Low Budget

Stand By Me and The Telling Detail

I'm about two thirds through watching Stand By Me, and I have yet to get into it. There is a point, watching a movie, when we suspend disbelief and accept the movie on its terms. Sometimes this point is helped by good movie-making, sometimes it is done just because there seems to be so much fun going on. Sometimes we just do it to ourselves. Stand By Me has always been mentioned to me as a really good movie, so I was prepared for something much better.

Stephen King is a master of the telling detail. The telling detail, when you are reading a story, is that little nugget the author throws in to tell you that there is a genuine experience behind what you are reading. Maybe it's the way Cracklin' Oat Bran slowly turns to mush at the bottom of your cereal bowl. It relates your experience viscerally to that of the character in whom you are asked to believe. Nobody piles these on faster than Stephen King.

But, in the movie, this pile of telling details achieves near worshipful stature. We see so many boyhood rituals, each one probably true, that we begin to see the four boys as an IDEAL boyhood. In fact, we get the sense that the boys are acting out an idealized memory an adult might have of the event. This slant could be workable, given that the story is being narrated by an adult. However, there are no indications of "unreliable narration". We appear to be given omnipotent flashbacks, not something cleaned up. So the excess of true details becomes untrue.

posted by dan @ 1/26/2005 11:29:00 AM