There's a scene in the movie Moana that I like the most. It is the one at the start of the movie. It is cute as a button yet as deep as the ocean (pun badly intended). It tells about innocence in such a beautiful way that it deserves a writing of its own.
However... this is not such a writing.
Instead, this is a writing about how it is redundant, pointless in the perspective of storytelling.
The scene shows Moana who was still but a little child, playing alone at the beach. She was greeted by the ocean, which offered her a stone, the heart of the Goddess Te Fiti. It was long taken from her, causing bad things in the world. In time, Moana would restore the heart to Te Fiti and lift the curse. But at that exact moment, she was just too young to understand anything. When her father eventually came and carried her away, the ocean silently took back the heart until the time it fell on her hands again when she was already a teenager.
I've said that the scene is redundant and now I'll tell you why. It adds nothing to the plot. If the scene were taken away, it would change nothing. Moana would still receive the heart as a teenager and restore it to Te Fiti. She didn't even have any recollection of the event due to her young age. And because there was no witness, it was never mentioned again in the whole movie. The scene was an isolated event, detached and lost to everyone in the movie.
Well...
Except for the audience.
It is also why the scene, as pointless as I think it is, remains the scene I like the most.
Most stories I know have an unwritten rule. Pointless scenes get pointed out and ridiculed, and for good reasons. Such scenes clutter the story and take away the meaning. However, this scene does exactly the opposite. It gives another dimension to Moana's quest, a divine aspect. She didn't just make the choice to save the world, as fantastic and noble as it was. She had always been meant, or expected, to do so. What was considered a simple human endeavor for all the characters in the movie was morphed into a quest of the divine.
And let's remember that this perspective is only given to the audience. It was absent to all the movie characters, even Moana herself. She never knew about the great destiny expected of her, not at the beginning nor the end. Only the audience understand that she not only needed to take the quest, she had to. And they get to keep the perspective as they go through every scene that comes next.
It was something I admire in storytelling. I like to write, and the mechanism never crossed my mind. The idea that you can add depth in a story by giving a personal, private, special perspective just for the audience and the audience alone, captivated me. It was genius. And maybe for people longing for a hidden layer of meaning inside their lives, assuring.
Please kindly play the next video before you continue reading.
It has come to my attention that in my articles, I often quote questionable sources. For example, in Finding God’s Will, an article that is obviously about God, I quoted Fast & Furious: Tokyo Drift. And in Encounters, an article that is about truly connecting to someone, I featured a cigarette commercial. This habit supposedly comes from my love for pop culture. However, as I have come to realize, that is not the sole reason. The other one is unexpectedly, my wholehearted love for the lives of Man.
Joe Dirt
In the comedy Joe Dirt, a movie about a man who’s trapped in a perpetual bad luck but stays positive and happy no matter what, there is a scene I adore the most. It is mostly a silent scene, and it went like this.
Joe Dirt, who worked as a janitor in a radio station, was mopping the hallway at night. Everybody had gone home and he was all alone. When he reached a room with the sign "BOILER ROOM" on its door, he stopped and looked around. Convinced that there was no one, he cautiously opened the door and stepped inside. Right then, we could see that it was secretly his living quarter. He had no money to rent a place so he turned the station’s boiler room into his home.
After closing the door, Joe Dirt sat on his bunk. He took two photographs that he kept on the table. They showed a blonde girl with her dog. We know the woman was not with him anymore because he was living alone. Yet we also know that she remained in his thoughts because of the way he kept the photographs.
Joe Dirt lied on his bunk...
He took a good look at the photographs...
He smiled for a while...
And then he went to sleep...
And all of this happened while Crash into Me by Dave Matthews Band (the video above) played in the background, undeterred by any sound because there was no dialogue.
I wish I could explain why the scene captivated me but I doubt if I can. I can tell you this, though. In what otherwise a loud, raunchy, and slapstick movie, I got to experience Joe Dirt in his silent moment.
And it was a sweet moment.
Movie moments like this stay in my heart. And they fill it up with warmth.
That’s also why I love the horror movie It. Not because it was a good horror movie, which of course it was, but because I love the protagonists, the children in the Losers' Club.
Their interaction with one another was so adorable… and familiar. You can’t help but feel for them. And the stuff they had to put through… oh God. They had to fight an ancient evil entity while they couldn’t even open a blocked door without working together. They were really just kids, who found strength in each other.
And have I mentioned the poem?
When one of the kids, Ben Hanscom, fell in love with the red-haired Beverly Marsh, who was also a member of the Losers' Club, he wrote a poem for her on the back of a postcard.
Beverly Marsh
Your hair is winter fire,
January embers.
My heart burns there, too.
It was the best poem I had experienced for a long time…
I friggin' love pop culture.
It's good.
And sometimes… sometimes, they capture moments... recognizable, familiar moments.
In the movie Before Sunrise, Celine said, “If there’s any kind of God it wouldn’t be in any of us, not you or me but just this little space in between.” I used to foolishly take this almost literally. But now I picture it as His presence in the wake of life, our actions, struggles, feelings, about each other, and also our lone moments when we long, when we’re connecting to some... thing, whether it is a distant memory, or just the presence of our surroundings. He is there in the moments. Or if I may dare to quote another great movie, V for Vendetta, “God is in the rain.”
I usually end my writing with a long-thought sentence. However, it doesn’t feel right this time. I’m not going to do that. Instead, I’ll leave you with one of the best songs to hear in the lone moment, at least for me.
I hope you will always find your moments. And may them fill your heart.
Ever since I heard the phrase in Bridge of Spies, I have been captivated by it. In the movie, Colonel Abel used it to describe the quality he observed in his lawyer, James Donovan. He said the words after watching how resilient Donovan was in defending him. Stoikiy Muzhik, or standing man, the man who keeps standing back even though everyone tries to put him down, ignites something in me. What can be more mesmerizing than the thought of a man who just won’t back down? And the funny thing is, it is not his resoluteness I admire. It is not the strength, nor the conviction. The thing that captivates me the most is the reason. The why. Why does he keep standing? What enables him to go beyond his supposed self?
There is nothing new in my question. It has been brought up numerous times in books and movies. Just like in The Matrix Revolutions when Neo constantly gets back up. Agent Smith asks him why he keeps standing. Is it freedom, truth, peace, love? Neo finally replies because he chooses so. It is an exceptional answer. It is an answer that emphasizes the greatness of a subject that is man, the ability to choose. But it is not the kind of answer that I currently want to write. Right now, I want to write about something that in the perspective of spiritual enlightenment, goes a bit lower. I want to write about the reason that comes not from the inside, like the ability to choose, but starts from outside the person, something that deeply mesmerises him to go beyond his usual strength, something like an ancient overplayed concept, something like a simple love.
I have a friend that I haven’t seen in a while. There are many things about him, but one thing that stands out is his experience with a girl he loved. He once loved this girl so much that he kept chasing her for more that twelve years. Mind you, I never thought of him as a standing man. I would think that the reason that drove a standing man would have to be something greater than mere infatuation. It would have to be humanity, or peace, or something similar. It couldn’t be love.
John Keating in Dead Poets Society
However, my recent experiences has put another perspective on the matter. Why can’t it be love? Isn’t it a grand thing? In the movie Dead Poets Society, John Keating says to his students, “Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.” They are what make life, well... life. They are the reasons we fight so hard to survive. They give meaning to our survival. I have also heard someone said, “Loving is like having a song in your heart.” I know what it's like to be depressed, and I know what it’s like to be so happy that you want to sing. I imagine someone who has a song in his heart, whose heart is constantly singing, to be nothing less than jubilant. Isn’t it the drive of countless great people? Love is a good enough reason to sustain someone beyond his self. Love is more than enough.
Still I think, the rough patches he must have gone through. Twelve years must not have come easy. Happiness in love comes and goes. It can’t be the only thing that sustains him. Then I think that perhaps he managed to go through because for him, the whole deal was who he was. There are things that have put me in pain and distress, and one of those things is having to do something that contradicts my honest being. Maybe it was harder for him denying his heart than going through the twelve years. Maybe at least when he’s with her, he is at peace within his own self, and everything makes sense. It is something that I can only suspect, remembering that when he’s with her he was the most vibrant and giving person I know.
Poetry, beauty, romance, love are what we stay alive for. For the Stoikiy Muzhik in my life, it's what kept him standing. It is what matters. I imagine if I had asked him to pick between living pain free without love or having the chance to pursue a great love, I would have known the answer.
