2 Movies 1 Moment is a recurring segment about two films that feature similar scenes, breaking down why they might be significant and considering their impact.
One of the mainstays of any movie about a character with untapped talent who struggles through great adversity to earn their way to some kind of surprised recognition is the reveal that the one person who doubted them most finally sees that they were forehead-slapping wrong about them all along. Need an example? Remember that moment at the end of John Cusack‘s brilliant High Fidelity (2000) when he – after an entire film’s length – discovers that Barry (Jack Black) is actually one heckuva great singer? It’s a sensational shot that had the whole (probably?) audience feeling the same way.
So let’s talk about a couple of moments like this that are worthy of a little closer inspection, and as such, naturally, let’s toss some major SPOILER flags out on the field. The first is from Prince‘s seminal feature film screen debut Purple Rain (1984), a rock opera-esque tale of an up-and-coming singer-songwriter named The Kid (Prince) who is a headliner with his band The Revolution at a club in Minneapolis called First Avenue. He’s a flashy guy, a bit self-centered, but with big dreams and ambitions, his wild erotic (soft-core pornographic?) stage antics drawing big crowds … for a while. His outlandish overtly sexual presence is starting to turn some off, including his new girlfriend Apollonia (Apollonia Kotero).
READ MORE: That Like My Father Moment In Purple Rain
What’s more, there’s another gig in town called Morris Day and the Time who have built a rivalry with The Kid, looking to take over as the most popular act in the club. Not only that, the First Avenue manager, Billy (Billy Sparks), is onboard with Day’s rising star and his idea to form a new all-girl group, which he eventually convinces Apollonia to join, telling her that The Kid is no good for her career. Meanwhile, all is not well at The Kid’s house, his father (Clarence Willliams III) has become terribly abusive to his wife (Olga Karlatos), something that The Kid is beginning to see in himself.
As things continue to spiral for The Kid, he finds himself about to lose everything, including his girl, his family, his friends, and his job with the band. With nothing left to lose, he takes to the stage one more time in hopes of turning things around. To do so, he lets down his miles-thick guard, playing a song called Purple Rain, written by the girls in his band (something he refused to do numerous times before) and reveals a new side of himself that proves to have profound effect on all who are watching. These include Apollonia, Morris Day and even the girls in his group, but most especially on Billy, who sits at the bar in stoic silence as The Kid pours out his soul to the deeply moved audience.
Director Albert Magnoli cuts to Billy during the emotional song, pulling his camera in close as Billy sits unmoving, staring in breathless awe at the performance, and we recognize immediately the effect it is having on a man who, to this point, has worked almost tirelessly to get The Kid replaced, feeling the singer has lost his way and has long since peaked. Billy, who is for most of the film a bombastic and high-energy character, is transformed by the music and The Kid’s incredibly vulnerable and affecting performance, looking on in stunned acceptance of true greatness. He ‘gets it.’ It’s a tremendously satisfying moment.
The next film is director Damien Chazelle‘s twisted love letter to jazz Whiplash (2014), another music-themed project, this one about a young man named Andrew Neiman (Miles Teller) who is consumed with becoming one of the greatest jazz drummers in the field, enrolling at the prestigious Shaffer Conservatory in New York. There, he is soon spotted by the school’s famous instructor, conductor Terence Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), who selects the boy to be an alternate in the studio band, of whom only the best musicians in the school perform. Sensing something special about Andrew, Fletcher appears initially to be a warm and encouraging mentor, but soon reveals himself to be quite the opposite, demanding precision with tirades of insults, demeaning and abusive condemnation and even physical assault, all of which Andrew heeds in hopes it will cull from him the greatness he believes lies within himself.
Meanwhile, Andrew sacrifices his relationship with a girl who is highly supportive and wanting a relationship but for him, she’s become merely distracting. Drums before sex. It’s a weird world. There is also his family, who never quite embrace his dedication to the drums; his brothers football jocks with whom their father (Paul Reiser) can more immediately identify, including their successes. This leaves Andrew an outsider, even as his dad tries to hold onto a relationship, struggling to understand what drives his son to such ambitions. However, that all changes near the end of the film when Andrew, who has overcome incredible hurdles to earn his place, finds himself on stage by special invitation from Fletcher (after a falling out that led to Fletcher’s dismissal at the conservatory) to drum for his new band at the JVC Jazz Festival, which is considered the highest achievement at this level. Things are looking up.
However, after a shocking start, it becomes clear that Fletcher used this opportunity to betray Andrew and publicly humiliate him. Andrew exits the stage an emotional shambles, where his father awaits in the wings, thinking he will give his boy a safe harbor away from this sudden and tragic end. But have no fear, for Andrew is not done yet. Undeterred and driven by a madness Fletcher himself instilled, he paces back out on the stage and behind his kit where he takes over the show, interrupting Fletcher’s speech and beginning one of the hardest drum-centered tunes in all of jazz, an epic piece called Caravan.
With the band behind him, the song takes off, and Fletcher, initially furious over Andrew’s comeback is quickly overtaken by the incredible start, and soon realizes the boy is doing exactly as he’d hoped for, which sees him welcome Andrew back into his graces even as the songs plays on. But hold on … Andrew ain’t done yet.
When the song seems over, Andrew bursts into a solo, the young prodigy exploding into a set that shocks even Fletcher, the band around him staring in disbelief, which is pretty potent imagery all on its own … yet it’s a cut to a backstage door where through a small glass panel we see Andrew’s father staring out onto the stage at his son, that changes everything. Stunned at the raw unbridled majesty of the art in its finest form – his own boy now recognizably a master of something he himself knew so little of – Andrew’s dad is suddenly aware of what this is all about and without a word, watches in awe, finally ‘getting it.’ It’s a sensational image that is a gut-punch of emotional satisfaction, for in this one drum solo, Andrew not only earns the respect of the mentor he’d so long suffered to achieve, but he – at last – reaches his father. That’s just great moviemaking.
These two moments are terrific examples of the Finally Got It trope, helping greatly to make these movies so much fun to watch. Though brief and seemingly contrived, they are the most singular impactful moments in these sequences, signaling without lengthy dialogue, that these stories’ heroes have at last accomplished what they have so greatly desired, and it’s these short cutaways to what we felt were minor characters – who come to accept what we’ve known all along – that feels so incredibly inspirational. These are great movie moments.