I watched The Door in the Floor this evening, and I was a bit disappointed. It happens that I was watching Short Cuts by Robert Altman last night, and the way these two films addressed reality was striking. Both were full of implausibility, but Altman's film had randomness with a core sense of humanity that allowed me to suspend my disbelief, while The Door in the Floor had the opposite. It had direction, but seemed to lack truth. It didn't have verisimilitude – it didn't capture a semblance of truth that allowed me feel and connect. Instead, it felt synthetic and manufactured, as if each scene were part of the mandatory structure of the piece. This is a bit is ironic, since another annoyance was that much of it felt repetitive and overextended. Actions took place with blatant and unnecessary symbolism, and dialogue was dispensed like clues in mystery, but without the requisite tension and curiosity. It was neither conceptually satisfying nor narratively engaging.

All mediums are different from real life. What I really hope for is that the semblance of truth will be so powerful that I accept the differences between the dramatic form and real life. I feel much the same about wedding videos. I often talk about conveying truth in video, but in actuality, this isn't a possibility. Rather, it should feel real, without taking people through all the unnecessary details of reality. I suppose this is what I am really after - verisimilitude.