MovieChat Forums > Spartan (2004) Discussion > God I love David Mamet

God I love David Mamet

posted 15 years ago by remembervhs
11 replies | jump to latest

No one makes movies like this. You cannot get 10 minutes into the movie without knowing it's a Mamet because of the dialogue and acting.

No other director cares this much about making dialogue sound like it sounds in real life. I see so many criticisms that the dialogue in Spartan is bad or the script is bad. The truth is that Mamet directs his cast to speak as realistically as I've ever seen since Ridley Scott's Alien.

Now, it's not perfect. People don't repeat themselves as plainly as Mamet has his actors. But it's that much more realistic than we usually get to see. Most movies today contain seamless bantering with no obscure or unclear lines. It's refreshing to see someone take a different approach.

Mamet is the only director with a signature that makes his movies worth watching completely ignoring the plot.

[–] IceboxMovies 15 years ago

I don't know if "realism" is a good way to describe his approach... this is, after all, hardly the way that people talk in real life. What I appreciate about Mamet's writing is that he is one of the few writers out there who has successfully invented a language of his own. As you say, it's hard to watch a Mamet-scripted film and not recognize that it's his own dialogue. Although, to be sure, there are some films he's written where you don't recognize it because he probably only wrote it for the money, as in the case of films like The Untouchables or Hannibal, which had screenplays that could have been written by anybody.

A lot of the stuff that the characters say in Spartan, like "Do you want a cigarette" and "Can you produce one?" doesn't sound very realistic, but I don't necessarily think that's what Mamet is trying to achieve. In his universe, characters talk in a classy, gritty way, as if they've been raised on Dashiel Hammett novels all their lives. It's always good to have a writer brave enough to use this kind of dialogue.

"What I want to know is how we're going to stay alive this winter."

[–] novtj 15 years ago

Hannibal was completely rewritten by steve zaillian, but mamet got credit because he wrote the first draft. So you can't really use that movie as an example of his writing style.

[–] tawdry_hepburn 15 years ago

I donno, "It seemed like a good idea at the time..." is one of my favorite Mamet lines.

,Said the Shotgun to the Head--
Saul Williams

www.myspace.com/ohhorrorofhorrors

[–] dante144 15 years ago

He is good, isn't he?

http://DanteDreams.com/ <-My webcomic
"Jesus saves, everyone else takes damage" -Tshirt

[–] WarpedRecord 15 years ago

I wish people in my life spoke like they did in Mamet's films (minus the f-bombs, though). Then I'd know what they were talking about instead of having to read between the lines.

Mamet's dialogue is like poetry – it has rhythm, rhyme and syncopation. I quit trying to follow the plot of this film (such as it was) quite early, but I didn't care because the characters seemed to know where the trail of the girl was leading. And what dialogue! I'd love to read this screenplay as a poem.

[–] denise1234 10 years ago

Val Kilmer said that it was one of the best scripts he has ever read ~

~~ The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means ~ ~ Oscar Wilde

[–] David_Blue 14 years ago

ffa01: "Actually I can usually spot a Mamet movie from the ridiculously unrealistic dialogue. No one (and I do mean no one) speaks like that in real life."

There are people who speak exactly like the Australian mercenary in real life.

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