ABSTRACT
What is a character? Kinds, functions. Meanings of the term and implications for the nature of character. Actors and character. How a character “speaks” to a writer. “Naturalistic” characters (The Kid with a Bike). Inner contradictions (Rear Window, Three Colors Blue). Character as suspense (Wasp). Less conflicted characters (I, Daniel Blake, Happy as Lazzaro). Historical characters, those based on an actual person (Lincoln, Wolf Hall, The Loudest Voice, Steve Jobs, Temple Grandin, Once upon a Time in Hollywood, Mr Turner). Meta-historical characters (Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull’s History Lesson, Ragtime, Shakespeare in Love, Dickinson). Non-meta (A Quiet Passion). Auto-fictional characters. Character as mystery vs. god-like view of character. The director’s approach to this contradiction. Character in dramatic narrative. Action is character. Character is destiny. Character is contradiction (Vertigo, American Honey, Moonlight). Character and the unconscious. Character drives plot or plot drives character? The character breakdown. Main, principal, or primary characters. Secondary characters. Minor, or tertiary, characters. Protagonists and antagonists. Ensemble protagonists (Inglourious Basterds, Mustang). Heroes and villains. Humanization of villains. Monsters (The Silence of the Lambs). Anti-heroes (Purple Noon, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Dexter, M, American Psycho, The Sopranos). Non-hero/villain protagonists (One Week and a Day). Nature and function of secondary/minor characters. Superfluous secondary characters. The configuration of characters. Tragedy through a force of evil, through error or chance, through the characters’ positioning with respect to each other (One Week and a Day, Shoplifters, The Farewell, Rules of the Game, Nashville, Gosford Park). Characters in broad comedy (Dumb and Dumber, There’s Something about Mary, Mon Oncle). Characters in TV and franchises.
