How Much Dialogue Does a Movie Need?: Days of Heaven and Casualties of War

Here we have two extremes on the dialogue spectrum. One has very little dialogue and one has a lot of dialogue. Where is the line for too little or too much? Can a film make up for it's apparent loss of or excess of dialogue? With that in mind, do films have different objectives, or should they just be stories set upon the medium of motion picture? Other mediums, of course take advantage of dialogue, from books to TV. But just as in novels, where the rule is show don't tell, film has a similar rule, or string of similar ways of saying the same thing; don't tell the story through dialogue, action should tell the story, don't rely on narration, etc., etc.
I just watched two films with completely different examples of dialogue, Days of Heaven and Casualties of War. In the end, both films were pretty good, and both had me thinking about the use of dialogue.
Days of Heaven is by the classic-of-all-classic visual directors, Terrence Malick. His films are notoriously dialogue absent, from The Thin Red Line to The New World. (The New World is one of my favs.) All three films establish tone, setting, and even character without hardly a word spoken. The Thin Red Line is a war epic following Marines during World War II on Guadalcanal. The film is a remarkably different take on the war film. Most of the film is taken up by the soldiers' personal thoughts and mood. And even during the action, which climaxes in the middle of the film, rather than end, the camera cuts away to non-action elements. The placing of the climax at the middle has two effects. First, it makes the latter end almost pointless because it feels like the movie could and perhaps should end at any point. Although the characters keep going through issues, and they end up fighting further up the island, easily taking the Japanese camp. The film just sorts of wanders around like the Marines further up the island. Secondly, on the flip side, there's a tenseness that continues through the second half of the film. They take the camp, but how easy should it be? But still, as the movie goes on, and you expect more and more for a great climax, you begin to lose hope that there will be one worthy of the grand feeling film, and the film almost kind of dies slowly. The film closes as Japanese soldiers counter attack, and you're left thinking about the historical battles that made Guadalcanal so famous, but aren't going to witness through Malick's camera.
The Thin Red Line actually has quite a bit of dialogue, whole scenes of it, in fact. But it's used properly. Even the narration is used perfectly, giving us tone and depth to the inner thoughts of characters, rather than ever telling us things we know, or trying to be witty. Really, the narration is kind of the point of the film, showing through different soldiers' eyes the difficulties and realities of war. Every soldier is fighting the war within himself.

Terrence Malick loves narration, or at least he feels the need to use it, since it's in every one of his films. Days of Heaven is no different, except the film is narrated by the young sister, a side character in the story. She is brought along through the whole story, witnessing everything and ultimately at the end, she pursues her own life, though, even that is questionable as she merely finds someone else to tag along with.
The film follows a man and woman, with her little sister, poor workers after the turn of the century. They start in Chicago, but after the man hits his boss, they have to leave, and end up on a wheat farm in North Texas. The farm is owned by a rich bachelor, who takes a liking to the woman. The whole time, the man and woman have pretended to be brother and sister, and with the rich man's advances, it makes things slightly awkward. The man makes the woman take the opportunity, because he's sick with something and will die soon, and she ends up marrying the rich man. The man moves into the house with them, but it's only a matter of time until their secret is revealed. And the only way it could get revealed without saying it is.....kissing and touching where people can see you! The first rule of con artists is don't kiss your fake sister. But migrant workers have never had a track record for intelligence, so what can you expect. Plus, they aren't really scammers, they're just workers trying to make it in the world.
So what's this film about? Who knows. The plot is pretty simple, the characters aren't too deep, and the narration the girl spouts only goes so far. It's good, but not too good. Wikipedia says it's transcendental. What does that mean? It's airy and hard to put your finger on. There's a lot of scenes where the sun is setting and people are working, or the sun is setting and the people are dancing near the house, or when the sun is setting and they're doing whatever. Sun sets and slim dialogue translates as being transcendental.

Then what does lots of dialogue and Marty McFly screaming about a dilemma translate as? A great stage play? Or maybe just a mediocre war movie? Casualties of War at times felt like both. It has all the trappings of a great military stage play; off-duty soldiers discussing the war and being home while drinking cheap beer, lots of discussions about semi-meaningful stuff, a big time dilemma, and what every military stage play needs.....a military tribunal!
The film follows Marty McFly, who has somehow travelled back to the 1960's, where he got drafted. Marty's squad leader is a surfer from California named Spicoli, except now he's become a total douche, who wants to get revenge on the VC by kidnapping and raping a girl to keep up squad moral. So everyone goes along with it, except one heroic young time traveller. They kidnap the girl while on a long range recon mission, everyone takes their turn, then eventually kill her when she's giving away their position. Then afterward, McFly tells everyone, wanting some justice, since he's the only one who believes in their being there, getting some resistance here and there and almost a grenade up his butt.
The film is pretty good, except when you place it alongside other war greats, especially other Vietnam films. The opening battle sequence is hokey and you can tell it's on a set, as compared to the rest of the film shot on location. It has Brian DePalma's signature suspense, which is what makes it so silly. McFly is dangling in a VC tunnel hole unable to get out. Can he get saved in time, before a knife-wielding Charlie can stab his boots? The whole scene is such a cliche that it drains all suspense out of it. Then you have Michael J. Fox screaming like a teenage boy lost in time. He's upset, but the way he screams and whines, you'd think he was just complaining to Jennifer about sending in his audition tape. And with that, we have another thing that feels cliche, this guy who comes off as a kid, going up against men. It's hard to tell if it was great casting or totally wrong to cast Sean Penn as the Sergeant and Michael J. Fox as the young, idealistic Private. Sometimes it's a joke, and sometimes it works perfectly.
I think the times it doesn't work is when Fox is going on about his dilemma. First it's how to stop it before, then how to stop it during, then what to do after. I'm a pretty moral person, and even I was all like, "Just shut up already, who cares."
And that's what too much dialogue does. It takes good thoughts from the audience and says them out loud, taking away any moral decisions the audience should be asking themselves. A viewer who comes to a conclusion on his own, is more apt to think the movie smart(and hopefully better), than a viewer who is told the answer outright, even if every viewer comes to the same conclusion. It's like a bad teacher, who merely tells the students what to think and giving them all the answers. It's less effective than helping the student come to the answer themselves. And that's why Back to the Future is better than Casualties of War.