This morning, skimming through an email from Slatest (or was I following a link from a link?), I see a reference to “The best scene from The Bourne Identity.” So of course I click on it, and… here’s the sweet part… they got it right! They did indeed choose the best scene, the one that really makes the movie, that hooks you and pulls you in for good, and they at least had an inkling why it was the best scene.
Here’s a portion of the writer’s musings on the scene:
You walk to the mailbox, you mail a letter. Walking back, it comes to you with a queer shock of awareness that you have no memory of the mailbox or the act of mailing—and yet the letter is no longer in your hand. What happens next is the Jason Bourne version of this phenomenon. A nightstick is jabbed into his shoulder: Bourne frowns, as if in recognition. He grabs the nightstick. “Hey!” says the cop. Voltage jump, hair-raising crackle of imminent violence: The three men are momentarily one circuit. Then Bourne looks right, looks left, stands up and in five movements disarms and dismantles the two cops: wrist grab, forearm smash, nightstick to face, wham, bam, an ecstasy of automatism. It’s over. The symmetry of the encounter is fulfilled: Policemen are laid out, sleeping in the sleepy snow … and Bourne is all at once horribly conscious. It swarms over him like a sickness. Panting and confused, he looks at the gun in his hands. He breaks down the gun, drops the pieces, and sprints from the snowy park.
So now we know. The fugue state is fully wired. It’s the present moment that hums with emptiness. Who am I? Who trained me? My substance was not hid from thee,says the psalmist to his God, in Psalm 139, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. Yet somehow my substance is hidden from myself. I’m programmed—but for what? For some virtuoso ass-kicking, clearly. But there must be a mission, a commission, some greater duty. To find it out, that’s a long road. That might take two or three movies. Look at Jason Bourne fleeing the scene, shedding his coat as he goes. Short movements, maximum efficiency. He looks like a man imprisoned in motion….
We’re of course talking about the scene in which the two Zurich cops wake our hero while he’s napping on a park bench, and he discovers, to his surprise, that he can handle himself the way Mozart handled a piece of music. He’s slightly shocked by the realization. He doesn’t enjoy it, the way you or I would if we suddenly realized that nobody, but nobody, could lay a hand on us and get away with it. But we, vicariously, get to enjoy it.
It’s the moment of Harry Potter finding out he’s a wizard, or young Arthur pulling the sword from the stone. It’s the magical moment of discovering one is special, perhaps even (if you’re Neo in “The Matrix”) THE One. It’s the realization that, after all, Paul Atreides is the Kwisatz Haderach. There’s no greater vicarious thrill than that, and we eat it up in spite of the fact that — or maybe because — we have a strong suspicion that we will never make such a discovery about ourselves. It’s the reason why this is the hottest plot device going, from the New Testament to Ender’s Game, from Lord of the Rings to The Hunger Games.
The thing that keeps Bourne from appreciating his discovery is that he doesn’t know the purpose for which he has these superpowers. And he’s probably already suspecting that it’s for purposes that are not going to make him proud of himself.
Anyway, in an Inbox full of irrelevant emails that I don’t want, but suspect I should force myself to glance at before deleting, this was a nice little reward. I appreciated it.
And this was posted this morning apropos of nothing. There’s not a new movie coming out in the series. Matt Damon didn’t die or anything. There was just some movie geek out there thinking about this, irrelevantly, the way Nick Hornby’s obsessive hero (actually, all his heroes are sort of obsessive, aren’t they?) in Fever Pitch is always thinking about particular moments in soccer matches from years past, and therefore can’t bring himself to answer his girlfriend honestly when she asks, “What are you thinking about?,” because he knows the scorn to which he will be subjected. (See the end of page 1 and the top of page 2.)
Since I, too, am always thinking about stuff like this, I feel a kinship for the person who wrote this. I feel less alone in the world — maybe the way football fans or political partisans feel, sure in their knowledge that there are other people like them.
So that’s one of the things I like about the Internet. Not that it’s chock full of stuff that is immediate and relevant, but that you can find stuff that isn’t those things at all, and it can make your day. Or at least, help you pass a pleasant moment. Then you have to get back to the relevant stuff….
The pivotal instant in the pivotal scene — when the cop pokes Bourne with a nightstick, and Bourne grabs it without thinking, and pauses just an instant, before asserting complete control. That’s the cusp of the film, the cusp of the series…
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When I lived in Bennettsville while my Dad was in Vietnam, when I was in the 9th grade, the boys used to have a standard response to things that really impressed them. It sounded like “GOT-taw-mah-tee!” Which was they’re overly vehement pronunciation, for emphasis, of “God Almighty.”
This was the GOT-taw-mah-tee! moment in that movie…
Best Matt Damon moment? “How you like them apples?” from one of my favorite all time movies.
Oh, yeah. My boy is wicked smaht!
I really liked Damon in The Rainmaker and Rounders.
That’s the sort of movie that makes my mind wander,and by the end,I have no idea what it was about.I fixed my oven for $12,using the net,but it has become increasingly useless-http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2009/12/why_this_decade.php