The only movie I know that comparably fills its frames with scenographic inventions of dramatic significance is Jacques Tati's "Playtime"; it, too, is great to see on DVD.
When Edith Wharton said, of "The House of Mirth," that "a frivolous society gains dramatic significance only through what its frivolity destroys," we see that for Wharton, Lily Bart was a way in, and are reminded that dramatic significance has always been hard won.
The catalogue now includes fifty-five distinct leitmotifs — thematic ideas that point toward characters, objects, ideas, and relationships — and forty-three so-called incidental motifs, which, Lehman says, "do not meet criteria for proper leitmotifs" but nonetheless possess dramatic significance.
Pegg injects plenty of fun and wit and certainly doesn't hesitate to give his own acting role, chief engineer Montgomery "Scotty" Scott, a touch more dramatic significance than might otherwise have been the case.
Other plotlines, however, Schrader just puts out there, in scenes that point to emblematic traits, some of which have more thematic than dramatic significance, others of which merely ramp up pathos.
Chandor, whose father worked in finance in New York, demonstrated a forceful and sensitive understanding of such things as the protocols of hierarchy in the financial world and the dramatic significance of decorum, diction, glances, silences.
