What lies are you living right now? Stop and think, is there something false you tell yourself every day, but you actively accept as real? You choose to live in a daily delusion instead of dealing with the truth's repercussions and failing to take your reality's responsibilities. Now the real question is, what will make you finally one day accept that which is real? How can we explore that? What film, better yet, which film's writing best understands the extent to which someone can be so deeply in a delusion that their entire life is but a lie they keep for their sanity?
Furthermore, what are the implications of destroying delusions? Is it better to live a lie, blissfully in a state of ignorance, or to face reality for the sake of growth, betterness, and truth, even when it is not a pretty thing to shine a light on?
I've tried to write scripts that focus on a delusional character before, using the protagonist's delusion as a catch-all excuse for any action by them that didn't make sense—a reason behind the unrealistic intensity of a character's need. Over and over, professors have told me that writing a delusional lead is difficult for many reasons. One being that delusion is challenging to put into a script where the audience can follow it. However, there is a play-turned-film that examines this wonderfully.
I want to talk about the film 'Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?'
'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' was written by Ernest Lehman and is a film adaptation of the stage play of the same name by Edward Albee. It was the film directorial debut of Mike Nichols, who directed 'The Graduate' only one year later.
This film follows two couples throughout a one-night descent into a decaying marital hellscape, or as they call it in the marketing: 'Fun & Games'. As I discuss this movie, I will discuss spoilers, and if you have not seen this film or read the play, I highly recommend it.
We start with our protagonists. We have George & Martha played by Richard Burton & Elizabeth Taylor, and Nick and Honey, played by George Segal and Sandy Dennis.
Throughout, the film reveals each character's delusions. We follow how living in the illusion has affected their lives until we end with putting it frankly, the characters mentally destroying one another. I want to argue that this ending of mental and possibly spiritual destruction is subtly cheerful. First, I'd like to figure out what writers can learn from 'Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf."
The film starts with George & Martha in the minutes between coming home from a university faculty mixer and when Nick & Honey arrive at their home. In this opening, we immediately are introduced to two writing lessons & established rules for the film.
1. Dialogue as a battleground for characters.
2. The power of setting a promise between characters and, thus, with the audience.
George & Martha have quick back and forth banter, making it immediately prevalent how routine and toxic their current dynamic is, as though each of them knows how every interchange will play out. There is no use in fighting for anything new. Despite their overall neutral discussions, the dialogue is snappy, interwoven, and convoluted. We understand these are smart characters-- this is reinforced with them both being college professors. The opening is a basic lesson for writing characters. What are their routines and their intelligence level? Then in writing, how can that be shown to an audience? Also, writers can utilize the dialogue as the battleground for conflict and words as the tactic for characters to get the upper hand. The enhanced use of dialogue makes perfect sense since this is a play adaptation, and in plays, the dialogue is the crux of every story beat. For example, in some of the early scenes where George and Nick are alone, George, with ease, runs circles around Nick with complicated words, syntax, and questioning. In the performance and subtext of the dialogue, we can tell this is George's way of showing his masculine power over Nick-- even hinting at jealousy where George feels compelled to prove himself. Nick gets more and more irritated by George's barrage of verbal eloquence, which only brings inner satisfaction to George. As a character, George felt threatened, inadequate, so he uses his strength and his words to figuratively demonstrate a sense of manhood over him-- his tactic to 'win' the scene.
Going back a bit earlier in the film, just before Nick and Honey come to the house, George tells Martha not to bring up a child. Albee and Lehman are using one of the essential writing rules, the 'Chekov's gun' rule. The audience reaches a promise in the story; this absolutely will not be the last time we'll hear about a child. The takeaway from "Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf' is that the film picks up speed when Martha tells Honey about their child while George is weaving sentences around Nick. In other words, the promise is kept. Now George is mad, and he will continue to use his power of speech to control most of the evening. George and Martha's games have begun when this recurring promise of a child's existence is kept with the audience.
The promise is upheld right before the final sequence of the film unfolds. George implores Martha to be awake and sharp for the last game to begin. They badger each other on, that whatever is about to happen, it will be the peak of their fighting, a point of no return. But I will get back to this scene later.
The next thing this film does is thematically invert our expectation of the 'every-man & woman' character. From their introduction, it seemed that Nick and Honey would be the 'every-man' and 'every-woman' characters to serve a purpose of comparison to George and Martha's antics. They are the every-man and every-woman, meaning they are channeling our experience of George and Martha since they seem like the 'normal' ones. Nick and Honey are the white picket fence, Goodyear tire swing emblem of a young, prosperous couple of Americana. But to go along with the story's theme of delusion and marital struggles, we soon learn neither Nick and Honey aren't so innocent and perfect after-all, breaking the convention of the 'every-person.'. Nick tells the background of their marriage, alluding that he feels trapped in a marriage he only submitted to because of a pregnancy scare. Later, when Honey comes off as a bumbling drunk, it accelerates Nick's contempt for her; Nick feels burdened by her existence by the end.
Now the ending. Albee and Lemon both practice the powerful tool of withholding information. Withholding information in narrative means that when Edward Albee plotted out this story and these characters, he created a bombshell and knew he had to use it. But instead of telling the audience flat out initially, the film lets it muster and simmer until it ultimately boils over by the time of reveal when George' murders' his and Martha's child. Martha screams to George that he can't decide something like that. But the way she says it implies not that death is something he has no control over, but instead that George was selfish and horrible to use that control to kill their child by merely stating it as such. The audience then realizes that George and Martha have a fictional child they created to live in a lie that makes them feel better about themselves and their marriage. This lie prevents themselves from facing their incapabilities to conceive a child of their own, probably something that carries many repressed emotions that only show through their toxic antics. Nick plays the every-man card once more and says what the audience is thinking "Oh my God. I think I understand this." repeated louder a few times as the realization seeps in second by second. Nick and Honey leave the house, the night bringing their marriage to shambles as secrets emerge into the light, but they leave George and Martha alone to console each other. Martha admits she is afraid of Virginia Woolf. Their hands connect, a connection we haven't seen at all in this film, and the night is over as we see the sun of a new morning through the window pane.
This film primarily channels the themes of delusion, public vs. personal identity, and marital dysfunction. But the latter two stem from delusion. Each character has their fantasy as to what they believe to be their current reality. Honey is under the delusion that Nick truly loves her and doesn't regret the marriage. Nick's delusion is the same. George is under the delusion that his emasculation from Martha is undesired and unwanted. Martha's delusion, the most prominent and intense of them all, is the belief in a son that doesn't exist. Martha and George's entire marriage is drowning in delusion; they refuse to see the reality of their lives, marriage, and themselves while Nick and Honey do the same to a lesser effect. This also can allude that Nick and Honey will one day be like them if this delusion continues. Now, by the film's end, all of these delusions come crashing down in the destruction of each character. Martha's child is dead, George gets cuckolded, Nick cheats, and Honey realizes her marriage wasn't based entirely on pure love. They have all had their realities shattered beyond repair. It may be the best thing to ever happen to any of them.
Martha and George's marriage is, to put in a word, rough. Nick and Honey's is off to a very rocky start. But they all choose to live in delusions that everything is fine. Either they do this for themselves, their significant other, the public eye, or a combination of the three. But by the end of the film, the falsehoods are gone, and they must live in this new reality, the actual reality. They must face the morning, the new day, knowing this information. However, this new information is true reality; breaking down their delusions was a controlled demolition to get a new, clearer foundation for a new life to begin.
Many presume that the title means 'Live free of illusion.' Virginia Woolf is known for a stream of consciousness writing style, which gets as close to a character's inner mind and thoughts as possible-- genuinely knowing them and their reality. Seeing them for who they are, without pre-placed delusions. So, in the final lines of the film, Martha admitting she is afraid of Virginia Woolf implies she is terrified to live her life now that the delusion of her child has died. But her husband takes her by the hand to comfort her into a new morning. The script specifies their hands emerging from different corners of darkness and joining in a spot gleaming with morning light. The script also specifies that the camera slowly leaves them be and faces the sunlight directly, showing the audience a rebirth of their marriage, perhaps truly beginning out of their minds' dark delusions and into an enlightened state.
Do you agree? Did I miss some details? Want me to talk more on the political implications of the character's names and how George and Martha Washington live in the delusion of creating a son (America) only for it to be killed, and tainting the ideas of marriage (union) to the couple (land) of Nick(milk) and Honey? Let me know your thoughts! Thanks for reading.