When all else fails!
Danny Lemieux on Aug 21 2011 at 2:42 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized
I confess, I love movies. And every now and then, I come across a movie quote that transcends the times. We all remember movie quotes like that, of course. Casablanca was released in 1943 and is still widely quoted today.
Recently I watched one of my favorite movies, a very hard-hitting sleeper from 2006: Lord of War, starring Nicholas Cage. Patterned roughly after the life of infamous Russian arms dealer, Victor Bout, it is the brutal tale of a global arms dealer’s descent into spiritual hell.
The takeaway quote for me was what Yuri Orlov’s (Nicholas Cage’s) wife, Ava Fontaine, tells him after she, a former model, discovers who and what he really is and prepares to leave him:
I feel like all I’ve done my whole life is be pretty. I mean, all I’ve done is be born! I’m a failed actress, a failed artist… I’m not much good as a mother. Come to think of it, I’m not even that pretty anymore. I have failed at everything, Yuri… but I won’t fail as a human being.
When all else fails, not failing as human beings. It’s the last redoubt. I think that this quote offers a wonderful glimmer of sunlight through stormy clouds that tells us what is truly important in life, no matter how bad it gets as we enter this coming electoral season and address the challenges ahead. Ava Fontaine may have provided us with the perfect metaphor for our sad declining Western Civilization. Maybe it even shows us the way forward.
What about you all…do you have favorite movie quotes that you would like to share?
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Here are a few of mine:
“We’ll camp here.” John Wayne after falling off his horse, drunk, in True Grit.
“I’m singin’. . . and dancin’. . . in the rain.” Gene Kelly explaining to a cop what he ‘s doing playing on a wet sidewalk in Singin’ in the Rain.
“Anthony! Anthoneeeee!” Liz Taylor using all her skills as an actress to call her lover back in Cleopatra.
“The cheaper the gunsel, the gaudier the patter.” Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) remarking on the hire-a-punk played by the great character actor Elisha Cook Jr. in The Maltese Falcon.
“Bring me the broomstick of the Wicked Witch of the West.” The wizard handing Dorothy her death sentence in The Wizard of Oz.
“Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the war room!” President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers) in Dr. Strangelove.
“Rosebud.” Charles Foster Kane whispering to the artist which tattoo design he prefers at the end of Citizen Kane.
Movies… what are those?
From “Being There?
Peter Sellers as Chance the Gardener
President “Bobby”: Mr. Gardner, do you agree with Ben, or do you think that we can stimulate growth through temporary incentives?
[Long pause]
Chance the Gardener: As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden.
President “Bobby”: In the garden.
Chance the Gardener: Yes. In the garden, growth has it seasons. First comes spring and summer, but then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer again.
President “Bobby”: Spring and summer.
Chance the Gardener: Yes.
President “Bobby”: Then fall and winter.
Chance the Gardener: Yes.
Benjamin Rand: I think what our insightful young friend is saying is that we welcome the inevitable seasons of nature, but we’re upset by the seasons of our economy.
Chance the Gardener: Yes! There will be growth in the spring!
Benjamin Rand: Hmm!
Chance the Gardener: Hmm!
President “Bobby”: Hm. Well, Mr. Gardner, I must admit that is one of the most refreshing and optimistic statements I’ve heard in a very, very long time.
[Benjamin Rand applauds]
President “Bobby”: I admire your good, solid sense. That’s precisely what we lack on Capitol Hill.
Young Frankenstein, Gene Wilder as the doc; Marty Feldman as Igor
Dr. Frankenstein: “Igor, would you help me with these bags…”
Igor: “Certainly – I’ll take the blonde, you bring the brunette.”
Caped Crusader, are we in fall or winter, now?
JJ – Clinton, Pelosi?
Danny, I fear we are approaching Antarctica.
A couple from Serenity:
Mal Reynolds: “Half of writing history is hiding the truth.”
. . . .
River Tam: “People don’t like to be meddled with. We tell them what to do, what to think, don’t run, don’t walk. We’re in their homes and in their heads and we haven’t the right. We’re meddlesome.
The Dark Knight:
Joker:”Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I’m an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It’s fair!”
Libby, your very topical quote from The Joker pricked my memory regarding these other immortal words from “Batman: The Dark Knight”, where Alfred explains to Bruce Wayne,
“Because some men aren’t looking for anything logical, like money. They can’t be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_vjROzIXf0&feature=related
Very timely and a-propos definition of a significant segment within the Left.
Another movie I love is Gattaca:
Vincent, after describing how his identity donor, Jerome, had been genetically engineered to be a champion swimmer, but was hit by a car and paralyzed: “There’s no gene for fate.”
Later, when Vincent is racing (and for the first time, beating) his genetically superior brother in an ocean swim:
Anton: Vincent, how are you doing this? How have you done any of this? We have to go back.
Vincent: It’s too late for that. We’re closer to the other side.
Anton: What other side? You wanna drown us both?
Vincent: You wanna know how I did it? This is how I did it, Anton. I never saved anything for the swim back.
From The Devil’s Advocate, Al Pacino as Satan/John Milton, Keanu Reeves as Kevin Lomax:
Lomax: Why lawyers? Why the law?
Milton: Because the law, my boy, puts us into everything. It’s the ultimate backstage pass – it’s the new priesthood, baby! Did you know there are more students in law school than there are lawyers walking the earth? We’re coming out, guns blazing!
And Pacino’s amazing soliloquy, form the same film, as he disposes of a threat, Eddie Barzoon.
Eddie Barzoon – take a good look because he’s the poster-child for the next millennium. These people – it’s no mystery where they come from. You sharpen the human appetite to the point where you can split atoms with its desire, you build egos the size of cathedrals, fiber-optically connect the world to every eager impulse, grease even the dullest dreams with dollar-green, gold-plated fantasies until every human being becomes an aspiring emperor, becomes his own god – and where can you go from there? And as we’re scrambling from one deal to the next, who’s got his eye on the planet as the water thickens, the air sours, even the bee’s honey takes on the taste of radioactivity. And it just keeps coming, faster and faster. There’s no chance to think, to prepare. It’s buy futures, sell futures, when there is no future!
Gattaca and Aeon Flux were some of my favorite sci fi movies.
If you have not seen “Being There” with Peter Sellers you owe it to yourself to do so. You will chuckle yourself to death, the funniest movie I’ve ever seen, with Woody Allen’s “Radio Days” a close second. I’m not Jewish and did not grow up in NYC but it reminds me so much of growing up in that era it seems to be my life on film due to the era and the characters so much like what I experienced.