About halfway through MIDNIGHT MASS--probably in the episode where Riley and Erin talk about death--I suddenly realized this show is FULL of what are effectively monologues. In fact every single major character gets at least one in the seven episodes, and some get three or four. It's CRAZY. Monologues are momentum killers. They're exposition that hasn't even been properly gussied up to look like something else. They undermine the realism of the piece--people do not monologue (or when they do, it is strange and it is NOTED).
Except these monologues didn't kill the show's momentum. They are not expositional (mostly). And they come off as perfectly natural (again, mostly). At the risk of repeating myself ad infinitum on this blog, How the hell does Mike Flanagan do that?
1) He Uses Conflict to Motivate the Monologues
This is the most obvious strategy when doing anything that even slightly resembles exposition--put in a context of conflict. The character has their back against the wall or is deeply provoked and this is them fighting back. It's Sheriff Hassan in the classroom or talking to his son about church. It's Leeza talking to Joe. It's Bev in the same classroom or responding to Fr. Paul's change of heart in the finale or acting really pretty much anywhere, God Bev is such a piece of work.
It's also some of Fr. Paul and Riley's long responses to each other in the AA meetings--especially that first meeting, which does such a brilliant job of setting them up as the protagonist and antagonist of the piece. It's also his sermons, both in the sense that the later ones take place within the context of us knowing that he doin' bad things, and so there's internal conflict for us there, and in the broader sense that his preaching style is always about persuasion. I am here to overcome your disbelief. This is my argument.
2) He Has People Talk About Stuff that is Meaningful Not Just to the Story but to Us
You think about the Riley/Erin scene. Yes, they have different points of view, but I wouldn't really say there's a lot of conflict there. They are much more Character Speaks Their Truth moments. And they are LONG, and there are two of them.
In part I think the moment works as catharsis. We want to hear from Erin after she's lost her baby. We want her to have a moment to deal with that--which is also a moment for us to deal with that. You're much more likely to be able to get away with a monologue if you've previously created a sense of conflict or pressure in the audience that the monologue becomes a way of solving. (Think Riley's dad saying his peace to Riley; that character is so internally trapped any time he says anything we lean in.)
But also Erin and Riley end up talking about stuff that is deep and meaningful for us. God, Heaven, Death--these are topics that most if not all off us think about at some points in our lives. And so I think we're more open to moments where characters stop and do the same. In fact rather than breaking with the reality of the piece it actually fits it. When we have conversations about these topics, they are kind of monologue-y. They have to be. Sharing your point of view takes a sec.
So many of the monologues in MIDNIGHT MASS are about these kinds of matters.
3) He Calls on Our Imagination
Even if we both of the above, monologues can easily lose a viewer. They demand our constant attention. The longer you push that, the harder it is. I think of Erin's final monologue--it's her second take on death and the after life, topics I want to hear about; it's also occurring within the context of a conflict--her own death. And yet it's so long. I did drift off in fact. But weirdly that worked to the monologue's purpose, because what I found myself thinking about was that initial idea of the speech that our problem is that we remove ourselves from connection with everyone else, that we are not selves at all, but a part of something with everyone else. I found myself suddenly thinking about people and events in my life from the kind of position Erin invites, and it became a pretty powerful experience for me, even though it meant I checked out of her words for a bit.
What Flanagan does in this monologue, in the Riley/Erin Talk About Each Other's Death scene, and in a couple others, is he makes sure the monologue includes ideas that provoke our imaginations in some way. Riley and Erin both talk about their deaths in really specific, interesting and image-laden ways--which allows us to imagine the same.
Fr. Paul's homilies at times work like this, too, by way of scripture. Out of nowhere, really, he'll offer a take on scripture that you didn't see coming, on who Jesus is or what his people are called to, and it turns our heads just as hard as it does the characters in the series. He's kind of a Jedi master of inception; once he hits you with an idea, it's pretty hard to shake. Which keeps us locked in as he talks on.
4) They Foreshadow What is to Come
This is still a horror series. And so ideally you want everything to somehow build out a sense of dread, anxiety or danger. Fr. Paul's sermons become more and more terrifying precisely because we are both ahead of most of the characters, and so we know Fr. Paul is dangerous, and at the same time because we are not ahead of him, we're scared.
Everything Bev says works effectively the same way. We know how freaking crazy she is, and so anything she says we read not as a statement of fact but of purpose and promise. And at the same time, we don't fully know what she's capable of. I think Flanagan was brilliant to have her kill Joe's dog in such an oblique way. By not showing her literally murder that dog--say, shoot it or drown it--Flanagan keeps enough of Bev hidden from us that we stay interested and anxious.
Even Riley and Erin's conversations about death are these tremendous moments of foreshadowing. Flanagan does not lean into that. There's no spooky music or weird camera angles to alert us to the fact that Oh shit, this means something. He doesn't need to. We're smart enough as audience to either see that two characters talking about death in a horror series is probably going to have something to do with the way that they die; or, maybe better, to not think about their comments until they do die, at which point our minds get blown by how they each get the other person's death/afterlife. Erin becomes one with the universe, and Riley dies loved and not alone.
I feel like I could go on and on about Flanagan and monologues. Seriously, MIDNIGHT MASS is a dissertation on bold writing.
I'll be back tomorrow with one more idea about MIDNIGHT MASS.
