Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy “I never thought I had an accent until the hurricane”: Sociolinguistic Variation in Post-Katrina Greater New Orleans Sociolinguistic Variation in Post-Katrina Greater New Orleans. As a supporting character, he naturally has a lot more slack to play with before his delivery starts to sound totally, utterly ridiculous.“I never thought I had an accent until the hurricane:” The Devil All The Time is a stylised film, true to the American Gothic inspiration of the original novel and so he just about gets away with chewing the scenery and having a blast playing up to the charismatic preacher stereotype. In the end, Pattinson just about clinches it with an accent slicker than a greased hog. The intensity is upped by the fact that we’ve already seen him commit acts of extreme violence over the previous hour and 40 minutes, including pulling a paper bag over a fellow teenager’s head and punching him till he leaves the shape of his knuckles in whatever’s left under the bag. When Holland stands up and says, “Go ahead and talk,” pulling out a Luger and pointing it at Pattinson, he sounds like a man 40 years older, weighed down by the deaths of all of those close to him over the years. He sits down quietly at the back of the nave, on the end of a pew with his cap pulled down over his eyes and begins a false sexual confession that Pattinson, sitting at the front of the church, vicariously encourages until he realises Holland is recounting accusations against him, the preacher. It’s Holland’s righteous fury when he finally confronts Pattinson in his empty church that gives him the edge in this one. Words are something he throws at people to try to confuse them, not something he considers carefully. Namely, to persuade young women to “worship” with him in private. Though he talks a lot, most of what he says is ultimately meaningless or little more than attempts to wheedle his way out of trouble or to get people to do what he wants. The way Teagardin speaks is actually not very intense.
Not as performative as Pattinson’s, but perfect for his character. I’ve done… lustful acts”), or else it’s almost Biden-esque in its use of working class 1950s terminology (of a bully he fights at school: “He ain’t bothered Lenora since. His language is either simple and shot through with religious imagery and reference to sin (“I been doing wrong and I want to get right by the Lord. As the narrator says, “He would never win a fist fight, but he could recite the Book Of Revelation in his sleep.”Īrvin Russell is the very epitome of the hard-working, salt of the earth, romantic West Virginian that people like to picture, the flip side of the travelling shysters who try to swindle the honest folk of Knockemstiff and its environs. He gets lots of very typical preachy lines about righteousness and delusion, which he manages to make sound perverse nonetheless. But then again, an actor’s delivery can emphasise specific words and Pattinson works very well with what he’s given. Perhaps it’s hard to judge on vocabulary, because Pattinson and Holland can only deliver the lines in the script, after all.
Arvin lets his actions speak louder than his words. He only raises his voice a couple of times in the film and even then it’s in justified anger rather than as a performance of any sort. What a showman.įairly little for Holland here, as he’s all about the understatement. Pattinson gets some great bombastic moments, including a brilliantly dumb sermon about fried chicken livers at a church community lunch that begins with him whispering, “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst for righteousness,” and ends with him very dramatically suggesting that he’s, “going to eat these organs because I model myself on the good lord Jesus, whenever he gives me the chance”, selflessly consuming the cheap livers and offering the better meat to his flock.
0 kommentar(er)
