9 scenes that BLOW UP the screen
Cinema is hundreds of iconic quotes, memorable chases, spectacular shootouts, brutal duels and disaster sequences. It’s a flurry of scenes with breathtaking special effects that strike our imagination from the spot and stay in our memory forever. Iconic moments of the X muse for more than 100 years have given us baked goods on our faces, not allowing us to tear ourselves away from the screen. But there is one category of scenes, in my opinion, too rarely mentioned. I’m talking about the moments that literally pull you out of your shoes, with an intensity that gives you goosebumps. We then sit in the armchair with our mouths open with sensation, wondering what also just happened on the screen. Looking at the actors screaming and running amok, making it seem as if they let go of all the brakes, it is better to sit quietly and wait out this outburst of emotions, and certainly not get in their way…
3. 300 (2006), dir. Zack Snyder
If 300 were shown in 7D theaters (you know, twitching seats, gusts of wind, rain falling on the audience…), the moment Gerard Butler shouts the iconic “THIS IS SPARTA!!!” (in capital letters, it’s impossible otherwise), a bucket of testosterone should be poured over the audience. This line of text, brilliant in its simplicity, shouted in a manner full of charisma and causing shivers in the audience, became the calling card of Snyder’s film and made Gerard Butler an icon of true valor, toughness, cold-bloodedness and tenacity. At the same time, the actor was held hostage not even to the role itself, but to this very issue, never thereafter repeating or even coming close to the success his role in 300 brought him.
2. Brothers (2009), dir. Jim Sheridan
Traumatic experiences from Afghanistan and a hidden, unimaginably painful secret prevent Sam (Tobey Maguire) from returning to a normal life. The situation is also not improved by the distance his daughters keep from him, and Sam’s suspicions of his brother (Jake Gyllenhaal) and wife (Natalie Portman) add fuel to the fire. These, believing Sam to have fallen on the battlefield, in the mind of the miraculously surviving soldier, have surely had sex with each other. The eruption of the volcano of emotions bubbling in Sam’s head, battered by black thoughts, takes place in the kitchen, which has been renovated in his absence by his brother. Tobey Maguire, challenging his wife, smashes the furniture with a metal object similar to the one with which he committed the cruel act in Afghanistan. We have a feeling that something very bad is about to happen, after all Sam has a gun stuck behind his trouser belt. When Maguire points to his hands and, in despair, asks his wife, “Do you know what the fuck I did with those hands to get back to you!” this is dramatic acting of the highest order – heartbreaking, clenching the throat from the torrent of emotions played in a mature way by Maguire. The viewer knows what his character did in Afghanistan, while the actor has the weight of that act painted on his face. Tobey Maguire, after a widely criticized performance in Spider-Man 3, more than rehabilitated himself with his performance in this excellent drama, receiving a well-deserved Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor.
1. The Godfather Part III (1990), dir. Francis Ford Coppola
Although this is the weakest installment of Francis Ford Coppola’s famous trilogy, it contains the most powerfully gripping scene of all three films (although the emotional charge of “I know it was you, Fredo” from part two is not much inferior to it). We are, of course, talking about Michael Corleone’s almost silent (!) scream on the steps of the opera house after his daughter falls dead from an assassin’s bullet. In this touching scene, when Michael Corleone lies for a long moment with his mouth open, making absolutely no sound (this one appears later and lasts only a short moment), we paradoxically get the impression that we are hearing the loudest cry of despair that a person can make. In this silent scream Al Pacino accumulated all the suffering and life failure of his character. We didn’t need a flashback to appear before our eyes all of Michael’s bad choices, through which he became an angry, lonely, bitter man; whom life had just knocked out and made lonely until death.
Rafał Donica