The best movie speech ever delivered - Writing Wednesday
Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,
Whilst I was on holiday in the Isle of Wight, I watched a film with my family called Scent of a Woman. It was about a student called Charlie, who ends up working for this old war veteran to earn some money. However, this old war veteran is blind and quite a handful so when he decides to spontaneously go to New York whilst his daughter and her family are away, the student Charlie is forced to go with him. They get up to all sorts and have quite the adventure whilst they are away:they eat at a fancy restaurant, dance the tango with a random woman, and drive a ferrari around the streets of New York!
SceneScreen
However, the young Charlie finds himself in a bit of a friendship predicament by the end of the trip. His friends had pulled a prank on the headteacher, which he had witnessed, and now he is forced to face the school court. If he tells on what his friends did, he will have a golden ticket to Harvard by the headteacher. If he doesn't tell what his friends did, it would be quite the opposite! Let me tell you, the speech delivered by Al Pacino, who played the blind colonel, was the best speech that I have heard in a long while and I personally believe that we can learn a lot from it.
Universal Pictures
Some strong language used in this scene so
viewer's discretion advised. A great speech nevertheless so
watch it if you would like!
Charlie ends up deciding not to tell on his friends and instead acts like he couldn't really see the people who had orchestrated it. His friend George Willis Jr, who was also there with Charlie at the scene, ended up saying the same thing so this creates a bit of tension with headteacher, who tries to force clear answers out of both of them.
However, the colonel, who stepped up as the parental figure for Charlie, stands up for what he did. He claims that if Charlie was sent home, the school would be amputating his spirit. The colonel has seen amputated arms, legs, and limbs but as he says, "there is no prosthetic for an amputated spirit."He also says that regardless of whether Charlie was right or wrong to not snitch on his friends, he is made of integrity and courage for doing what he did. He claims that "this should be the stuff that leaders are made from" and that the school's perception of "using people to buy your own future," goes exactly against what leaders are.
In the end Charlie is excused by the Committee and his friend George, who would have gotten a straight ticket into Harvard by his dad, is expelled from the school.
However, I think the important message that can be taken away from this brilliant speech is that the true leaders of the world are those who will never put down another person, no matter how bad they are, for their own personal gain. In this speech, Al Pacino was talking about how Charlie had integrity because he didn't throw Harry, Trent, and Jimmy to the flames, no matter how bad they were. Not every leader nowadays is bad but it is made perfectly clear by some leader's actions, that they lack humility and that really says a lot about how they rule and wish to influence the world. It is sometimes difficult to put your feelings aside about something but it really does show what type of person you are. I think that if more people were a lot more self-less instead of selfish, we would have a world of successful leaders.
I would like to also say that the speech delivered in Scent of a Woman was pure art. No wonder Al Pacino won an Academy Award for this because no one could make such an impact on a speech like he did!
I hope you enjoyed this blog post!
Have you watched this movie before? Have you got any other great speeches to recommend? I would love to hear them. Let me know in the comments below and I'll be sure to reply to them. I ♡ hearing from you!
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See you next time,
Bye,
XOX, Juliette
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