How Todd Field's game-changing screenplay sustains interest for multiple viewings, via Ernest Hemingway's "Iceberg Theory" -- pages 2,3, and 4 of the screenplay, which can be found here: https://variety.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/tar-screenplay.pdf
Screenwriting : The Woman Whose Face We Never See in TAR by Yusuf Toropov
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I'll have to watch TAR a few times now, Yusuf Toropov. You said every direct explanation was removed from the script. I think some scripts, movies, etc. work better when things aren't explained (a villain, event, monster, so on). Or when only some things are explained.
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Agreed!
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Field takes this principle as far as any screenwriter I have ever encountered. (I don't pretend for a moment, though, to have read/seen anything but a fragment of the most important ones.)
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If you have the chance to review Hemingway's superb short story BIG TWO-HEARTED RIVER you will see this technique in action at full strength in literary-fiction mode. it's about what we would call PTSD but the protagonist's battlefield experiences are never directly referenced. Also there are a few Salinger short stories that seem to me to exempllify the passing of the "Iceberg torch" (there's a mixed metaphor for you) to him from Hemingway.
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Thanks, Yusuf Toropov. I'll check out BIG TWO-HEARTED RIVER.
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Krista in TAR -- this is pretty much all we ever see of her