigh on impossible.
3) Actors who appear for twenty seconds in Episode One, never to be seen again until Episode Four. You are expected to know instantaneously who they are - otherwise, you lose the plot.
4) Whilst the great directors of the past helped you to follow the plot - the modern idea seems to be to ensure that you do not.
5) Extraneous and trivial characters are seemingly added who either ensure that you cannot follow their role - and yet, are vital to the story-lines.
6) Extravagantly convoluted plots.
7) Calculated efforts to mislead the viewer.
8) Music so loud that it extinguishes the dialogue.
Strange how we can follow all of the older films without difficulty and with much poorer soundtracks.
