Top Tens #6: My Top 10 Favourite Movie Monologues

Words have power. The pen is mightier than the sword, as the saying goes. Since the essence of great cinema is propelled by action and dialogue, it is rare for many films to stop and commit to a lengthy soliloquy or speech.

So when one sees a meaty monologue consuming many minutes of a film’s running time, odds are you’re in for a treat. Whether it’s an inspiring halftime speech, a biting tear-down of a group of middle-rate employees, or a moving argument intended to persuade an audience, great movie monologues can rank among the finest and most personal oratory of our time.

Here are my Top 10 favourite movie monologues, presented in reverse chronological order:

10. “Inch by Inch” – Any Given Sunday

Written by John Logan and Oliver Stone, Performed by Al Pacino

Note: clip contains some strong language

Speeches made by a coach at halftime tend to be legendary. Speeches made by Al Pacino tend to be even better. So I’m essentially killing two birds with one stone by placing Pacino’s terrific halftime proclamation here. Any Given Sunday is a film more notable for its intense, realistic football sequences than its nuanced characterization. But the film’s crowning scene, where the embittered coach confronts his own shattered dreams in front of his team, enticing them to with-hence go back and pick up those pieces, inch by inch, and fight for victory, is its finest moment. By the standards of American sports films, it’s a rather edgy and bracingly honest pep talk. But it comes from the mouth of the excellent Pacino and the pen of Oliver Stone – two men who aren’t known for their pleasantries.

9. “USS Indianapolis” – Jaws

Written by Peter Benchley and Carl Gottlieb, Performed by Robert Shaw

Steven Spielberg’s Jaws is both praised and maligned for being the first summer blockbuster. But many tentpole pictures lack the daring thrills and strong characterization that Spielberg’s film is known for. In this scene, obssessive shark hunter Quint, played by the great Robert Shaw, explains the reason why he’s taken up such a dangerous line of work. He was on the USS Indianapolis, which delivered parts of the atomic bomb that was later dropped on Hiroshima. When the Japanese torpedoed the ship, causing it to sink and leaving its 1,100 soldiers in the middle of treacherous waters, many of the troops died from shark attacks while waiting for assistance. It is reported that Shaw rewrote the monologue based on survivor testimony, giving the scene an unforgettably haunting texturing.

8. “Your Move, Chief” – Good Will Hunting

Written by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, Performed by Robin Williams

Note: clip contains some strong language

Although Robin Williams is primarily known for his outrageous comedic talents, I would argue that his dramatic work, film-wise, displays a greater range than his funny bits. Dead Poets Society and One Hour Photo are terrific indicators of this talent, but it would be foolish to deny that his performance as psychologist Sean Maguire in Good Will Hunting is the most accomplished work of his career. The four-minute monologue, the best scene in the film, could have single-handedly won him the Oscar he received for Gus Van Sant's drama. During the scene, Maguire tells his patient, Will Hunting (Matt Damon), that while the young man may be content with his fastiduous knowledge and intellect as a means to tear into other people, he doesn’t have any useful wisdom to offer. It’s the point in that film where the protagonist, our title character, starts his real education.

7. The Critic’s Lament – Ratatouille

Written by Brad Bird, Performed by Peter O’Toole

If you frequent The Screening Room, you may have noticed the beginning of this speech on the top of the page, placed there as a perfect summation of my thoughts on arts criticism. The succinct, flareful writing comes from Anton Ego, the slouched and often strict food critic from Pixar’s Ratatouille, whose nasty words have the tendency to put restaurants out of business. Ego, brought to life by the warm, prickly voice of the great Peter O’Toole, reports about a terrific new chef at Gusteau’s, humbling his own savage professional obligations in the process. “Not everyone can be a great artist,” he says, “but a great artist can come from anywhere.” That’s a thought that the Pixar staff ought to hang atop the entrance to their animation studios.

6. “Believe Tom Robinson” – To Kill a Mockingbird

Written by Horton Foote, Performed by Gregory Peck

“The defendant is not guilty,” proclaims lawyer Atticus Finch, the fatherly voice of reason and figure of unequivocal integrity at the end of the trial in To Kill a Mockingbird. “But somebody in this courtroom is.” It is hard to stand up for the rights of an African-American in the intolerant Alabama county where Finch lives, but he does so even as much of his community remains firmly seated. Masterfully portrayed by Gregory Peck (in an Oscar-winning role), Finch’s last stand before the jury, urging them to cast out their prejudice, is as pointed as it is poignant. To read the closing statements in Harper Lee’s remarkable novel is one thing. To watch Peck pierce the words into the air of the still Alabama courtroom is another.

5. “Always Be Closing” – Glengarry Glen Ross

Written by David Mamet, Performed by Alec Baldwin

Note: clip contains some strong language

Alec Baldwin’s slick, snide, notoriously profane salesman extraordinaire, Blake, doesn’t appear in the original Mamet play, but was a juicy addition to James Foley’s terrific big-screen adaptation of it. And Baldwin’s sole scene is one of the most vicious – and viciously funny – moments of the actor’s career. Blake shows up to a middling real estate office about 15 minutes in and tears every salesman there to shreds, offering bravado sales advice to help the agents close their leads while also belittling them without a shred of compassion or class. I have performed this monologue a few times, and Mamet’s mix of motivation, malice and merciless profanity help make it a knockout each time.

4. “This is Not Just Madness” – Michael Clayton

Written by Tony Gilroy, Performed by Tom Wilkinson

Note: clip contains some strong language

Tom Wilkinson is one of the most underappreciated screen actors of our generation. He should have won the Oscar for his shattering turn in Todd Field’s excellent In The Bedroom, and was snubbed most recently by the same Academy for his tour de force in Tony Gilroy’s dialogue-obssessed thriller Michael Clayton. In fact, he should have been given some sort of honourary prize for his opening monologue – done entirely with voice-over. In the film, he plays a top-tier attorney who is let off the hook after an outburst in the middle of a deposition. This monologue, delivered with urgency and menace, relays to the audience the character’s stamina as well as his vulnerability. Even though we only hear his voice, it’s an undeniably compeling opening, setting the tone and cadence for the high-tension realism of the film, one of 2007’s finest.

3. “Chapter One” – Manhattan

Written by Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman, Performed by Woody Allen

Let’s face it: New York is Woody Allen’s town and always will be. Set to the jazzy strains of Gershwin’s "Rhapsody in Blue" and the intoxicating black-and-white, slice of life images from the five boroughs, Allen (and to an extent, his character in the film, Isaac Davis) tries to find the truest way to sum up the city he loves. Also done entirely through voice-over, Allen rehearses different possible openings to the first chapter of a book he is working on. Eventually he realizes the impossible pursuit of trying to get it all into one sentence, and goes with this: “He was as tough and romantic as the city he loved. Behind his black-rimmed glasses was the coiled sexual power of a jungle cat. New York was his town and it always would be.” What a delightful way to sum up the oeuvre of one of cinema’s most prolific writer/directors.

2. “In the Name of Democracy” – The Great Dictator

Written and Performed by Charlie Chaplin

Chaplin’s rousing call to democratic freedoms signified the triumphant climax of his artistic career. While some of his earlier films addressed social and political issues in the periphery, The Great Dictator tackles the rise of Nazism and facism head-on. In the film, Chaplin plays a Jewish barber with a conspicuously similar look to a well-known European tyrant. Mistaken for the leader at the end of the film, the barber is obliged to make a speech in front of the dictator’s fervent followers. Chaplin begins by speaking directly to the soldiers in the film, but turns to face the camera midway through to express his deepest feelings, breaking the proverbial fourth wall in the process while offering a direct, personal statement about how to rise up from the greed and poisonous misery that had taken shape in Western civilization. His closing words, a resounding call to defeat the mechanized soullessness and terror that had become so fraught around the world at the time, still seems appropriate today.

1. “Mad as Hell” – Network

Written by Paddy Chayefsky, Performed by Peter Finch

And speaking of passionate, prophetic, socially relevant calls to change through the form of a movie monologue, none resonate more than Peter Finch’s shattering proclamations that he’s mad as hell and won’t take this anymore in the 1976 satire Network. Finch plays the unpredictable news anchor Howard Beale in the biting comedy – which has aged particularly well – and becomes a prophet of the airwaves by spewing honest and uncompromising opinions of the state of national and world affairs. His words mirror the frustration and misery of post-Vietnam War America, and are still relevant today. Preaching pundits have become all the rage in recent times, giving the film an even greater prescience today. 35 years after its release, audiences are still mad as hell.