These are the transcendent moments, whether they fall on Freytag's Pyramid or merely are pithy asides, that you relive in your imagination or rehash in post-film autopsies over coffee. You replay them countless times. You recap them for your friends. But revisiting never captures the essence of the original.
Director: Wes Anderson; 91m.
Francis, regimented ringleader of the quest for brotherly bonding in India, is off balance after a shoeshine boy runs off with half of a $3,000 pair. We sense he is due for a meltdown; A., because he's the wound-tight wanna-be pilgrim whose well-laid plans toward E-Z-enlightenment are derailing; and, B., because film formulas train us to expect characters in his caste to snap easily. A further clue to the viewer that he's due to come unglued: Shortly after becoming one shoe lighter he is told, "Those guys are laughing at us." Now, he's really gonna lose it, we think. But his response defies archetype. Uncharacteristically, he goes with the flow. He looks up in wonder and presumably swept up by his surroundings, says, with conviction: "I love it here. These people are beautiful."
I am awed by his ability to love those who laugh at him. To embrace those who seek to make him "other." It does not matter whether the laughter is real or a product of paranoia.
On the hilly geography of his face, close-set eyes bump against the bandaged nose, and an angry red dot marks the spot. Then the third eye on this map of conflict is touched, and the terrain shifts unexpectedly into this exquisite expanse of clarity, non-ego and unconditional love.
In the river rescue scene later the concept gets fleshed out more fully, but this small, everyday moment brings it home for me.
— Becky
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