Film festivals have generally been the places where controversies get cooked up and provided to the media. Last year’s film festivals were especially in the limelight due to the perceptions being generated regarding the message expected to be given by the Todd Phillips directed Joker to the society. Nevertheless, Joker went on to win the top award at Venice- the Golden Lion, two Oscars of the original score and best actor, and other accolades. Film festivals allow the interconnection of various cultures and communities of people in an increasingly polarized world. This year’s Toronto film festival came at a time when the world grappled under the Covid19 is still enamored to the tastes offered by films. Toronto film festival 2020 had on one hand had movies streamed in the online format as the major component and on the other hand, featured 50 films while following the social distancing norms. American Utopia directed by Spike Lee had its world premiere in the opening of the Toronto Film festival 2020.

In this backdrop, let us revisit some earlier movies which in their ways had left a mark on popular culture. Here we will try to immerse ourselves in seven sequences of screenplay execution in certain movies (as opined by the author). (These may be different from the seven favorites of the reader. But it is hoped that the difference would not be an impediment for the reader to read on.)

Let us begin with the first one which comes at the end of a beautiful Cinematic masterpiece by Tarantino. Near the culmination of the third act of Once Upon a time in Hollywood, we see Tex, Sadie, and Katie of the Manson family get into the house of Rick Dalton. These characters were in the framework of an alternate history written by Quentin Tarantino, who used the chance to avenge (on-screen) the 1969 murder of Sharon Tate to its fullest extent. The Manson family members get literally slammed, cracked, and roasted by Cliff Booth and Rick Dalton with help from the fearsome pit-bull- Brandy. Soon after that, Dalton gets invited to the house of Tate. There comes the moment where the gates of the Tate family Villa open up welcoming him. One cannot help but notice that the gates symbolically welcomed the viewers into the new era of Hollywood (after the golden age) with a horrifying real-world massacre averted or rather inverted.

The second one is from the second movie in the John Wick series. The former assassin John Wick is hired back into the business by Santinno. John is compelled to work on an assignment for Santinno due to a blood oath he had made to the Italian crime-lord. He had to take out Santinno’s sister, Gianna, clearing the way for the brother to take his spot at the high table of the underworld. Here, he has to select his dress, his weapons for the occasion of the high-end assassination, and understand the site in detail for his successful infiltration and exfil. There were three components in the sequence. It had scenes with the detailing of the architectural plans of the fort at the site of the assassination. There were the scenes on the selection of the Italian and Austrian guns & knives. The final part of the three-dimensional screenplay was the group of scenes on the selection of the fabric including the Kevlar and recording of the measurements for his suit. The interlacing of these three parts which made the assassination job sound like a dinner date before Wick gets ready for his task to kill Gianna is breath-taking.

The third is from the third act in the pastiche masterpiece of 2019- Joker. In this movie, near the end, TV host Franklin Murray is playing a video of an episode of Arthur fleck unsuccessfully trying his luck in stand-up comedy. While playing the video it is shown that Murray is mocking Fleck, while Arthur was having a smoke standing just behind the curtains. He (Arthur) was listening to his audio being played and absorbing the insult silently. The fresco over Arthur’s face with an intense silence-embalmed penance-stare in his eyes betrayed a seething rage under his skin. It was not the first time that Murray, his idol, had made fun of him publicly. It was probably at that moment that he decided to escalate his suicide mission into an act of dishing out vengeance onto Murray publicly. Arthur’s face was the indication of the fate that awaited Murray. It was the manifestation of him snapping out. JP was phenomenal in that scene with absolutely no lines, just smoke, lighting resembling moonlight, and his eyes with the creepy background score. One could literally see Friedrich Nietzsche written all over the frame. In terms of screenplay writing, there simply could not be any better way in which that moment could have been dealt with. Just the horrifying silence did its job!!!

The fourth one is from the fourth Avengers movie- Endgame. Tony Stark had figured out a way to solve the time travel riddle using his simulations. He kisses Morgan, his daughter goodnight, and comes down in the simulation room. There he saw his wife, Pepper reading some materials on composting. Their conversation started normally as to what she was reading. Tony declares to Pepp that he had solved the time travel puzzle. As the viewers are taken through the frame of a paused simulation, the mode of their dialogue gets inverted. Tony starts speaking out what was running through Pepp’s mind and vice versa. This screenplay showed what a perfect couple should be like. Their personal, mental, and emotional resonance with each other was reflected in that inverted dialogue exchange. Tony and Pepper know exactly what is going on in the heart and mind of the other person. The inversion in their dialogues just after the frame crosses the simulation was brilliantly executed.

The fifth is a couple of scenes in the iconic and extremely well-written landmark 2008 movie-the Dark Knight. In that movie, after Joker assaults the mayor in broad daylight, the district attorney Harvey Dent is shown interrogating a lunatic who had been made a pawn by the Joker to infiltrate the town parade. In this sequence, Nolan’s use of lighting on Harvey Dent shows his face half dark, which foreshadowed his turning into the nemesis Two-face. After this, when Joker is captured and is interrogated in the lockup, Commissioner Gordon enters in a jet black dark room with the clown prince of crime sitting. That perfectly portrayed the ultimately malevolent dark psyche of the Joker into which Commissioner Gordon was entering.

The sixth one is from the timeless classic, the Shawshank Redemption. At the beginning of the third act of this masterpiece, it is shown that Andy Dufresne, the protagonist, had escaped from the inescapable prison. The warden of the Jail, Andy’s friend Red and the head of security in the prison find out that a tunnel had been dug through the walls all up to the sewage pipe. It showed that the tunnel, which was dug by Andy for 19 years, was surreptitiously hidden below a poster of the then famous actresses which kept on changing from time to time. The screenplay here stressed that the plan of escape was well laid in front of the jail authorities who time and again came to check up the rooms of all the prisoners including Andy. Everybody in that prison had taken the poster as the ostentatious symbol of Andy’s admiration of the beautiful popular ladies of the silver screens. The poster was nothing but a thin veneer hiding Andy’s true intentions from the people in the prison. The brilliance of the screenplay here lies in the sub-textual message that none in the prison including his friend Red, had ever thought about the possibility of escape, hence none could have in their wildest imagination guessed any ulterior purpose for the hanging poster.

The seventh one is from the movie- Edge of tomorrow which was released six years ago. The basic premise of the movie is that an invading alien race is using its capacity to reset the day to conquer earth. Without going into the war of words over the impossibility of it, let us get to the particular sequence. The protagonist of the movie is Captain William Cage (played by Tom Cruise). He is an advertiser turned reluctant soldier dragged into the battlefront. He accidentally acquires the power to reset the day. Taking help from a veteran soldier, Rita Vrataski, who once had gained that same “reset the day” power, William slowly polishes himself as a soldier. His main mission is to get the humans past the beach on the first day of Operation downfall by resetting the day over and over again by dying on the battlefield. After many such attempts with help from Rita (played by Emily Blunt), he is finally able to get past the beach. William and Rita go to a near-by village. Here, William makes Rita a cup of coffee and adds three sachets of sugar to it. The beauty of the scene lies in the way Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt execute it onscreen. Here the character, Rita along with the viewers learns that William has been at this same situation many times before using his powers. Hence, he knows exactly how much sweet does Rita need her coffee to be. In this sequence, Rita subtly gets to know that William is in love with her and hence cannot let her go even at the cost of losing the greater battle. This conflict makes this sequence the most favorite from the author’s point of view among the seven. (Frankly, this sequence along with the climax makes “Edge of tomorrow” the best onscreen love story the author has ever seen.)

Cinema has time and again given us many such memorable moments and sequences on-screen which brought delighted imagination, flared up possibilities, and which give the drive to push ahead through morbid times like in the present. Streaming of movies on smart-phones and TV platforms is fine in terms of diversification but let us hope that in post-COVID times, the pull of the large screen theatres remains intact. The reason is simple. The excitement when Jake Sully gathers the Navi people as the TorukMakto to battle against the Sky people in Avatar, or the adrenaline rush when Thor makes a nick of the time arrival in Wakanda to turn the tide of the battle in Avengers-Infinity War can be exclusively felt in large-screen format theatres. That feeling can never be relived on TV or smart-phone streaming.

Such film festivals like TIFF 2020 can be the hope for continuance of the relevance of the conventional, IMAX, or non-IMAX large-screen theatres.