THE SPOILERS REMEMBER
For your Star Wars Trivial Pursuit: Tony Gilroy and Dan Gilroy are the sons of Frank D. Gilroy. Frank D. Gilroy wrote The Subject Was Roses, a play that won the Pulitzer Prize and the Tony Award for Best Play in 1965.
The Subject Was Roses is three-character drama about a young man who comes home from World War II and realizes his parents marriage is not the one they pretend to have. It’s about coming of age and post-war America. It is, in many ways, the kind of play you imagine when people say the word play. It’s a father, mother and son, it takes place in an apartment set, it’s about middle-class Americans dealing with very middle-class American problems. It’s about talking things out. It’s about the discoveries we make while talking.
Star Wars movies (and many action films and martial arts films) act more like musicals than straight plays. In both genres, dialogue is memorable, concise and declarative. It carries us from song to song, number to number, sequence to sequence. Musicals (traditionally) consist of elevated emotion, visual storytelling (i.e. dance) and a score that could tell the story all by itself. Action films work the same way, using dialogue to create stakes and then move on to the chase, the fight, the narrow escape.
Plays work differently. They exist in the pleasure and detail of dialogue. Scenes are opportunities for characters to discover things about each other, to challenge each other, to question each other. Some playwrights heavily employ the space around words in order to convey meaning (Harold Pinter) and others flood the zone with language (Shakespeare, Eugene Ionesco) but what’s spoken is the center, the point, the main event.
The latest episode of Andor, “The Axe Forgets,” is full of scenes that feel very much like Dan Gilroy is the son of a playwright. It leans hard into the Andor mission: a galaxy of people talking. It’s full of character-revealing writing that would feel at home on a stage.
The most obvious example is Syril Karn’s conversation with his mother, played by renowned stage actor Kathryn Hunter. The conversation is mannered and peculiar and pointed. It’s framed like a play being filmed, the characters at a table, in profile.
Just look at this section of dialogue (over some planet-shaped cereal and blue milk).
EEDY KARN: Being a leader isn’t something you just turn on and off. By the time you’ve remembered to sit up straight, it’s too late. You might as well wear a sign that says ‘I promise to disappoint you.’ Shame we couldn’t have seen more of each other when you were flourishing. I’d have the memory to sustain me.
SYRIL KARN: Well, you could have come any time you wanted.
EEDY KARN: Any civilized being knows and open invitation is no invitation at all. My assumption is you have no prospects for the future.
SYRIL KARN: I had a spare room. You could have visited any time you wanted. You know that.
EEDY KARN: I know what you tell me. I intuit the rest. I intuit you have no future prospects.
SYRIL KARN: I’d forgotten the precision of you predictive powers.
EEDY KARN: You remembered how to mock me.
SYRIL KARN: I’d forgotten how sensitive you can be.
EEDY KARN: Perhaps you’ve forgotten my question: do you have even a single prospect before you?
SYRIL KARN: (After a long pause.) I’ll find a way.
EEDY KARN: …I’m calling Uncle Harlow.
If we never see Uncle Harlow (and I hope we never do) we know all we need to know. Syril has family connections he doesn’t want to use. His mother is unsentimental and derisive. Syril is both hurt by her and wants to please her. None of that is expressly stated, but it’s all there.
Another scene like this happens on Aldhani, as Cassian and the Arvel circle each other. They’re cagey, evasive, but share an understanding.
ARVEL SKEEN: (pointing to his tattoo): You know what this means don’t you? Yeah, I saw your eyes go right to it.
CASSIAN ANDOR: Krayt Head?
ARVEL SKEEN: See they don’t know. They got no idea. (referring to another tattoo) What about this?
CASSIAN ANDOR: “By The Hand.”
ARVEL SKEEN: So where were you?
CASSIAN ANDOR: Sipo. Youth center. Three years. I was 13 when I went in.
ARVEL SKEEN: I never heard of it.
CASSIAN ANDOR: Well you didn’t miss anything.
ARVEL SKEEN: Yeah. They built a lot of cages, huh? “The axe forgets but the tree remembers.” Now it’s our turn to do the chopping.
CASSIAN ANDOR: So that’s it? That’s why you’re here? Revenge?
ARVEL SKEEN: Yeah, that’s good enough for now. You?
CASSIAN ANDOR: I was told I could help.
ARVEL SKEEN: Yeah, but you won’t say by who.
CASSIAN ANDOR: Working with other people is never easy.
Scenes like this make up the entire episode. Mon Mothma’s dinner table argument with her daughter and husband; Lieutenant Meero’s quickly taking some space-analgesic as she discusses her hunches with her assistant; Andor’s conversation over tree milk with Karis Nemik, discussing the finer points of freedom; an Imperial asking if he can be named Prefect on Ferrix even though it comes with no additional pay; Arvel’s non-apology. Andor doesn’t just use dialogue as the glue to hold the story together. The dialogue is the story.
For contrast, here’s some dialogue from The Mandalorian. This is an exerpt from The Jedi, written by Dave Filoni, where we learn Grogu’s name for the first time.
THE MANDALORIAN: Is he speaking? Do you…understand him?
AHSOKA TANO: In a way. Grogu and I can feel each other’s thoughts.
THE MANDALORIAN: Grogu?
AHSOKA TANO: Yes. That’s his name.
THE MANDLORIAN: Grogu.
AHSOKA TANO: He was raised at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. Many masters trained him over the years. At the end of the Clone Wars when the Empire rose to power, he was hidden. Someone took him from the Temple. Then his memory becomes…dark. He seemed lost. Alone. I’ve only known one other being like this. A wise Jedi Master named Yoda. Can he still wield the Force?
THE MANDALORIAN: You mean his powers.
AHSOKA TANO: The Force is what gives him his powers. It’s an energy field created by all living things. To wield it takes a great deal of training and discipline.
THE MANDALORIAN: I’ve seen him do things I can’t explain. My task was to bring him to a Jedi.
AHSOKA TANO: The Jedi Order fell a long time ago.
THE MANDALORIAN: So did the Empire yet it still hunts him. He needs your help.
Note just how much more declarative and direct the dialogue is in this pivotal scene. Nothing is talked around. Everything is said. This is his name. This is what happened to him. He needs your help.
I don’t offer these contrasts in order to suggest that Andor is sophisticated and The Mandalorian is not. They’re stories told to accomplish different things with different sensibilities so the characters speak in different ways. In The Mandalorian, we learn what is happening, we are told how people feel, the story moves forward. The characters are an open book. Even the character that wears mask has his heart on his sleeve.
In Andor, characters carefully avoid revealing themselves, and in doing so, they show us what matters most to them. What they don’t say is what they care about, what they do say is what they choose to reveal.
Even as “The Axe Remembers” sets us up for the bank heist to come, and lays out the plan (here’s payroll behind a locked gate), it’s never about the plan. It’s about the reasons each character has for rebelling, it’s about their trust in each other, it’s about leadership and anger and fear. It’s about how everyone has their own Rebellion.
Basically, Andor Part 5 is about preparing for a heist in the same way The Subject Was Roses’s subject was roses.
One final thought: Luthen Rael (who continues to be awesome) intimates that things are just about to start as the fifth episode comes to a close. I am loving the faith Andor has that the wide-net of character empathy its engendering will make for a richer show when things pay off. It’s clear from Part 3 that they can put on quite an action sequence when they want to. So, I’m looking forward to what Part 6 has in store. I feel prepared to be upset when Karis Nemik dies or when Mon Mothma is betrayed by her husband. Let’s see what it means for all these fleshed-out characters when the Rebellion becomes a reality.
Also, I feel like there are even more Gilroys in the credits. Maybe it is because they each do several jobs. What if we haven't even found all the Gilroys yet?