How Spielberg shows intimacy instead of telling us about it

Watching the scene (above) from Wonder Woman 1984, I am filled with a sense of dread.

This is a classic example of telling verses showing.

The entire conversation is a mixture of Diana complimenting her counterpart:

“You are so funny!” “You’re so versatile!”

And from her friend, “You’re so popular, you just have to be!”

Yet nothing of substance is coming from the conversation. No depth, no connection, no subject matter other than empty compliments and offhanded, strange, evocative observations of each other’s character or personal life that neither of them could know(as they barely know each other). Just, “You are so funny!” But there are no jokes to back it up. Just, “You are so versatile!” Yet no actions or stories to back it up. It’s baseless and feels stale because it is stale—-and I do not blame the actors. It is the writing and the directing I blame 100%.

I am all for female to female empowerment through compliments and lifting each other up with unconditional friendship and support—- but this is pandering and feels more like the quickest and easiest way to build a connection to someone the plot needs her to be close to.

With Steve and Diana’s relationship, it was much more natural. They were both wary of one another at first, building their trust and friendship up with conversations, jokes, fighting together—-real hard work, not just baseless compliments that made no sense in reality.

I’ll quote one of the best in the business when it comes to writing free flowing, natural sounding dialogue.

Quentin Tarantino is the king of writing dialogue that feels more like you and your friends chatting in your living room than anything in a movie—-and that’s why it works. It’s not just one character saying how they admire such and such a quality about another… it’s someone showing their character to each other by their actions and how they think and feel. How the character becomes independent and their own person as they react to the other person’s ugly truths and bad habits… not just the pretty stuff that is nice to talk about on screen.

Let us segue to writer and director legend Steven Spielberg.

I will go into two quality dinner scenes that evoke a sense of true intimacy and a sense of the true dynamics of every single person’s relationship with one another—-their role in that family or group, and how they fit or don’t fit.

The way the conversation ebbs and flows naturally into something that is slowly more and more real—-a family situation that diverged and fractured them apart(their father in Mexico), and how the children divert into childish and even adult language to express their fears and frustrations—-it is truly a work of art. This is how you show family dynamics in a real, intimate way without being manipulative and overdone.

And this amazingly tense and quiet scene from the brilliant film Jaws:

The way Quint is the star of the show in this scene sets up his ultimate demise in a slurry of shadow and character development that is very subtle and also a little ironic—-a sad end for a man who carried bombs off only to swim with sharks and survive—only to meet his end trying to make his fortune trying to end big old Jaws. The close ups and the ways the other characters are out of focus show the dynamics of the group, and the jokes are funny yet likens with something sinister that feels like something bad is on the way.

Everyone is too calm. Everything is too quiet.

It is the best scene to show us and not tell.

Your imagination can lead you to much darker waters than any crazy, 3-D special effects (or jump scares) can do to your senses—and the best writers and directors not only utilize that fact, they bank on it.