Ramifications

"Got me a movie. I want you to know"

Monday, October 6, 2008

Musings On Five Unexplainably Great Movie Scenes

1. "I love that dress", 'Leaving Las Vegas' (1995)
Mike Figgis' brutal film about a man's determination to drink himself to death and a prostitute's determination to love him can be seen as a lot of things. It's hard though for many to see it as it truly is: a love story. For some unexplainable reason, the most romantic scene in the film comes in the form of Ben asking Sera for their first date. After a botched exchange in his motel room, Sera happens upon Ben on a city bench; drunk and sipping from a martini glass. When rejected after asking her out for dinner, she walks away as he mumbles to himself: "We can get prime rib. They got it on sale for $2.99. I love that dress". With the blinding lights of Las Vegas in the background, Nicolas Cage's slyly desperate delivery, and that piano-driven score; the scene feels like a darkly comic glimmer of hope in an otherwise hopeless story.

2. "You're a handsome devil. What's your name?", Gross Pointe Blank (1996)
'A hitman coming back to his hometown to do a job and attend his high school reunion is a premise that leaves ample room for a dark comedy; and John Cusack's four-man team of writers gives us plenty of casual, comic blood. But the film's most grim scene is also the quietest. 10 years after disappearing from home, Martin (John Cusack) comes back to find his mother (a wonderful Barbara Harris) widowed and confined to a nursing home after recreational Lithium usage has left her in a constant state of dementia and paranoia. All Martin's hopes for reconciliation are dashed immediately after she opens up their conversation by revealing that she spoke to his deceased father recently. "I imagine that'd be rather difficult" he replies with classic Cusack deadpan. After a few confused minutes, he is denied any kind of goodbye when she looks back at him and says, "Oh, you're a handsome devil. What's your name?" For only these few minutes, all humor is left out as Martin is revealed as a man who can never go back home again.

3. "Call it!", 'No Country For Old Men' (2007)
Anton Chigurh was one of the memorable movie villians right out of the cannon. It's too rare for an antagonist to be as terrifying as he is hilarious. It's even more rare and terrifying to see one try to bring a sense of logic and reason to his terror. Chigurh's brutal force is displayed almost immediately in 'No Country For Old Men' with one of the longest and most helpless death scenes maybe ever in films. But his next scene; where he confuses and threatens a hapless, old gas station owner may be his most affecting. Suddenly offended by the man's casual conversation, he mock's the man's Texas dialect and life decisions and gets increasingly frustrated at the man's confusion over his non-sequitors. He then pulls out a coin. "Call it", he says with a hilariously random sense of exhaustion. The flipping of the coin is maybe the only human commonality that Chigurh can understand, which he uses to justify his actions. Here he seems to feel an adrenaline rush from completely over-powering this old man, then has no problem walking away when the coin comes up in his favor. "Well done", he says easlily; then insists he not put it in his pocket. "You put it in your pocket, it'll just get mixed in with your others and become just a coin", he says. "Which it is."


4. "Sixteen Reasons Why I Love You", 'Mulholland Drive' (2001)
David Lynch is one of those great filmmakers whose work irritates those determined to have a reason behind everything they see in art. Like any surrealist or abstract artist, Lynch seems to create from feelings, images, and sounds; whose exact meanings may (or may not) come later. At the center of this film (arguably Lynch's best) is a scene that almost seemed as if it could've existed independent of the story. In the center of her dream (see my essay 'Thoughts On Mulholland Drive' for further analysis), "Betty" is taken to a movie set to meet the director who could make her career. In her real life, he is her nemesis: the man who stole her love away from her. But here, it's true love. The scene's opening crane shot always feels like an homage to the pop music of the '50's and the excitement of movie-making. The camera pulls back from a dolled-up quartet lip-synching Connie Stevens' 'Sixteen Reasons', then pulls up to reveal the movie set surrounding them. We then see Betty wisked into the room, and the director suddenly turns around as the two lock eyes in one of the sweetest "love at first sight" moments in movies. The subsequent zoom into Naomi Watts' face is worth the price of admission alone.



5. "I need a bike", 'Risky Business' (1983)
My mother, of all people, once said that a movie is only as good as it's music. For once, she wasn't wrong. Tangerine Dream's dark and quirky score helped establish 'Risky Business' as something above and beyond the American teen comedy. The mood-drenched, pulsating 'Love On A Real Train', will always be remembered for Tom Cruise and Rebecca De Mornay's sultry love scene on the L. But it was the song's first moment in the film that was maybe even more special. After young Joel drowns his father's trophy car, fails his midterms, and gets suspended from school; he's broken in front of his buddies outside their school after dark. "I need a bike", is all he can say to ask for help. Speaking later about co-starring with Cruise in their first film, 'Taps', Sean Penn described Cruise as "sooo...like he was training for the fucking olympics. I think he was the first person I ever said 'Calm down' to". Watching Cruise ride that bike across Chicago, pace the L train platform in a complete panic, and running up Rebecca De Mornay's stairs; we can see what he was on about. Here his worst nightmare has come true: he made a horrible mistake and jeopardized his future. What's most endearing about the scene is the over-wrought sense that things will not be alright in the end for this upper-middle class, polite, and intelligent teenager. But watching Joel run across Chicago gives us a real sense of someone's world coming down on them.

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