更新时间:2013-10-16
duckducker • 大审判:Dialogue as Litany
But if the script is a paradigm of Aristotelian structure, it is its adroit courtroom give-and-take that bespeaks a ruthlessness that would have been more recognizable on a battlefield. No other courtroom drama in memory is as ruthless in its examination of that much-honored profession, sparing no one, not even Frank Galvin, in its revelation that the client is seen too often as an irrelevant blip on an agenda filled with ego and avarice. When Galvin turns down an opportunity to settle the case out of court, he is confronted by the husband of the plaintiff's sister:
Doneghy, "You guys, you guys, you're all the same. The doctors at the hospital, you...it's 'What I'm going to do for you'; but you screw up it's 'We did the best that we could. I'm dreadfully sorry...' And people like me live with your mistakes the rest of our lives.'"
Later when Galvin interviews the nurse who knows the truth about the malpractice case, even while we see that his intentions are pure and honorable, he's still unable to unshackle himself from the lawyerly conceit that pompous bullying will win the day. The nurse attacks Galvin, accusing him of being like all the others:
Mary Rooney, "You know you guys are all the same. You don't care who gets hurt. You're a bunch of whores. You'll do anything for a dollar. You've got no loyalty...no nothing...you're a bunch of whores."
It is Galvin who recoils from this torrent of scorn, realizing that she is right: while his intentions may be noble his methods still define and stigmatize him. But in the end it is neither a rich doctor who is on trail, nor the legal profession, nor even Frank Galvin himself. The wonder of David Mame's script is that we realize at the end that all along it is we who were on trail. And the jury has found us guilty.
(Good Scripts, Bad Scripts by Thomas Pope)
Doneghy, "You guys, you guys, you're all the same. The doctors at the hospital, you...it's 'What I'm going to do for you'; but you screw up it's 'We did the best that we could. I'm dreadfully sorry...' And people like me live with your mistakes the rest of our lives.'"
Later when Galvin interviews the nurse who knows the truth about the malpractice case, even while we see that his intentions are pure and honorable, he's still unable to unshackle himself from the lawyerly conceit that pompous bullying will win the day. The nurse attacks Galvin, accusing him of being like all the others:
Mary Rooney, "You know you guys are all the same. You don't care who gets hurt. You're a bunch of whores. You'll do anything for a dollar. You've got no loyalty...no nothing...you're a bunch of whores."
It is Galvin who recoils from this torrent of scorn, realizing that she is right: while his intentions may be noble his methods still define and stigmatize him. But in the end it is neither a rich doctor who is on trail, nor the legal profession, nor even Frank Galvin himself. The wonder of David Mame's script is that we realize at the end that all along it is we who were on trail. And the jury has found us guilty.
(Good Scripts, Bad Scripts by Thomas Pope)
