Narrative film and the novel

In Michael Blake's novel Dances With Wolves the character of John J. Dunbar is described as:

A man caught in a war he cannot tolerate or understand. Sick of being an outsider, an outcast, an outlaw, sick of being alone, he yearns for the repose of freedom to rest his weary spirit.

Setting up this kind of character is easier in a novel than in a screenplay. A novel is very much like a tree. The trunk is the main idea, the theme, and the force that drive the story line forward. It branches off into other branches. Everything is attached to the trunk, but they go off in varying directions.

In a screenplay the action is focused, linear. The story always moves forward.

In Dances With Wolves the main character is isolated and alone, internal; the situation affords him no opportunity to talk to another person, to share his thoughts and feelings. This works for the novel, but not for the screenplay, a story told in pictures.

What did Blake do to solve this type of dramatic situation?

He had to find a picture and an arena of action that shows up this character. There are only a few pages - about ten, in which to do it. Because of the introspective nature of the novel, Blake had to introduce John Dunbar in a way that visually reveals his character, yet grabs the attention of the audience at the same time.

In the novel he describes Dunbar as

A man who possessed a certain strength of character that allowed for working hard when he had very little

In the film we have to see that.

Blake opens the screenplay on a black screen; then we hear the sound of a knife cutting through boot leather; then we see the stricken face of John Dunbar lying on the table waiting to have his foot amputated. From a pile of boots lying in the corner, we see the surgeons must have had a pretty rough time. Their smocks are bathed in blood and they are so tired they can hardly see.

Here is the scene in the screenplay:

LIEUTENANT JOHN J. DUNBAR is the young man, his features sharp and handsome. With effort, he lifts his head and searches the room.

His eyes come to rest on the form of a legless man lying in blood-soaked sheets. He's whimpering like a child.

Dunbar comes to a sitting position on the operating table. As his eyes move around the room they come to rest on a crate filled with the boots of men who have lost their legs.

A cane travels through space and deftly hooks one of the boots.

Lieutenant Dunbar brings the boot onto the operating table. He tries to pull it on his mangled foot, but the pain makes him cry out. Deliberately he breaks the cane and sticks a piece of it between his teeth.

Tears of pain are rolling down his face. A sweat has broken out on his forehead and with great determination he pulls the boot on.

What does this show us? 

Dunbar must confront and overcome a tremendous amount of excruciating pain. It is an extreme test of strength and character, so we see he is a man of strength and will.

The screenwriter needs to set up the story from page one, word one.

Though Dunbar is a man of strength and courage, we see in the next scene that he is a man who wants to die.

In the opening of the novel, Dunbar is already on his journey to Fort Sedgewick, the farthest point of the frontier. For the screenplay, Blake had to create an entirely new opening, so he took an incident out of chapter five - about two and a half pages - and used it to illustrate Dunbar's character in the opening scene.

In the screenplay we have to see that he is a survivor, but at the same time that he wants to die.

In the novel, Blake explains that Dunbar's pain of living was so great that

The lieutenant wanted nothing more than to die. When the opportunity presented itself, he took it.

In the screenplay, after the opening scene, when Dunbar returns to his unit, he finds the Union and Confederate forces facing each other across St. David's field in Tennessee. It is a stand off. Outside of some sniper fire, nothing is happening. Dunbar takes action and leaps on a horse and charges into the middle of the field, drawing Confederate fire. This is the opportunity he has been waiting for.
   
Back to the scene in the screenplay.

As he gallops in front of the Confederate troops, like a target in a shooting gallery, they pepper him with bullets, yet miraculously he avoids being hit.

They stand there taunting him to come back, to give them another shot, and Dunbar hesitates only a moment before he mutters: Forgive me, Father. Spreads his arms open, then flies off into the face of the enemy.

His action spurs the Union soldiers' forward, their voices loud and their guns blazing. And when it's all over, the battle has been won and Dunbar's action is seen as heroic.

                             DUNBAR (V.O)
                       The strangeness of this life
                       cannot Be measured. In trying
                       to produce my own death, I was
                       elevated to the status of a
                       living hero.

Remember. Action is character. What a person does is what he is, not what he says.

Film is behaviour.

These two actions of Dunbar, pulling his boot on, then trying to end his life, lay down the foundation of the entire screenplay. The purpose of the first ten pages is to set up the dramatic forces that reveal character, premise and situation.

Dunbar is a man who wants to die but is reluctantly forced back into life.

That is Dunbar's journey. It is a physical as well as spiritual journey.

Death and resurrection: the hero's journey.

As Dunbar journeys to the farthest point of the frontier, we are introduced to the frontier as the same time he is. Character and audience are connected and we see what he sees, experience what he experiences.

How does Blake do this in the screenplay?

He makes use of the conventional devises of voice-over narration (V.O) and we see Dunbar writing in his diary. The focus is always on Dunbar. He is the main character. The hero. The person whom the story is about. Dunbar's journey helps establish his character, and those magnificent shots of the wild and untamed are intercut with the necessary dialogue essential to move the story forward.

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