by Ben Brady
BEGINNING. This first section lasts up to the point the problem takes specific form for Ben, when he says he “can’t do this.” The obstacle takes the form of guilt.
MIDDLE. From the moment Ben refuses, he searches to find something else to do. Mrs. Robinson derails his attempt by challenging his masculinity. Crisis—his effort to leave seems to have failed.
END. The brief, climactic conclusion builds to Ben’s furious “INADEQUATE,” which leads to the resolution of his effort to go—by staying.
Immediately at stake: whether Ben can escape the seduction.
Ultimately at stake: whether Ben will slide into a depressing affair after having hoped for better from life.
Complication: as indicated, Ben’s seduction by an older woman able to manipulate him at will. His taking the hotel room is a natural outgrowth of Mrs. Robinson’s power over him and shows the inevitable connection between a complication and the action it causes.
Reverses:
1. Ben says he can’t stay and speaks of his parents’ reactions. But in response to Mrs. Robinson he can’t imagine what these would be, and when she directly challenges him by asking if he’s afraid of her, his first effort to break off the seduction fails.
2. Ben’s denial of fear combined with an attempt to substitute a movie fails when Mrs. Robinson again challenges him, this time by implying he is afraid because he is a virgin.
3. Ben denies he is a virgin as Mrs. Robinson simultaneously shifts ground again by speaking of his being afraid of being inadequate. His hot denial forces him to demand that Mrs. Robinson stay.
This is a very simple scene with its easy play on virility. Ben turns out to be as hapless as Adrian, if more artfully maneuvered by Mrs. Robinson than Adrian is by Rocky. She is repellently direct and efficient: his reactions betray exactly how naive and inexperienced he is.
The reverses’ minisequences of dramatic action that successively define what is immediately at stake for Ben are nearly identical with the scene’s structure. His immediate problem—trying to stop the seduction—undergoes a series of transformations. These transformations are caused by the antagonist’s successful attempts to deny letting Ben resolve the problem. Specifically, his guilt is changed first to a denial of fear and then to a denial of inadequacy. The artfulness of this simple scene is that by succeeding in overcoming the final form the obstacle in the scene takes—the challenge to his adequacy at the climax—Ben fails to get what he wanted initially. He is drawn into the affair he wanted to avoid.
Looking at a scene’s reverses, then, gives us a good hold on the actual development of character and conflict. We can pinpoint the specifics of the changes the protagonist’s immediate problem undergoes. We can see that a character develops only to the extent he encounters reverses. Thus Ben is checked enough to show his essential naïveté in this scene, but little more is developed beyond the obvious. Three reverses do not give you much room for development. The artfulness of Buck Henry and Mike Nichols’ writing is what gives the scene its interest.
Let’s look at a more sophisticated scene from Ingmar Bergman’s family fantasia Fanny and Alexander.
The Punishment Scene from Fanny and Alexander
Good dramatic writing is an international art. Few cinemas have been as popular as the American, with its heavy accent on action, or as respected as the Swedish, led for so long by Ingmar Bergman. Many of his earlier films were somber, brooding stories filled with a dark magic and a deeply pessimistic view of human nature, but his later films often have shown a moving humanity combined with a beautiful sense of scene and detail, evoked in part by Bergman’s frequent chief cameraman, Sven Nykvist. The scene we are going to look at is drawn from Fanny and Alexander, Bergman’s farewell to movie-making.
It evokes many of his earlier themes in his later context of warmth and humanity, powerfully contrasting the life of the warm, material, loving Ekdahl family with the life four of its members lead for a time with Bishop Edvard Vergérus. A figure like Edvard once would have been the protagonist through which Bergman would have wrestled with the modern dilemma of the failure of faith: in Fanny and Alexander he is reduced to the antagonist whose torments are juxtaposed to the Ekdahls’ worldly-wise comfort.
Alexander, 10, and his sisters Fanny, 8, and Amanda, 12, had lived an idyllic existence at their grandmother’s mansion with their parents, Emilie and Oscar. But Oscar dies (first complication) and Emilie falls in love with and marries Bishop Vergérus (second complication). They move to his austere mansion, populated by his unpleasant servants, sisters, and mother, where the children are very unhappy, especially Alexander.
As the scene begins, Alexander has been summoned to Edvard’s study to answer charges brought by the children’s virtual imprisoner, the housemaid Justine. A short time before Alexander had tried to frighten her in front of his sisters by indulging his streak of fantasy. He told Justine that he had seen the ghost of Bishop Vergérus’s former wife, who had drowned with her two children. The wife’s ghost, Alexander said, told him that the bishop had imprisoned, starved, and driven his former family into jumping out the window into the river beside the house, where they had drowned trying to reach freedom. Impressed and shocked, Justine immediately left and told Alexander’s story to Edvard. Alexander’s mother is absent at the time the bishop interrogates Alexander.
Alexander has thus caused a fresh complication for himself with this story. Whether the story is true or not doesn’t matter from this perspective: it was at least symbolically true and an entirely ill-advised thing to tell someone devoted to the bishop. The scene that follows is its immediate consequence.
After you read the scene, jot down your notes on its structure, and list the reverses in the scene. Then compare your notes to ours.
FADE IN:
INT. EDVARD VERGÉRUS’ STUDY GROUP SHOT (EST) DAY
[showing the austere study with Blenda, Edvard’s mother, Henrietta, his sister, Justine, the thin housewife in black, and Edvard as Fanny, Alexander, and Amanda hesitate just inside the door. Edvard gets up from a long table.] Justine gives a brief, uncertain smile.
Alexander is told to step forward. He stands in the middle of the vast room, which is filled with books from floor to ceiling. A great dread, like a sick crab, squirms in his bowels.
EDVARD
(gently)
Alexander, my boy. In the presence of your sisters and Justine you have accused me of having murdered my wife and children.
ALEXANDER
It’s not true.
EDVARD
Justine, please repeat what you told me.
JUSTINE
Alexander said he had seen the late Mrs. Vergérus and her children. She
(MORE)
JUSTINE (CONT’D)
had spoken to him. She had said that in a fit of wrath His Grace the bishop had locked her and the children into the bedroom without food or water. On the fifth day they tried to escape through the window but were drowned.
EDVARD
Do you recognize the story, Alexander?
ALEXANDER
No, sir.
EDVARD
So you allege that Justine has given false testimony?
ALEXANDER
She was probably dreaming.
EDVARD
Justine, are you prepared to confirm your statement on oath?
JUSTINE
(bobbing)
Yes, Your Grace.
EDVARD
That is good, Justine. Did Fanny and Amanda hear Alexander’s story?
AMANDA
No.
FANNY
(whispers to Amanda)
Stop pinching.
(aloud, to Bishop Vergérus)
No.
EDVARD
So you deny having heard anything?
AMANDA
I only remember that Justine told us that the mother and children were found under the cathedral bridge and that they had to be sawn apart to get them into the coffins.
/> EDVARD
Did you say that, Justine?
JUSTINE
(whispers)
Yes, sir.
There is a long silence. Bishop Vergérus’s face swells until it is huge, terrible, inhuman. His voice is nevertheless unchanged—quiet and friendly. To Alexander:
EDVARD
You maintain that Justine was lying or dreaming?
ALEXANDER
Yes sir.
EDVARD
Are you prepared to take an oath on it?
ALEXANDER
Of course.
EDVARD
It is a mortal sin to swear falsely, Alexander. It is called perjury and is severely punished.
FAVOR ALEXANDER
ALEXANDER
Oh, is it?
Alexander shifts his weight on to the other leg, puts his hand at his side, and licks his dry lips. Nothing matters now. Life is over. God’s punishment is going to strike him. Bloody damn vindictive God.
TWO SHOT: BISHOP VERGÉRUS & ALEXANDER
EDVARD
Kindly come here to the table. Lay your left hand on the Bible and say after me: “I, Alexander Ekdahl, swear by Holy Writ and by the living God . . .”
ALEXANDER
(in a firm voice)
I, Alexander Ekdahl, swear by Holy Writ and by the living God . . .
EDVARD
“. . . that everything I have said, am saying, and will say is the Truth and nothing but the Truth.”
ALEXANDER
. . . that everything I have said, am saying, and will say is the Truth and nothing but the Truth. May I go now?
EDVARD
Do you want to go already, Alexander?
ALEXANDER
There’s nothing more to say. How can Justine prove she wasn’t dreaming?
EDVARD
Tell me something. Are you happy with us here in the bishop’s palace?
ALEXANDER
As happy as a snake in an anthill. Though worse.
EDVARD
You dislike your stepfather, don’t you?
ALEXANDER
Must I answer?
EDVARD
Do you remember the two of us had rather an important little talk about a year ago. It concerned certain moral questions.
[Note: about lying and cheating]
ALEXANDER
You can’t call it a talk.
EDVARD
What do you mean?
ALEXANDER
The bishop did the talking and Alexander said nothing.
EDVARD
Said nothing and felt ashamed, perhaps. Of his lies.
ALEXANDER
I’ve grown wiser since then.
EDVARD
You mean you lie better.
ALEXANDER
That’s one way of putting it.
EDVARD
I don’t know what you imagine, Alexander. Do you think this is a joke? Do you think you can smirch another person’s honor with impunity? Do you think you can lie and play the hypocrite and commit perjury and get away with it? Do you think we are having a game, Alexander? Or do you think perhaps that this is a kind of play in which we say whatever lines come into our heads?
ALEXANDER
I think the bishop hates Alexander. That’s what I think.
EDVARD
Oh, so that is what you think.
(pause)
Well, I’ll tell you something, my boy. Something that will perhaps surprise you. I don’t hate you. I love you. But the love I feel for your mother and sisters is not blind and is not sloppy. It is strong and harsh, Alexander. If I must punish you, I suffer more than you know. But my love compels me to be truthful. It compels me to chasten and form you even if it hurts me. Do you hear what I say, Alexander?
ALEXANDER
No.
EDVARD
You are hardening your heart. Moreover, you are misjudging the situation. I am much stronger than you are.
ALEXANDER
I don’t doubt that!
EDVARD
Spiritually stronger, my boy. It’s because I have truth and justice on my side. I know that you will confess in a little while. Your confession and your punishment will be a relief to you, and when your mother returns this evening it will all be over and done with and life will go on as usual. You are a wise little man, Alexander. You realize that the game is up, but you are proud and stubborn, and of course you are ashamed.
ALEXANDER
One of us should be ashamed. That is true.
EDVARD
You must understand your insolence does not help your cause. It merely confirms my suspicions.
ALEXANDER
I’ve forgotten what I am to confess.
EDVARD
Oh. Have you now.
GROUP SHOT
[to show the tense expression on everyone’s face as the drama heads toward its climax.]
After a long pause
ALEXANDER
What does the bishop want Alexander to confess?
EDVARD
You know that I have means at my disposal.
ALEXANDER
I didn’t know, but I do now.
EDVARD
Effective means.
ALEXANDER
That doesn’t sound pleasant.
ON EDVARD
EDVARD
In my childhood parents were not so soft-hearted. Naughty boys were punished in an exemplary but loving manner. With the cane. The motto
(MORE)
EDVARD (CONT’D)
was: “Spare the rod spoil the child.” I have a cane too. It is there on the table. Then we had another means that was really efficacious, and that was castor oil. There you see the bottle, Alexander, and a glass. When you’ve swallowed a few mouthfuls of that you will be a little more docile. And if castor oil didn’t help there was a dark and chilly bogey hole where one had to sit for a few hours, until the mice started sniffing at one’s face. You see, over there under the stairs, Alexander, a nice big hole is waiting for you. Then of course there were other, more barbarous methods, but I disapprove of them. They were humiliating and dangerous and are not applied, nowadays.
TWO SHOT: ALEXANDER & BISHOP VERGÉRUS
ALEXANDER
What punishment will I get if I confess?
EDVARD
You may decide that for yourself, Alexander.
ALEXANDER
Why must I be punished?
EDVARD
That is perfectly obvious, my boy. You have a weakness in your character—you cannot distinguish lies from the truth. As yet you are a child and your lies are a child’s lies, however dreadful they may be. But soon you will be a grown-up man and life punishes liars
(MORE)
EDVARD (CONT’D)
ruthlessly and indiscriminately. The punishment is to teach you a love of the truth.
ALEXANDER
I confess I made up that about the bishop locking his wife and children in.
EDVARD
Do you also confess that you have committed perjury?
ALEXANDER
Yes, I suppose so.
EDVARD
Now you have won a great victory, my boy. A victory over yourself. Which punishment do you choose?
ALEXANDER
How many strokes of the cane do I get?
EDVARD
Not less than ten.
ALEXANDER
Then I choose the cane.
EDVARD
Take your pants down. Bend over by the sofa. Put one of the cushions under your stomach.
GROUP SHOT
Ten not too hard strokes on the cane follow. Alexander makes no sound. He bites his hand, tears fill his eyes, his nose runs, he is dark red in the face, and blood oozes from the weals in his skin.
EDVARD
Stand up, Alexander.
Alexander stands up.
EDVARD
You have something to say to me.
ALEXANDER
No.
/>
EDVARD
You must ask my forgiveness.
ALEXANDER
Never.
EDVARD
Then I must whip you until you think better of it. Can you not spare us both that unpleasant experience?
ALEXANDER
I’ll never ask your forgiveness.
EDVARD
You won’t ask my forgiveness?
ALEXANDER
No.
EDVARD
Take your pants down. Bend over the sofa. Put a cushion under your stomach.
Raises his arm to strike.
ALEXANDER
No more, please!
EDVARD
Then you beg my forgiveness?
ALEXANDER
Yes.
EDVARD
Button up your pants. Blow your nose. Lend him a handkerchief, Justine. What are you to say, Alexander?
ALEXANDER
Alexander begs the bishop’s forgiveness.
EDVARD
For the lies and perjury.
ALEXANDER
For the lies and perjury.
EDVARD
You understand that I punished you out of love.
ALEXANDER
Yes.
EDVARD
Kiss my hand, Alexander!
ALEXANDER
(kissing Bishop Vergérus’s hand)
May I go to bed now?
EDVARD
Yes, my boy, you may. But so that you will have an opportunity of thinking over the day’s events in peace and quiet, you are to sleep in the attic. Justine will provide a mattress and a blanket. At six o’clock tomorrow morning Henrietta will unlock the door and you are free. Is this understood, Alexander?
ALEXANDER
Yes, Your Grace.
FADE OUT3
Before we analyze this scene, compare your notes on structure with ours:
BEGINNING. The problem appears instantly: did you tell such a story? No, Alexander replies. No time is wasted getting to what is immediately at stake: whether Alexander can avoid punishment for his story.
MIDDLE. The scene proceeds through the point at which the bishop tells Alexander about the type of punishments available to him and used in the past, and Alexander caves in and confesses. Failure: crisis.
END. There is an extended climax in which the punishment turns out to be inadequate, and the bishop forces Alexander to beg his forgiveness.
Immediately at stake: Alexander’s telling the truth—and then asking forgiveness.
Ultimately at stake: whether the spiritual force is on Alexander’s side or the bishop’s or, phrased in terms of the issue of conflict, whether the life of this world is better than some other’s—religious, or implicitly, any “-ism’s.”
