The problem with most screenplays, line-to-line and character-to-character, is a problem of differentiation. As in, everybody sounds like the same type of person. Human or human-adjacent qualities, optional. Separate from this problem is the rarified, repeat-Oscar winner realm of screenwriting, where Quentin Tarantino holds court and the writing becomes so self-consciously embroidered that scenes have a way of slowing to a crawl while the writer dog-paddles around for a while. And then somebody shoots somebody.
But there are exceptions to these ridiculous and untenable generalizations. Some of them are even playwrights, breaking into what is, for them, a new medium.
Take Annie Baker, a terrific playwright whose Pulitzer Prize winner, “The Flick” (2014), served up a luxuriantly naturalistic slice of life, set in a struggling art-house movie theater. Baker has now made her feature film debut as writer-director with “Janet Planet,” and there’s so much right with it, beginning and ending with how Baker listens to, and frames, what her characters say, and how. And what they don’t.
It’s set in early 1990s western Massachusetts, where Baker grew up, in the seldom-filmed Pioneer Valley region. This is a verdant patch of mostly comforting isolation, as Baker remembers it by way of the soundtrack, full of birdsong and insect buzz and the wind blowing through the back seat of an un-air-conditioned car.