Big Big Big

The other day I just rummaged through my film collection wondering what to see. Its been quite sometime trying to figure my own scripts and funding, my tummy not really helping with the situation, i decide the best way to go about it is return to the basics... Watch a film. That's how I end up scanning the films I have and I get my hands on 12 Angry Men.
Reginald Rose originally wrote this as a play for the television but was also made into a film starring Henry Fonda in 1957. A courtroom drama, actually a jury room drama. And when I say that one will notice that is what it actually is. I am not going to tell you the story if you haven't seen it, but would rather suggest one goes and gets it. But I will mention so much - the film starts at a court with the judge asking the jury to leave and decide the fate of a later established 18 year old boy who is accused of murdering his father.
Now technically that is a straight forward script or thats the way I look at it. There are just about so many ways to take forward the film, but still I wanted to see how do they actually go about it. The other thing that didn't help was that I had already read the book as a 12 year old visiting my grandmum's place. But that just made the watch even more fun in the end.
I started by thinking about a way to keep me glued to the screen knowing too well that a 30 year onld watching a conversation based film is like asking a kid to read amartya sen (though he happens to be one of my favourites, it can be ascertained that he never meant to write those books for kids.)
But what will hit you immediately is that Rose does not wait for too many introductions and all but goes straight to the jury room and start the drama... the basics of introductions are done via dialogues that each of them speak. Even the characterisation comes out through the dialogues.
As a person who really would want to be later writing films I think this is just the film to watch. All you need is 12 actors and a room. watch