Daily Dialogue — June 30, 2019

Harry: [about Ray] So he’s having a really nice time?
Ken: Well, I’m having a really nice time. I’m not sure it’s really his cup of tea.
Harry: [after a long pause] What?
Ken: You know, I’m not sure it’s really his thing.
Harry: What do you mean it’s not really his thing? What’s that supposed to mean? It’s not really his thing. What the fuck is that supposed to mean?
Ken: Nothing, Harry.
Harry: It’s a fairytale town, isn’t it? How’s a fairytale town not somebody’s fucking thing? How can all those canals and bridges and cobbled streets and those churches, all that beautiful fucking fairytale stuff, how can that not be somebody’s fucking thing, eh?
Ken: What I think I meant to say was — 
Harry: Is the swans still there?
Ken: Yeah, there’s swans…
Harry: How can fucking swans not fucking be somebody’s fucking thing, eh? How can that be?

— In Bruges (2008), written by Martin McDonagh

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Telephone Call.

Trivia: Harry’s strict moral code gets a further insight in a deleted scene, where a young version is played by actor Matt Smith, best known for his role as the 11th doctor in ‘Doctor Who’. In it, Harry discovers his partner holding a dead woman in a club, so he marches into a police station and beheads the man who did it, a dirty detective. Ultimately, film makers decided to cut the scene, as the CGI decapitation looked fake.

Dialogue On Dialogue: The relationship between Ken (Brendan Gleeson) and Harry (Ralph Fiennes) is a complex one, set up by a series of phone calls even before Harry arrives in Bruges to take care of some business. Here is a setup telephone call:

Which leads to this callback by Ken:

“Do you know what that is? Yeah, I know you know it’s a train. Do you know what train? Well, it’s a train that Ray just got on, and he’s alive and he’s well, and he doesn’t know where he’s going and neither do I. So if you need to do your worst, do your worst. You’ve got the address of the hotel. I’ll be here waiting. Because I’ve got to quite like Bruges, now. It’s like a fucking fairytale or something.”