While I was discussing on my final film project with a few of my classmates, one of the thing we talked about was script writing. As one of my main focus will be script writing, Ben suggested I look up for Samuel Beckett’s famous play “Waiting for Godot”.
Thus, I searched it up and found this movie on Youtube actually based on the play “Waiting for Godot”. It is not very good quality in terms of resolution, but since the point of the play are the dialogues itself, it didn’t really matter. The play consists of two acts, lasting for about 2 hours.
I can safely say that I’m very unfamiliar with this sort of plays so watching it was interesting, but it was also challenging. It was a bit hard for me to digest the whole thing, especially since English isn’t my native language. I couldn’t even say I understood it at this point.
Nonetheless, in terms of the script itself, “Waiting for Godot” is interesting because of its very few characters (Estragon, Vladimir, Pozzo and Lucky) and its setting – an estranged place with nothing to mark it but a tree. But most importantly are the dialogues, as they are the highlight of the play. To be really honest, I am often confused by the lines and I just couldn’t understand it. It might be because of the difficult language that is being used, or I just do not have the cultural context needed to understand what it is that is being talked about. Aside from that however, I enjoy how the lines are short but witty. I enjoy how the conversation flows really well from one person to the other, and sometimes it’s just repeating each other’s sentences, or simple yeses or nos.
Despite the play not having a strong narrative to it, there are similarities between my film project and this play, which is the few characters and confined setting. Thus, I’d love to make the dialogues shine as much as possible, as it will be the highlight of the movie, and being inspired by this play.
As i found this play diffictult, I actually searched up the written script which helped a little, but more interesting was an Philosophy based explanation video on this play. The guy explained how the play was based on the theory of absurdness as he further elaborated what he means in the video, which was mind opening but at the same time mind blowing.
Lastly, despite my inability to quite comprehend this play, it was a unique experience. More importantly, I’m inspired to create great lines and natural dialogues like Beckett’s.