Word: odd
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...Odd how a style that looked spare in one movie can feel bloated in the next. That's the case with The Green Mile, reverently taken from King's serialized novel. It's 1935, and we're on a Southern prison's death row, where the only recreation is watching a mouse commandeer the corridor. Enter a new inmate, John Coffey (Michael Clarke Duncan), a giant black man with a gift of preternatural empathy; he can literally suck the pain out of people. Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks), the chief guard of E Block, is in awe of this white magic...
Actress and comic Janeane Garofalo describes David Lindsay-Abaire's work as "cleverly odd." That seems an understatement for his hit off-Broadway farce, Fuddy Meers. Its characters include a housewife whose memory is erased nightly, her jibberish-speaking mother ("fun-house mirrors" becomes in her mouth "fuddy meers"), and an escaped con with a sock puppet on his hand. Just turned 30, the little-known Lindsay-Abaire has suddenly been discovered. He's been commissioned to write a play for Garofalo, and 20th Century Fox has given him a five-year film-and-TV contract. First up: Road...
...this sterility, the play opens as dark lighting and odd music fade into a sharply lit, sanitary office. The dialogue is reminiscent of a machine, and the office becomes a highly functional organism. The Filing Clerk (Randy Gomes '02) and the Adding Clerk (Eddie Montoya '02) do a fabulous job of doubling dialogue and repeating each other with static variations. Coupled with the aimless chatter of the Stenographer (Kate Agresta '02) and the Telephone Girl (Thandi Parris '01), an environment of alienation is complete. Everything about this world is artificial, including the commotion when Helen (Erica Rabbit '00) enters...
...theater achieves its completion in the last scene. The costuming is radical; both Parris and Agresta, executioners, are dressed in metallic-punk-dominatrix suits, and Gunn, the priest, wears a silver robe. The sense that all dialogue is a voice-over creates the impression that the actors are merely odd configurations of marionettes. In this scene, people have fully transformed into machines. Helen's appeals for mercy seem to be almost rays of light bouncing off the darkened stage, for she is the only lit figure. Suddenly, strobe lights destroy the darkness, and the execution is complete...
...Strange yet fascinating, Machinal angers, excites and disturbs. One wishes for a more concrete understanding of the stilted dialogue and the odd movements of the actors and actresses, yet the sense of not fully understanding the dynamics of the plot piques the audience's interest. Machinal reinforces the audience's worst suspicions through its oddly lit, sparsely staged and undeveloped emotional tension, for the play suggests that emotions do not matter, and existence is merely a sterilized and mechanical occurrence...