Inner thoughts as voice-overs/dialogue

Klingon Hamlet

I was just thining the other day, dramatic movies love voice-overs,but very few like to let the viewer hear the character's inner thoughts. The ones that do really strike me as fascinating, because it's not the character talkig to the viewer, it's the character talking to themselves...which opens up so many interesting possibilities.

For example, The Thin Red Line uses their thoughts to thread together the character's current situation, and their fears and memories and desires. Sometimes it's almost stream of consciousness...their ponderings drifting back home to loved ones, or simply trying to make sense of the madness and carnage they find themselves knee-deep in.

Then there's American Psycho, with the main character a complete cypher: is he who he claims to be, or simply a mirror to reflect all the vain sycophants and leches surrounding him? Does he live waking dreams, or get away with murder? Pushing that aside for one moment, it's his innermost thoughts that truly entertain. he's hilarious, and terrifying. He jokes whilst doing the most disgusting things, and even more interestingly, the viewer giggles along with him.

The biggest and boldest example I know of is Enter The Void, where you literally enter the mind and body of a young drug pusher, from waking up to tripping out to getting shot, and then: 2 hours of intense psychadelic experience that could be drug-induced, shock-induced, or the last flicker of his soul before death closes in...or a combo. We see and feel everything he does but in the context of this thread---we hear him thinking overlapping thoughts ("Oh God I'm shot." "Am I dead?" "Why'd they shoot me.") All chaotic and tumbled and tangled, just like the racing mind of anyone in a bad place.

The Limey is to me one of the most effective time-jumping, overlapping movies that's easy to follow and really touched me, because of one moment---the sound of the Limey humming---it's his own memory of himself humming to his daughter. So it's really a playback in his mind and heart---and a doorway into the position of the protagonist that turns all the events before and after into almost-real experiences for the viewer. I felt what he felt, because I could imagine myself doing the exact same thing---playing it back, to try bring back the good times.

Can anyone else point out films that use this method effectively? I couldn't recall any others that weren't simply narrative voice-overs.

liah

I liked the voice over in Adaptation, particularly the intro speech.

Do I have an original thought in my head? My bald head. Maybe if I were happier, my hair wouldn't be falling out. Life is short. I need to make the most of it. Today is the first day of the rest of my life. I'm a walking cliché. I really need to go to the doctor and have my leg checked. There's something wrong. A bump. The dentist called again. I'm way overdue. If I stop putting things off, I would be happier. All I do is sit on my fat ass. If my ass wasn't fat I would be happier. I wouldn't have to wear these shirts with the tails out all the time. Like that's fooling anyone. Fat ass. I should start jogging again. Five miles a day. Really do it this time. Maybe rock climbing. I need to turn my life around. What do I need to do? I need to fall in love. I need to have a girlfriend. I need to read more, improve myself. What if I learned Russian or something? Or took up an instrument? I could speak Chinese. I'd be the screenwriter who speaks Chinese and plays the oboe. That would be cool. I should get my hair cut short. Stop trying to fool myself and everyone else into thinking I have a full head of hair. How pathetic is that? Just be real. Confident. Isn't that what women are attracted to? Men don't have to be attractive. But that's not true. Especially these days. Almost as much pressure on men as there is on women these days. Why should I be made to feel I have to apologize for my existence? Maybe it's my brain chemistry. Maybe that's what's wrong with me. Bad chemistry. All my problems and anxiety can be reduced to a chemical imbalance or some kind of misfiring synapses. I need to get help for that. But I'll still be ugly though. Nothing's gonna change that.

The entire film from a voiceover aspect is incredible, follows such realistic trains of thought that I'm sure everyone has experienced at one point or another, and allowed us to completely empathize with the character, his insecurities, his growth.

Still don't like the end of the film though.

And I'm not sure if it really counts as a voiceover, exactly, but Ed Norton's rant in the mirror the 25th Hour certainly added to it.

Yeah, **** you, too. **** *me*? **** *you*, **** you and this whole city and everyone in it. **** the panhandlers, grubbing for money, and smiling at me behind my back. **** the squeegee men dirtying up the clean windshield of my car - get a ****ing job! **** the Sikhs and the Pakistanis bombing down the avenues in decrepit cabs, curry steaming out their pores stinking up my day. Terrorists in ****ing training. SLOW THE **** DOWN! **** the Chelsea boys with their waxed chests and pumped-up biceps. Going down on each other in my parks and on my piers, jingling their dicks on my Channel 35. **** the Korean grocers with their pyramids of overpriced fruit and their tulips and roses wrapped in plastic. Ten years in the country, still no speaky English? **** the Russians in Brighton Beach. Mobster thugs sitting in cafés, sipping tea in little glasses, sugar cubes between their teeth. Wheelin' and dealin' and schemin'. Go back where you ****ing came from! **** the black-hatted Chassidim, strolling up and down 47th street in their dirty gabardine with their dandruff. Selling South African apartheid diamonds! **** the Wall Street brokers. Self-styled masters of the universe. Michael Douglas, Gordon Gekko wannabe mother ****ers, figuring out new ways to rob hard working people blind. Send those Enron assholes to jail for ****ING LIFE! You think Bush and Cheney didn't know about that ****? Give me a ****ing break! Tyco! Worldcom! **** the Puerto Ricans. Twenty to a car, swelling up the welfare rolls, worst ****in' parade in the city. And don't even get me started on the Dom-in-i-cans, 'cause they make the Puerto Ricans look good. **** the Bensonhurst Italians with their pomaded hair, their nylon warm-up suits, their St. Anthony medallions, swinging their Jason Giambi Louisville Slugger baseball bats, trying to audition for "The Sopranos." **** the Upper East Side wives with their Hermès scarves and their fifty-dollar Balducci artichokes. Overfed faces getting pulled and lifted and stretched, all taut and shiny. You're not fooling anybody, sweetheart! **** the uptown brothers. They never pass the ball, they don't want to play defense, they take five steps on every lay-up to the hoop. And then they want to turn around and blame everything on the white man. Slavery ended one hundred and thirty seven years ago. Move the **** on! **** the corrupt cops with their anus-violating plungers and their 41 shots, standing behind a blue wall of silence. You betray our trust! **** the priests who put their hands down some innocent child's pants. **** the church that protects them, delivering us into evil. And while you're at it, **** J.C.! He got off easy! A day on the cross, a weekend in hell, and all the hallelujahs of the legioned angels for eternity! Try seven years in ****in' Otisville, J.! **** Osama Bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and backward-ass cave-dwelling fundamentalist assholes everywhere. On the names of innocent thousands murdered, I pray you spend the rest of eternity with your seventy-two whores roasting in a jet-fuel fire in hell. You towel-headed camel jockeys can kiss my royal Irish ass! **** Jacob Elinsky. Whining malcontent. **** Francis Xavier Slaughtery my best friend, judging me while he stares at my girlfriend's ass. **** Naturelle Riviera, I gave her my trust and she stabbed me in the back, sold me up the river, ****ing bitch. **** my father with his endless grief, standing behind that bar sipping on club sodas, selling whisky to firemen, and cheering the Bronx Bombers. **** this whole city and everyone in it. From the row-houses of Astoria to the penthouses on Park Avenue, from the projects in the Bronx to the lofts in Soho. From the tenements in Alphabet City to the brownstones in Park Slope to the split-levels in Staten Island. Let an earthquake crumble it, let the fires rage, let it burn to ****ing ash and then let the waters rise and submerge this whole rat-infested place...

No. No, **** you, Montgomery Brogan. You had it all, and you threw it away, you *dumb* ******!

Sad Professor

Ed Norton's Fight Club voice-over is an excellent example of inner dialogue. It provides most if not all of the humour in the film. It's pretty much just him commenting on the world around him. It makes the whole film work.

Do narrative voice-overs ever work? I can't think of any that I liked. They always feel tacked on and designed to explain the film to the slow people in the audience. e.g. Blade Runner.

There's a wonderful scene in Withnail and I, where he's in the toilet having a pee after being called a ponce, and he's having an internal monologue about ****ing arseholes. The wonderful bit is when his lips start mouthing his thoughts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVFavnzXK9Q

1:16 in.