GUY RITCHIE is Humorous, says MARK TWAIN

“The humorous story is American, the comic story is English, the witty story is French.”

- Mark Twain, How to Tell a Story.

If I ask you, how would you categorize Guy Ritchie’s films? Are they humorous? Are they comical? Are they witty? They do certainly have that charm of British comedy but it is still difficult for me to categorize Guy Ritchie’s work as any of the three – humor, comical, or witty. But again, what I can’t do, Mark Twain certainly can.

Mark Twain, in his short piece How to Tell a Story, differentiated between what makes a story American, English or French. Though it is questionable why Mark Twain chose only these three nations to subjugate telling of a story. Every culture, without doubt, has its own quirks about story telling. But let’s talk deduce Guy Ritchie’s storytelling voice according to Mark Twain.

Mark Twain Categorizes these three ways of storytelling something like this: -

A Humorous Story depends for its effect upon the “Manner” of telling where as a Comic or a Witty Story depends for its effect upon the “Matter” of telling.

He feels that a Humorous story may be spun out to great lengths and are free to wander as they please as long as it keeps the audience entertained and may never even have an end. On the other hand, the Comic and Witty Story may be brief and to the point. A Humorous Story is a work of Art. A high and delicate Art and it is told gravely with the teller fully concealing that anything is even slightly funny about the story and he is right, there is nothing funny about the story but the manner of its telling makes it memorable and enjoyable. Thus, with these words taken directly from his gospel, Mark Twain set out to make the point clear – American Humor is the superior form than the British Comedy. I suspect he threw the French Wit in the mix just for the sake of the argument.

If you were to ask me purely on the basis of genre, I would say Guy Ritchie has excelled in making a Guy Ritchie film. A lot of auteurs or directors cannot boast that feat. With a Guy Ritchie film, from frame one you will know that it is a Guy Ritchie movie (except Aladdin – that’s a Disney movie). Since his feature length debut Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Guy Ritchie set out to carve his own story telling voice which indeed is not a derivative of its plot or characters but how those characters feel about the plot and that is how his style is so effective in capturing the imagination of the audience.

After the recent viewing of The Gentlemen, I could not resist noticing how Guy Ritchie has perfected his cinematic voice. Sure it may not always produce the best results but he ensures that the film is told is a manner worthy of Mark Twain’s applaud. Even a movie like King Arthur, which has its flaws, is told in his own certain manner despite the source material being far from an ideal candidate to be a Guy Ritchie film.

Even if we take a classic British creation such as Monty Python, their sketches and the films were funny because of the subject matter that they talked about. Sure, the manner of telling the stories was distinct too but still they relied too heavily on the subject matter rather than the craft of film for telling those stories. Another British classic comes to mind, Withnail & I. That film too was comical, but again the comedy arising due to the circumstances of the characters and not in the manner of how the story is told from behind the lens.

Mark Twain may turn in his grave if he ever comes to know that his quantification of Humour, which was supposed to belittle the British, is being used to applaud a British. But Guy Ritchie deserves that more than any other auteur of recent times. Guy Ritchie is also a perfect example of someone trotting a different path. Whenever the word auteur is uttered, the many images that are formed in most minds are about filmmakers who make hard-core drama whose pace may shame a turtle with never ending long shots perhaps in monochrome. Guy Ritchie is an auteur of different sorts, but a master in his craft of storytelling. His protagonists are gangsters, he uses fast cuts, and every post-production tech available to improve the pacing and the manner in which he tells his story. Guy Ritchie indeed does deserve the due respect of Mark Twain. It may even be alleged that Guy Ritchie perhaps is the only director who makes American Humour movies despite being British.