Compiling Script Recommendations: Emotional Depth

We are compiling lists of excellent screenplays per various categories as a resource for writers to read and analyze. Per this series, I received this email from GIT reader Nigel Anderson:

Hi Scott

just going over the list of categories you have left for script recommendations, it occurs to me there is a glaring omission: emotional depth.

Stirring the emotions of the reader is the single most important thing your script needs to do, and it is also one of the trickiest things to accomplish. It doesn’t matter what genre you are working in, it applies across them all.

It occurs to me because I just read the script for Passengers by Jon Spaihts — a well liked blacklist script with a neat concept that is pretty well executed, but left me stone cold in terms of emotion. You probably know the premise — a man wakes up 70 years early on an interstellar voyage and decides to wake up a woman to keep him company, dooming her to die with him before they reach their destination. I think it is the fact that everything is so pat and predictable — she is beautiful, smart and sexy, she falls in love with him, difficult emotional moments (such as after she discovers he woke her up deliberately) are dealt with by him drinking alcohol and staring moodily, unshaven, out into space, and then after an emergency forces them to work together to save the ship she tells him she forgives him and loves him.

What if she’d been a bitch? What if, instead of the beautiful love-making they slip so easily into, there was awkward fumbling and “oh, no, what are you doing, not like that” stuff to overcome, to work at?

You were writing about something similar re: the action genre recently, but this isn’t an action flick and yet it still glosses over the difficult emotional stuff, touches on the issues without penetrating them.

Anyway, that’s what got me thinking about the subject, and if you have cross-genre suggestions as to which scripts excel at delivering on emotion I think that would make a very worthy addition to your lists. I suspect that a lot of them will deal with relationships and death, interesting to see if there are any that don’t.

Like most people I haven’t read anywhere near enough scripts, but for starters I nominate John August’s Big Fish (script: http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Big-Fish.html). He wrote about the experience of writing it recently: http://johnaugust.com/archives/2010/fake-tears.

While all movies should have some sort of emotional resonance, I think Nigel’s point is well-taken. So today we feature scripts notable for emotional depth. My recommendations:

Amadeus
Apartment, The
As Good As It Gets
Big
Body Heat
Boogie Nights
Braveheart
Breakfast Club, The
Breaking Away
Bridge on the River Kwai, The
Broadcast News
Bull Durham
Buried
Casablanca
Children of Men
Chinatown
Citizen Kane
Crying Game, The
Dead Poets Society, The
Deer Hunter, The
Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The
Dog Day Afternoon
E.T.
Elephant Man
Erin Brockovich
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Exorcist, The
Fatal Attraction
Field of Dreams
Finding Nemo
Forrest Gump
Godfather, The
Godfather, The — Part 2
Good Will Hunting
Graduate, The
Grapes of Wrath, The
History of Violence, A
How Green Was My Valley
Hurt Locker
In Bruges
Indecent Proposal
It’s a Wonderful Life
Jerry Maguire
Juno
Kill Bill, Vol. 1
Kill Bill, Vol. 2
Kiss of the Spider Woman
Knocked Up
Kramer vs. Kramer
Lawrence of Arabia
Lion King, The
Little Miss Sunshine
Local Hero
Moon
Moonstruck
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Natural, The
On the Waterfront
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Next
Ordinary People
Pan’s Labyrinth
Parenthood
Planes, Trains & Automobiles
Platoon
Precious
Pretty in Pink
Princess Bride, The
Rachel Getting Married
Rebel Without a Cause
Rocky
Rosemary’s Baby
Roxanne
Say Anything
Schindler’s List
Searching for Bobby Fisher
Se7en
Sex, Lies and Videotape
Shawshank Redemption, The
Shrek
Sideways
Silence of the Lambs, The
Sixth Sense, The
Slumdog Millionaire
Stalag 17
Sweet Hereafter, The
Taken
Taxi Driver
Thelma & Louise
This Boy’s Life
To Kill a Mockingbird
Tootsie
Toy Story
Toy Story 2
Traffic
True Grit
Unforgiven
Up
Up in the Air
Verdict, The
Visitor, The
Wall-E
Witness
Wizard of Oz, The
Wrestler, The
You Can Count On Me

Please post your suggestions in comments. And bear in mind, this is about scripts, so whatever movie you reference, make sure that there is a screenplay publicly available for reading.

Next week: I’ll post the entire list of script recommendations that we’ve compiled.

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