Here are some of the finest “climax speeches” of the new millenium: SHABANA AZMI (NEERJA) A majority of them are social statements, but there are also the personal petitions. The last two decades, in particular, have had more Hindi film screenplays conclude – and resolve themselves – in ways that can be heard rather than seen. Hence, we come away not with lyrical lines or memorable quotes but with entire moments. It makes for the most direct form of communication between the maker and the audience the medium that separates the two is transcended.
Here is where a film’s politics are laid bare. The camera, too, has a role to play – even something as basic as a well-timed crowd cutaway adds to the ethos. This is a distinct artform: Staking the finality of a full-length movie’s resolution on…an oration. But some of the movies’ most memorable scenes – where the feelings trump the phrases – have come from the climactic speech. On the sermons and the meltdowns, the pleas and the verdicts. Mainstream Hindi cinema, more than most, thrives on the monologue. And that it’s not just the courtroom that accommodates the rousing word. Al Pacino’s Scent of a Woman monologue proved that there is nothing quite as romantic as a sharply written and performed climactic speech. It’s different from, say, a blind Colonel delivering a compassionate speech during an Ivy League School disciplinary session in defense of a young student. Public figures and political leaders are the only ones afforded the privilege of being listened to without being interrupted, but the sense of occasion comes with the territory. A character speaking fluently – transfixing a room, auditorium or even nation, compelling people to listen in pin-drop silence, lending gravitas to every single word in the most unlikely of circumstances – is a rarity in everyday life. In many ways, a monologue, whether an exasperated rant or inspirational speech, is cinema. The monologue has long been cinema’s purest narrative device.
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