Overlooked film scenes
The other week I watched the worst film in the world, for the seventy-eighth time. A terrible thing. I was looking forward to it, but yet again it ended unhappily and made me cry.
There's this scene though. Maybe not even a scene. Maybe even one line. Stunning. Stunning. My absolute favourite moment of the film. What gets me is even when I mention it to other fans they're like "What?" Totally miss it. That isn't a complaint - it's just evidence of how differently we view things. My favourite moment is something other people don't even notice.
I don't want to make myself physically ill explaining it but it got me thinking about other really good probably-overlooked scenes.
One of the most legit scenes I've ever seen occurred in 1999. Fucking Åmål, English title Show Me Love. It was an enormously important film for me. I was sixteen and it was the first time I saw girls my own age kiss onscreen, and just be. I still think it holds up really well! It's got a very realistic teen party (boys showing off their new mobile phones, girls crying), very subtle class politics, and still one of the best sibling relationships I've seen. I quote it all the time and Foreigner's I Want To Know What Love Is gets me going.
So many great scenes but here's a gem, not so much underrated as unrated. The little boy, Oskar, asks his mother what a lesbian is. She gently explains that it's like with her and his dad, but both women. He asks is it bad. With enormous sensitivity, she replies, no, not at all, it's completely normal. Then she asks, why is he asking. Because, he says, someone at school called his big sister a lesbian. Immediate freeze! Turn to stone! Lesbianism in my home? Unacceptable! It's so good. It's so real. So relatable.
There's a scene in Sarah Waters's Fingersmith, a morning after, where the narrating character reflects 'Everything, I say to myself, has changed.' She's recording her internal monologue in that moment where she says to herself, 'Everything has changed.' All well and good. Everything has changed. It's very beautiful. 'She has touched the life of me, the quick of me;' And kinda suggestive.
But. In the BBC adaptation the first person points of view internal monologues are translated into voiceovers. The voiceover says, "Everything I say to myself has changed." A revelation! A whole different meaning! She could have just narrated "Everything has changed." But she doesn't. Everything she says to herself has changed. All the stories Maud has told herself, about Sue, about the situation, about herself... have all changed. I gasped when I heard it.
This might have to be an ongoing thing. When I watch or read stuff I'll note the scenes and do another part.