Movie Scenes that Lifted Your Spirit

M

MaduroUTMB

2,500+ Posts
This is a corollary to the other, drearier, thread.

For me, it's the end of Gladiator. Djimon Hounsou buries the figures of Maximus' wife and child in the empty Colosseum and says "Now we are free. I will see you again, but not yet. Not yet." He's wearing a toga, which means that he is a Roman citizen. The shot pans up to the sun rising over the eternal city, fades out to the credits.

Knowing the history from that point forward is pretty dismal, it's bittersweet. Still, that scene communicates the brevity and power of human accomplishment.

In that vein, I also love the credits theme from Apollo 13.
 
Sam's monologue at the end of The Two Towers where he talks about there being good in the world and that it's worth fighting for. This is probably one of my favorite monologues in any movie.

The last dogfight scene in Top Gun where Maverick has to overcome the loss of Goose. Maverick and Iceman team up to blow some commies out of the sky. The flyby and subsequent celebration are pretty cool.

The endings of the Bourne Supremacy and the Bourne Ultimatum. In the Bourne Supremacy he pulls the "Get some rest Pam. You look tired" act which just kicks ***. Then in the Bourne Ultimatum the news person says something like "his body has not been found" and Nicki just smiles.

The last scene in Casablanca. It has several timeless lines and it ultimately reveals Rick as a good man.
 
I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I'd like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a gray place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made those walls dissolve away, and for the briefest of moments, every last man in Shawshank felt free.

and

We sat and drank with the sun on our shoulders and felt like free men. Hell, we could have been tarring the roof of one of our own houses. We were the lords of all creation. As for Andy - he spent that break hunkered in the shade, a strange little smile on his face, watching us drink his beer. And that's how it came to pass that on the second-to-last day of the job, the convict crew that tarred the plate factory roof in the spring of forty-nine wound up sitting in a row at ten o'clock in the morning drinking icy cold, Bohemia-style beer, courtesy of the hardest screw that ever walked a turn at Shawshank State Prison.

and

I find I'm so excited, I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it's the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend, and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.
 
Bytor, those are some good ones. My favorite from Shawshank though is the pan out at the end of Red walking toward Andy's boat.
 
Donny was a good bowler, and a good man. He was one of us. He was a man who loved the outdoors... and bowling, and as a surfer he explored the beaches of Southern California, from La Jolla to Leo Carrillo and... up to... Pismo. He died, like so many young men of his generation, he died before his time. In your wisdom, Lord, you took him, as you took so many bright flowering young men at Khe Sanh, at Langdok, at Hill 364. These young men gave their lives. And so would Donny. Donny, who loved bowling. And so, Theodore Donald Karabotsos, in accordance with what we think your dying wishes might well have been, we commit your final mortal remains to the bosom of the Pacific Ocean, which you loved so well.

Good night, sweet prince.
 
In Casa Blanca, when Viktor Lazlo leads everyone in Rick's Cafe in singing La Marseillaise to drown out the Nazi's singing Der Fatherland
 
Faces melting in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Seriously though Id have to say the whole part in Remember the Titans when the guy is watching the championship game from his hospital bed and the team pulls it out and wins.
 
From the end of 300:

And so my king died, and my brothers died, barely a year ago. Long I pondered my king's cryptic talk of victory. Time has proven him wise, for from free Greek to free Greek, the word was spread that bold Leonidas and his three hundred, so far from home, laid down their lives. Not just for Sparta, but for all Greece and the promise this country holds... takes his spear from a soldier...Now, here on this ragged patch of earth called Plataea, Xerxes's hordes face obliteration!...Spartan Army: "HA-OOH!"...Just there the barbarians huddle, sheer terror gripping tight their hearts with icy fingers... knowing full well what merciless horrors they suffered at the swords and spears of three hundred. Yet they stare now across the plain at ten thousand Spartans commanding thirty thousand free Greeks!...Spartan Army: "HA-OOH! HA-OOH! HA-OOH!"...The enemy outnumber us a paltry three to one, good odds for any Greek. This day we rescue a world from mysticism and tyranny and usher in a future brighter than anything we can imagine...puts on his helmet...Give thanks, men, to Leonidas and the brave 300! TO VICTORY!...the Greek army roars and charges...

"Remember us." As simple an order as a king can give. "Remember why we died." For he did not wish tribute, nor song, nor monuments nor poems of war and valor. His wish was simple. "Remember us," he said to me. That was his hope, should any free soul come across that place, in all the countless centuries yet to be. May all our voices whisper to you from the ageless stones, "Go tell the Spartans, passerby, that here by Spartan law, we lie."
 
Ray playing a game of catch with his father at the end of "Field of Dreams."

I read that script before the film was made. Best script I ever read. Still choke up thinking about that scene. There's nothing more pure and loving that a son & father playing a simple game of catch.
 
Rocky..... he has just been knocked down in the 14th round and struggles to get up...once up he tell's him "come on"...
 
When that big Indian throws the sink out the window in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."
When the homerun smashes the stadium lights in The Natural.
 
Can't believe no one has posted this. We used to watch this scene before every rugby game when I was in college...it made us all ready to run through walls. Even now it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up, oh, and Branaugh's version is best far and away...

WESTMORELAND. O that we now had here
But one ten thousand of those men in England
That do no work to-day!

KING. What's he that wishes so?
My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair cousin;
If we are mark'd to die, we are enow
To do our country loss; and if to live,
The fewer men, the greater share of honour.
God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man more.
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold,
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost;
It yearns me not if men my garments wear;
Such outward things dwell not in my desires.
But if it be a sin to covet honour,
I am the most offending soul alive.
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from England.
God's peace! I would not lose so great an honour
As one man more methinks would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made,
And crowns for convoy put into his purse;
We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispian's day.'
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

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Danno
 
I'd like to tell you about a guy I know, a friend of mine. His name is Brian Piccolo. And he has the heart of a giant, and that rare form of courage that allows him to kid himself and his opponent, cancer. He has a mental attitude that makes me proud to have a friend who spells out the world 'courage,' 24 hours a day, every day of his life. Now you honor me by giving me this award. But I say to you here now Brian Piccolo is the man who deserves the George S. Halas award. It is mine tonight... and Brian Piccolo's tomorrow.
 
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