Best scenes of 2017: Part I

The movie Brawl in Cell Block 99 has set a high benchmark for hand-to-hand combat fights

Since last year I have decided to jettison the list of best films and instead go for the fleeting moments on both big and small screens that contained enough drama to make me forget the ills of the world. This year, I’ll do a three-part series: international cinema, TV series and Indian cinema. Here’s the first.

A Ghost Story: A long, single take of Rooney Mara’s character nearly choking on a cake while her “ghost” husband watches gave me gooseflesh at a plush cinema in New York. I was super glad that I got to watch this bewitching moment on the big screen.

On the Beach at Night Alone: Kim Min-hee’s minor rant about those who truly deserve love is every bit as stirring as any monologue in any Hong Sang-soo movies Beach Rats: After they spend a night together at his home, the scene where Harris Dickinson walks Madeline Weinstein to the subway in Coney Island and swipes his MTA card for her is suffused with intimacy and poignancy.

BPM (Beats per Minute): My jaw fell during the scene when Arnaud Valois’s Nathan gives sexual stimulation to his boyfriend (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart) on a back-lit hospital bed in Paris. Alienating and crass at the same time.

Coco: The most moving scene of 2017 belongs to an American animation movie about Mexicans, against whom, ahem, Trump wants to build a wall. It is when Miguel reminds his great-grandmother about her father.

American Made: When Tom Cruise’s character, a pilot, manages to take off in a helicopter from a tiny strip in Nicaragua, it was evident that this was the most fun he had had in years.

Félicité: When Véro Tshanda Beya Mputu realises that she was conned by a seemingly nice lady at a Kinshasa hospital and doesn’t bat an eyelid is when the outsider understands that living in Congo is like The Hunger Games in real-life.

Colin Farrell in The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Get Out: Allison Williams nearly picking a fight with a cop for being racist towards her black boyfriend has to be the most political scene of American cinema this year.

The Meyerowitz Stories: Ben Stiller’s discombobulation at the fact that his father (Dustin Hoffman) watched The Fault in Our Stars is director Noah Baumbach’s genius way of showing us the generation gap.

Logan Lucky: Daniel Craig’s so-droll-you-might-miss-the-joke turn in his first scene in the movie tells us how much he missed not being James Bond.

Brawl in Cell Block 99: The movie sets such a high benchmark for hand-to-hand combat fights that it breaks my heart to see it ignored by mainstream media across the world. The climactic fight, when Vince Vaughn pastes a guy’s face to the ground, is the most beautiful and grisly thing I saw this year.

The Florida Project: As the six-year-old protagonist finds that she’ll be separated from her mother, she sprints towards the hallowed gates of Disney World in Orlando. That is director Sean Baker’s way of telling us that a fantasy world cannot mitigate real-life messes. Quietly devastating.

The Killing of a Sacred Deer: Colin Farrell’s character blindfolding himself and doing Russian roulette on his two kids and wife with a gun was the most tense scene of 2017 for me. 

Icarus: The zany documentary has a particular scene where the film-maker talks to his Russian subject via Skype and his poodle lands up on the screen whom he caresses like the most precious thing. Here’s a man who has been orchestrating doping among Russian athletes on an industrial level and he’s anything but a super villain.

Good Time: The scene where Robert Pattinson realises that he got the wrong guy out of hospital and now he’s cribbing, much to his chagrin. The helplessness and seething anger plastered across Pattinson’s face is palpable.

Wonder Woman: “Men are essential for procreation, but when it comes to pleasure... unnecessary.” This line, spoken by Gal Gadot to Chris Pine, should be stuck outside every movie executive’s office.

jagannath.jamma@bsmail.in