Favorite scenes of a character realizing their error?
Jul 2, 2020 5:30:40 GMT
pacinoyes, Nikan, and 1 more like this
Post by Martin Stett on Jul 2, 2020 5:30:40 GMT
I'm talking about scenes in which someone will do or say something so terrible that they can no longer lie to themselves about their actions. The most obvious case for what I'm talking about is in 12 Angry Men:
Having trouble coming up with other film scenes, but I'm sure they're out there.
I was inspired to make this post by pondering over my favorite novel Till We Have Faces for the past... oh, year or so. There's a specific moment in that book that is very similar to Juror #3's outburst, and it got me curious about other such scenes. Below is the speech from TWHF:
Having trouble coming up with other film scenes, but I'm sure they're out there.
I was inspired to make this post by pondering over my favorite novel Till We Have Faces for the past... oh, year or so. There's a specific moment in that book that is very similar to Juror #3's outburst, and it got me curious about other such scenes. Below is the speech from TWHF:
"I know what you'll say. You'll say that the real gods are not at all like Ungit, that I was shown a real god and the house of a real god and I ought to know it. Hypocrites! I do know it. As if that would heal my wounds! I could endure it if you were things like Ungit and the Shadowbrute. You know well that I never began to hate you until Psyche began talking of her palace and her lover and her husband. Why did you lie to me? You said a brute would devour her. Well, why didn't it? At least then I'd have wept for her and built her a tomb and buried what was left and... and... But to steal her love from me! Can it be that you really don't understand? Do you think we mortals will find you gods easier to bear if you're beautiful? I tell you that if that's true, we'll find you a thousand times worse. For then (I know what beauty does) you'll lure and entice. You'll leave us nothing; nothing that's worth our keeping or your taking. Those we love best - whoever's most worth loving - are the very ones you'll pick out. Oh, I can see it happening, age after age, and growing worse and worse the more you reveal your beauty: the son turning his back on his mother and the bride on her groom, stolen away by this everlasting calling, calling, calling of the gods. Taken where we can't follow. It would be far better for us if you were foul and ravenous. We'd rather you drank their blood than stole their hearts. We'd rather they were ours and dead than yours and made immortal. But to steal her love from me, to make her see things I couldn't see... Oh, you'll say (you've been whispering it to me these past forty years) that I had signs enough her palace was real, could have known the truth if I'd wanted. But how could I want to know it? Tell me that. The girl was mine. What right did you have to steal her away into your dreadful heights? You'll say I was jealous. Jealous of Psyche? Not while she was mine. If you had gone the other way to work - if it was my eyes you'd have opened - you'd soon have seen how I would have shown her and told her and taught her and led her up to my level. But to hear a chit of a girl who had (or ought to have had) no thought in her head that I'd not put there, setting up for a seer and a prophetess and next thing to a goddess! How could anyone endure it? That's why I say it makes no difference whether you're fair or foul. That there should be gods at all, there's our misery and bitter wrong. There's no room for you and us in the same world. You're a tree in whose shadow we can't thrive. We want to be our own. I was my own and Psyche was mine and no one else had any right to her. Oh, you'll say that you took her into joy and bliss such as I could never have given her, and that I ought to be glad of it for her sake. But why should I be glad for some horrible new happiness which I had not given her and which separated her from me? Do you think I wanted her to be happy, in that way? I'd rather that the Brute tore her to pieces before my eyes! Took her so she could be happy, did you? Why, every wheedling, sniveling, catfoot rogue who lures away another man's wife or slave or dog could say the same. Dog, now. That's very much to the purpose. I'd thank you to let me feed my own. It needed no tidbits from your table. Did you ever remember whose the girl was? She was mine. Mine! Do you not know what the word means? Mine! You're thieves, seducers. I'll not complain (not now) that you're blood drinkers and man eaters. I'm past that..."
"Enough," said the judge.
There was utter silence all around me. And now for the first time I knew what I had been doing. While I was reading, it had, once and again, seemed strange to me that the reading took so long; for the book was a small one. Now I knew that I had been reading it over and over - perhaps a dozen times. I would have read it forever, quick as I could, starting the first word again almost before the last was out of my mouth, if the judge had not stopped me. And the voice I read it in was strange to my ears. There was given to me a certainty that this, at last, was my real voice.
There was silence in the dark assembly long enough for me to read my book out yet again. At last the judge spoke.
"Are you answered?" he said.
"Yes," said I.
"Enough," said the judge.
There was utter silence all around me. And now for the first time I knew what I had been doing. While I was reading, it had, once and again, seemed strange to me that the reading took so long; for the book was a small one. Now I knew that I had been reading it over and over - perhaps a dozen times. I would have read it forever, quick as I could, starting the first word again almost before the last was out of my mouth, if the judge had not stopped me. And the voice I read it in was strange to my ears. There was given to me a certainty that this, at last, was my real voice.
There was silence in the dark assembly long enough for me to read my book out yet again. At last the judge spoke.
"Are you answered?" he said.
"Yes," said I.