Sometimes, I can get really annoying when talking about emotions in movie scenes mostly because, at some point, I drop the talking and start sobbing. I mean, have you seen that part in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 where Neville opens the painting at the end of the tunnel that leads to the Room of Requirements, and everybody jumps up on their feet when they see Harry walking in and they are all like”Woohoo, lead us to death!”… whatever, yeah, it doesn’t matter, I never daydreamed being Harry when I was 14 anyways, duh...
Well, uhm, let me blow your heads with some movie scenes that have had the greatest impact on me and the YouTube videos of which I most certainly don’t have bookmarked and copy/pasted onto a list with the title “When you need to weep”, of course. Like… who does that?!
The Boat That Rocked (dir. Richard Curtis, 2009) - “The Biscuit Scene”
The Biscuit Scene with capital ‘T’, ‘B’, and ‘S’ has probably taken up more than 70% of my heart and, every time, it threatens to take up more space until I forget that I also have friends and family to love.
The premise of the scene is that Young Carl, who is visiting his godfather’s pirate ship… boat… aquatic radio shanty full of melomaniacs and their lesbian cook, has just seen the love of his life - Marianne, - who he has known for about the lifespan of a dinner + dessert, do the devil’s tango with an older dude. So he sits on a bench and does what every heartbroken homo sapiens does: the grumpy face. His awkwardly lovely pals - News John and Harold - join him in a few shots alternating between medium and full size, placing biscuits and a glass of milk on the table. Of course, they are meant to heal Young Carl’s frozen face but since his facial muscles are still wrapped in the bedsheets in which Marianne and that other guy were tossing and turning, he has little appetite for biscuits.
And when your depressed friend doesn’t want a biscuit, you eat it with so much obvious pleasure that he would have no choice but to join you. Harold and News John perform some selfless gluttony until Young Carl angrily grabs the last biscuit, probably pretending that it is Marianne’s biscuit, WHAT, SORRY, NO, WHO SAID THAT, and finally sheds a smile in Harold’s supportive embrace.
What I find the most wholesome about the scene is that it was a genuine improv. Richard Curtis put Young Carl on a bench and gave Ike Hamilton and Will Adamsdale the freedom to act however they wanted, as long as it covered the “Help a friend in need” model. AND THEY SMASHED IT, MAN, JUST SET THE BAR SKY-HIGH! If your friends don’t eat your biscuits when you are heartbroken, are they even your friends?!
P.S. I definitely did not make a re-enactment of the scene with three socks during the first lockdown. No, sir.
2. Call Me by Your Name (dir. Luca Guadagnino, 2017) - “A father’s monologue”
Throughout my life, so far, I have seen many things as beautiful as this scene… but that means shit now because we are, once again, grotesquely moisturizing our faces. The speech that Mr. Perlman gives to Elio after Oliver has left doesn’t cross any boundaries of the very intimate privacy of an individual’s (Elio’s) grief but leaves the impression that this is exactly the boundless father-and-son connection of limitless giving in return of simple gratitude that everybody could at least see themselves craving, or feel lucky to have.
The obvious is there but never addressed directly - Elio and Oliver had a secret relationship that ended before it could develop further, leaving Elio to suffer quietly, all inside himself since he hadn’t come out to others yet. His father knew, never asked a single question, accepted just as quietly and unobtrusively, regarded his son’s self-discovery with love and nothing less. So when Elio restlessly rocks, lying in Mr. Perlman’s lap to find some kind of a haven for his broken head and heart, the father releases sensible words with the smoke of his cigarette. The fact that he is performing this quotidian habit while vocalizing what I think is the one healthy break-up advice that rings true for everybody is a powerful move of the screenplay to make the boy feel more at ease with his grief, to embrace it, and to know that what he is feeling is true, raw, exceptionally necessary, and precious.
We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster that we go bankrupt by the age of 30 and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. (...) Right now, there’s sorrow, there’s pain; don’t kill it, and with it, the joy you’ve felt.
Parents want the best for their children so desperately that they tend to help them hide every sharp piece. On the contrary, Mr. Perlman carries the less common, vital to the emotional survival, wisdom that no pain goes away without having been consciously present. The sorrow is just as crucial as the memory.
3. Pride and Prejudice (dir. Joe Wright, 2005) - “The beginning”
No other introductory scene will surpass this one for me, and if it does, I will still deny that it has. How do you introduce the contrasting tempers of five sisters, without giving them a voice or words to say? How do you shoot so that, no matter what they do throughout the rest of the film, you already know who they are, what they believe in, and HOW LOW THEY CAN GO. Sorry.
First, we see Elizabeth the Emancipator - walking through the field, at sunrise, reading a book because independent billionaires wake up at 4:30 am to do push-ups while listening to an audiobook in a language they have never heard and receiving smoothie transfusions through their veins.
When she reaches the house, the camera abandons her and begins a smooth, one-shot journey of the inside of the Bennett family, introducing us to Mary - the nerd behind the piano; Jane, who is such a naive Cinderella that she would willingly throw herself under ill-meaning people’s shoes; Kitty and Lydia, everything about whom is high-pitched and hyperactive; Mrs. Bennett, probably begging her husband to bribe some fine fellas to marry their daughters, and Mr. Bennett, knowing that he will forever love his simple and superficial wife, listening to her with half a ear.
Cynicism aside, I find this scene fascinating and unique because the characters are thoroughly developed before they utter any quotable statements. There is a certain degree of modernity to the way we get to integrate into their lives, which makes the film so pleasurable to watch.
4. Fifty Shades of Gray (dir. Sam Taylor-Johnson, 2015) - “Every scene”
Sorry, my bad. Got carried away.
5. Jojo Rabbit (dir. Taika Waititi, 2019) - “Shoes”
One of my favourite things in pop culture are Easter eggs, planted by the creators for you to only find out about after a second viewing and go all, “Wow! Boom, baby, I love you, confuse me more, send my brain to hunt down your genius, I bow down to your manipulations,” on the director.
[SPOILERS AHEAD]
You probably didn’t pay much attention to the position of Scarlett Johansson’s shoes the first time you watched the film. You definitely noticed the classy red color but not how, in a couple of scenes, they appeared to be cut from the rest of her body by the framing of the shot and stood at the level of her son’s - Jojo - head. But Taika was giving us hints, directing our way to the grim revelation of the mother’s hanging.
When Jojo finds her, he is chasing a beautiful blue butterfly, compelling us to acknowledge the graceful absurdity of the plot about a Nazi kid seeking the wrong type of glory, while never failing to just be a kind, innocent child. Then, the butterfly leads him right next to his mother’s gently swinging shoes. But, this time, the red tone is colder - a percentage of blue that has increased during the dextrous editing process draws it closer to the thin skin of the butterfly, which manages to survive in the darkest hours. The inherently human and the monstrous intertwined.
Shoes and laces are the landmark elements of the film. While she is still alive, Jojo's mother is the one that ties his shoelaces because he hasn't got the hang of it yet. When somebody dies, our mind enters such a state of shock that it goes into ordinary mode, trying to perform daily tasks that seem pointless in such a dark moment. In fact, they serve to protect our sanity. At his lowest point, Jojo ties his mother's shoelaces as a sign of hope that his learnt lesson could bring her back. At the end of the film, he also ties Elsa's shoelaces, just before he reveals to her that her life has come back to her.
All I will say is that I would build Taika a temple but I think that he might have already built one for himself.
6. Minari (dir. Lee Isaac Chung, 2020) - “Sleeping on the floor”
After a month of prancing and bouncing around a rabbit hole of watching videos of teenage vloggers demonstrating to me what they eat in a day and how they navigate a busy life, as if I also couldn’t grow my own tomatoes and go to the gym three and a half times a day, I sat down to watch an entire film with my mum - Minari. With the film being the love child of a freshly and authentically represented, run-of-the-mill human story and A24 (the production company that is also the motherland of Lady Bird, The Florida Project, The Farewell, The Last Black Man in San Francisco), the obvious assumption was that at least the soundtrack would make me want to revisit the hardships of the South Korean family that tries to fight against nature and comfort as its very own, tiny immigrant community in Arkansas.
The four members of the family + a kickass grandmother are in conflict between themselves but you still admire the parents’ almost penniless strength to guide their children through the universal, not the American, dream: to have a roof above your head. There is this specific scene that shines a light on what ‘unconditional’ means.
Loss after loss strikes (no spoilers, that’s just how drama films go) - the strain on relationships seems to push all the buttons but, on the morning after an irreversible storm, we see the parents and the children sleeping on the floor, even though they all have beds. Everybody has somebody else’s hand on their body: an unbreakable touch of love in their sleep, as the grandmother sits on the kitchen table and watches over them. There is nothing else she can do - as the eldest, she couldn’t help them stand taller and firmer on their feet in the rough American soil. So she just witnesses that moment of unconditionality, with roots in the hardwood floor.
7. About Time (dir. Richard Curtis, 2013) - “The wedding”
No bride begs the Universe for it to rain on the day of her wedding… but About Time creates a hideously romantic vision of what it would feel like to have the outdoor tent rip open from the ceiling and let liters of water splash all over the guests, the cake, the catering, leaving everybody hungry, cold, and less drunk because the alcohol contains too much water now. I’d like to book one of those.
Even though the bride and the groom are unrealistically chill, all things considered, the scene is still my favourite thing after my brother’s attempts to emotionally drive my parents to get him a Pomeranian dog, by keeping a picture of one under his pillow. The gesture that Mary does for Tim while walking down the aisle to his top Spotify song - Jimmy Fontana’s “Il Mondo” - is so tiny but a substantial demonstration of what it means to compromise and not mind it at all because it is you two from then onwards.
Bill Nighy’s cheeky father-of-the-groom dance under the judgemental look of his wife is yet another minor detail that makes all the difference to a viewer like me who thrives on beautiful singularities connecting within the bigger picture. The wedding is convincing without trying to be because it is simple, which is what I love about Richard Curtis’ films. It feels like he never directs - he continuously tells his actors to improvise and sits there to observe, with gratitude for all the non-sensational stories that humanity provides for us.
P.S. The scenes that have had the greatest impact on me and "the best" scenes I have seen are not necessarily the same thing. Well, those are indeed some of the best movie scenes for me personally, but there are also some other magnificent minutes or seconds in cinema that have left me open-mouthed with how the cast and crew handled them performance- and plot-wise, as well as in terms of aesthetics. I don't know why I'm saying this - I guess I want to defend my Film & TV degree that taught me how to notice the various elements connecting, and sit in the cinema, consciously thinking: "I know what you're trying to do to me, melodrama llama, but I am not leaving; bought your stupid popcorn, your stupid Coke and jelly beans, and yes, I will make sure I don't shut up about what I just saw." Kept my promise.
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