The obvious genius

One of the most tired tropes in movies and TV is this idea of the genius whose talent in a particular field is instantly obvious to any other practitioner in the field who sees an example of the genius's work. This conceit occurs frequently with writers. In the case of The Words (2012), the genius is a novelist played by two different actors (Ben Barnes in youth, Jeremy Irons in old age), yet for some reason he doesn't get a name.

Some time after World War II, the young man moved to France, took up a job writing for an English language publication for "expats," and married a French waitress. After the tragic loss of their baby, the young man was inspired to write a brilliant novel, but the novel was misplaced on a train and lost for many years.

Until it is discovered by Rory Jansen (Bradley Cooper), a mediocre writer who has gotten enough rejection letters to fill up a binder and is marking time as a low-ranking employee at a publishing company. Rory is so impressed by the typewritten novel that he is compelled to type it on his computer verbatim. His wife Dora (Zoe Saldana) convinces him to show it to someone at his workplace. Rory does, leading to inevitable success.

And an inevitable confrontation with the true author, who claims to want neither byline nor payment. Rory comes clean to his publisher, who is understandably angry. After some convincing from the publisher and from the true author, Rory decides to continue the charade, and the secret of the true authorship of The Window Tears dies with the author.

Here I have presented the story of the movie in a straight line. But the way the story is presented in the movie, you'd be forgiven for initially thinking that Rory might actually be a very good writer who just hasn't caught the break he so desperately needs.

That's because in real life, the work of a genius is not immediately obvious to everyone. Try googling "rejection letters to famous authors." You probably won't even have to type the whole thing. Animal Farm by George Orwell and Moby Dick by Herman Melville are but two bestsellers to have gotten rejection letters your search will turn up. And a book we're led to believe was a source of inspiration for The Window Tears, The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, was deemed "tedious and offensive" by Peacock & Peacock in 1925.

So it's not just amazing that the misplaced novel was found by a novelist, it's also amazing that a novel which was so spontaneously written was also immediately recognized as a work of genius by the very first publisher it was shown to. Genius or hack, any novelist who makes any effort to get published will get rejection letters. Only in the movies will the publishers who pass on brilliant first time authors feel like idiots. In real life, publishers of print books have become very risk-averse, something this movie's screenwriters should have known back in the 1990s when they started working on this story.