3x3: favorite epiphanies

This. So awesome.

-xtien

“Like a monkey. Ready to be shot into space.”

Fine. Much respect to fire for mentioning my birthday. I tried to dodge it, but you win. You jerk.

-xtien

Frank, just after he gets a harp shoved in his mouth

The Matrix, when Neo gets “unplugged” from the machine and sees the world with his own eyes for the first time.

Probably goes without saying, but ‘Luke - I am your father!’

I mean - seeing that as a ten-year-old in the theater, it was a supremely monumental headfuck.

…oh, and when the private investigator sees what Anna’s been hiding in her apartment in Andrzej Żuławski’s Possession. That was an entirely different kind of headfuck.

My favorite one of the last few years is in Midnight in Paris when …

SPOILER for semi-recent movie


… Owen Wilson’s character realizes his wife is cheating on him. (Or more accurately Gertrude Stein realizes for him.)

The great thing about it is that it’s a totally fair reveal for both the character and the audience. The evidence was staring us in the face all along. We were just too distracted by the charms of Paris to notice.

  1. The Sixth Sense
  2. Primal Fear
  3. Memento
  4. The Usual Suspects
  5. The Book of Eli

I don’t want to give any of the above away. But I love a movie that makes me want to watch it all over again after a big twist.

The Crying Game.

No love for Bob Hoskins in Hook?

Oh, I loved that! You’re quite right about it working both for the character & for us as an audience.

The moment of epiphany as a viewer, which for me came when

Spoilers

Hemingway finally turned up (I wasn’t quite sure whether the Fitzgeralds were part of a costume party)

was also quite fun.

Along similar lines, the moment when we & George Clooney all finally realize that From Dusk Till Dawn is not the kind of adventure we thought it was, is awesome.

  1. Amelie is filled with minor epiphanies. She’s a weird girl who needs to figure out her role in the world, everyone else’s role, and then how she can improve their roles. The bug/feature is that everyone has such eccentric corners and little mysteries. My favorite is when she realizes why the dude is always taking photo strips of himself and then rips them up.

  2. Sometimes epiphanies are more about flashes of empathy than figuring out a puzzle. Since no Epiphany is complete without three kings, I liked the part of Three Kings where Marky Mark is getting tortured by Saddam’s men. The Torturer First Class forces him to imagine his own family being wracked by war. He sees his wife in a nice suburban kitchen, which then blows up. Mark doesn’t become a pacifist, but he does gain insight into the hearts and minds of the enemy.

  3. Speaking of Wise Men, there was that great part in Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring where Gandalf the Grey has a confab with the head of his order, Saruman the White, wise and powerful and a cool guy with whom you can hoist an ale after work. G-man realizes too late that Saruman is actually working for the bad guys. Following this epiphany, they battle-dance until Gandalf is arrested and brought to jail.

Runners Up: I liked when Jack’s lightbulb flips on in Chinatown. “She’s my daughter! She’s my sister! She’s my sister and my daughter!” Ohhh.

And I used to LOVE Kevin Smith movies. Chasing Amy is still my favorite of his, and the part where Jason Lee figures out he’s at a lesbian bar is wonderful, hilarious, and unsubtle.

Oh wow. This wins the thread for me. There have been some other great mentions here, but I still remember the sheer audacity of that moment. The ENORMOUS build up (“No one can be told what the Matrix is…”), the mysterious trailers so that the audience didn’t know what was going to happen just like Neo didn’t know, and then for it to culminate in that scene, which was so powerful, so mind-boggling. It still amazes me that they were able to show so much just in that scene. Even though I hadn’t even thought of this possibility when viewing the movie, in that particular moment, the way the apparatus was plugged into Neo’s head, and the sheer number of pods around him, you knew immediately as an audience member EXACTLY what that all implied, before any exposition or explanation.

I’d say the real epiphany in The Matrix is when Neo realises that he is the one, or rather that he and Trinity are in love. It’s followed by that iconic scene of the agents in matrix-vision and him stopping bullets. He’s in love and he can do anything!

My pick would be from the film, Hunger. In the climatic scene of the flim, Bobby (Fassbender) is visited my Father Dominic (Liam Cunningham). The father tries to dissuade Bobby from committing to a grueling task that’ll probably end in his death and the death of many others. Bobby recalls a time in his youth, a revealing and moving story, which cements Bobby’s belief in himself and what he’s about to do (almost as he’s telling it). The reaction of Father Dominic, is heart breaking, as he comes to realise that there’s nothing he can do or say to save this man. It’s a long, unmoving close up of his face too. I love that scene so much. It’s almost as if the two are dueling, starting out with a friendly tousle, testing each other, before doing real battle. In the end Bobby wins, claiming the packet cigs as well, which was a great touch.

Also I just want to defend Dingus’ Star wars example. Han’s epiphany isn’t that Luke an Leia are siblings, it’s that Leia wants to bone him.

I’m with you on this, although I find it becomes increasingly embarrassing with each viewing over the years. No matter, I laughed out loud when I read this part of your post. I love how this moment leads to this line from Holden:

“As stupid as you usually come off during this diatribe of yours, you’re going to come off ten times as stupid on this occasion.”

Also, your Amelie choice is inspired.

-xtien

“Hey. I always notice the bored look in their eyes.”

Thank you RedHerb. I believe I shall retcon and claim this was what I intended all along when I brought it up as an example.

-xtien

“Your feelings for them are strong. Especially for…”

I liked the bit in Stardust where Tristan looks at his handkerchief full of dust and realizes what it means, before running back to the wall. It’s kind of a two-fer, because he also realizes where his love truly lies, and that the one girl is kind of a huge bitch.

The end of Oldboy. Ew.

Uh, and for a third one, I’ll just go with the end of I Heart Huckabees, because I actually do like that movie, as un-cool as that may make me. Also, it’s probably the most accurately described as an epiphany of the ones I can come up with.

I’m probably an outlier here, but I prefer the end of Matrix Reoaded where Neo finds out that the mythology of the One is bait to bring people to Zion which is a big roach-motel for keeping all the malcontents in one place so they can be more easily stamped out. I found the fact that it totally subverted the kung-fu action stuff of the previous 1-7/8 films amusing.

Still a bad movie though.

My favorite epiphany for the Matrix trilogy was when the audience figured out that the first movie was a fluke and they were going to have to sit through another 4 hours of mouthy pretentious BS.

I knew we were in trouble when we got to the underground mud-stomping rave scene.

With I guess the back to back sequels were a sanguine attempt to recreate what made the first one so resonant as well as make a deeper statement with the movies. As mediocre as they are, the greater tragedy was the missed opportunity the sequels touched on but didn’t deliver.There were still some great moments in them, though.

In order to keep with the topic and having all of what comes to my mind covered up thread, I will go with Ace Ventura:

“That’s it! Einhorn is Finkle! Finkle is Einhorn!”

and Sinnick’s noted Se7en:

“Whatever you hear, stay away. John Doe has the upper hand.”

The stuff of legend.

I just remembered another one that sent me whirling: Incendies.

Never has the epiphany in a thriller been more devastating.