Supercalifrag … oh, you know the rest

I've had an idea running through my head for many years now and I saw it in action yesterday evening and this afternoon. Though the idea has been rattling around in my brain all this time it was only today that I figured out suitable terminology in which to explain it.

In my study of music composition the word idiomatic was discussed. There are some musical ideas that are much easier on some instruments and quite difficult on another. Some instruments do some things well and others poorly. An obvious example is the glissando on the harp. Even a kid can go up to a harp and run a finger across the strings making the pitch swoop up or down. But it is extremely difficult to do the same kind of thing on handbells. A chromatic glissando (the equivalent of all the white and black keys on the piano) is impossible on the harp but easy on the clarinet -- listen to the opening of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. Composition students need to know a bit about what is idiomatic for an instrument to avoid the performer complaining that it is unplayable.

The idea that has been in my brain all these years is this: In live theater it is idiomatic to make you think you see something that is not shown. In cinema it is idiomatic to show you something on screen that cannot be shown in real life.

This idea entered my head many years ago while watching the play Children of a Lesser God many years ago. At one point the character reached down to turn on the radio. The music came on, but there was no physical knob or radio. The actor's fingers twitch on empty air. The big counterpart in cinema is the original Star Wars movie -- battles in space, species from other planets, a Death Star, cheeky robots -- none of which exist outside the film.

Last night I saw the play War Horse. The basic story is about a farm lad in England who raises a horse. When the Great War erupts his father sells the horse to the Cavalry. Though the lad is too young, he joins the Army to find and be reunited with his horse.

What makes this play idiomatic is the horses are massive puppets. Each horse has three controllers -- two hold it up and operate the front and back legs (and bear the weight when the character rides the horse). We see both the horse's legs and the human legs. The third controller stands to the side operates the head. Though we always see all three controllers their movements are so thoroughly choreographed that they fade into the background and the puppet really does act like a horse, complete with the slight movement of breathing.

The way we see the horses is carried into other aspects of the show. There is a man who pushes a wheeled cart that looks and acts like a goose. Actors hold up long poles and create an instant corral. Various scenes in different locales take place simultaneously on different parts of the stage, each with minimal or no scenery. To me this is theater doing what theater is best at.

There is another aspect of this idiomatic work. Much of the story shows battles of WWI. The play, because the fighting isn't exactly shown, provides a bit of distance from the horrors of war. I have not seen the movie War Horse telling the same story because it is idiomatic cinema, showing the war in all its gruesomeness.

This afternoon I saw the movie Saving Mr. Banks. It is recently released, so I was at the Cineplex which, a few days after Christmas had a very full parking lot. I'm pretty sure they gave me a senior discount (my feeling at the moment is if you're rude enough to offer it without asking I'm going to take it). The story is about P.L. Travers, the author of the Mary Poppins stories (I didn't know there was more than one). She is played by Emma Thompson. She is summoned to Hollywood to meet with Walt Disney (played by Tom Hanks) to turn her story into a movie. She is most disagreeable, hating that it will be a musical, hating the songs the scriptwriter, composer, and lyricist perform for her, hating that Dick Van Dyke is being considered, and in general opposing just about everything, and doing so with a delightfully tart tongue. Intercut with this story is the story of when she was a child living in the Australian Outback. Yes, the two relate quite well. Since the movie Mary Poppins was obviously made one wonders what will change her mind.

This movie is idiomatic cinema primarily in the recreation of 1961 Hollywood and 1906 Outback. Even more idiomatic is the subject movie Mary Poppins -- a woman flying while holding her umbrella, the bottomless carpetbag, the dancing penguins, the tea party at the ceiling -- though we don't see much of that in this movie.

A very enjoyable two days.