Spellbinding Film Monologues That Hook Audiences

Posted On Mar 30, 2024 By admin With Comments Off

The monologue allows characters on the stage a moment to themselves and the actors playing them a juicy paragraph or two to dive deep into their emotions. Monologues can make or break a scene in a film, especially when surrounded by fast cuts and quick quips. If handled poorly, one might slow down the pace and throw a movie off entirely.

A great moment in Gremlins 2 plays on this, as a character begins a monologue about a traumatic memory tied to Abraham Lincoln’s birthday, and another briskly interrupts because they just don’t have time for that.

But these monologues are nothing of the sort, and immediately they command viewers not to look away from the very first line.

“In many ways, the work of a critic is easy.” – Ratatouille (2007)

Ratatouille (2007) Peter O'Toole — Image Credit: Buena Vista Pictures Distribution.

Anton Ego, voiced by Peter O’Toole, is a harsh and cynical food critic so intimidating to chefs that he even resembles a vulture. However, once he tastes the film’s namesake dish, Ego immediately transports back to his youth through memories of eating ratatouille as a child, causing him to write a review commenting more on art as a craft and artisans as creators. This review works not just as a shining star for a restaurant but also as a monologue that uplifts creativity and inspires taking risks. Ego’s words explain how art can come from anywhere and that anyone can be great, not despite their background but because of it.

The monologue becomes a moment of humbling snobs at the top and raising the voices of those often overlooked at the bottom.

“You think I’m weak, don’t you?” – Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022)

Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022) Ke Huy Quan — Image Credit: Allyson Riggs and A24.

Throughout most of the film, Ke Huy Quan’s character Waymond acts as a mostly quiet supporter of his wife Evelyn and his daughter Joy, whose relationship centers the story. As he causes his wife to stop and listen for a moment with this monologue, he motions to become the symbolic heart of the film, opening her eyes to him and the smaller parts that make up a life fulfilled for the first time in a long time. Though a monologue is not usually broken up or interrupted, in a film like this that pulls everything from everywhere and all at once, this monologue instead comprises two monologues happening simultaneously from the same person from two alternate realities, as well as a montage that nails his words home.

This monologue marks a great example of how the tools of a different medium, film, can translate a staple of another medium, such as a theater monologue, into something new. After decades of not acting, Quan swept award season with this performance.

“This…stuff?” – The Devil Wears Prada (2006)

The Devil Wears Prada (2006) Meryl Streep — Image Credit: 20th Century Fox.

Meryl Streep has a career spanning many a monologue, in roles most of which are more dramatic than her turn as fashion magazine editor Miranda Priestly. However, what’s brilliant about Priestly’s read of her new co-assistant, Andy, who scoffs at the details of fashion, is how off the cuff it comes. Priestly needs not a second thought for the details of which she speaks, letting Andy have a piece of her mind even while still making the fashion choices presented to her.

Streep’s talent has always appeared effortless, but even more so here. The importance of cerulean blue, for example, and how something so seemingly minute sparks trends amongst designers, trickling all the way down to influence the lower masses, is delivered exquisitely without missing a beat. Her shady takedown is swift and precise, and Streep continues her streak of appreciated performances even in a monologue where she doesn’t shed a tear.

“Oh come now, Prince Phillip.” – Sleeping Beauty (1959)

Marc Davis, designer and lead animator of the villain Maleficent in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, has described the character as a speech giver, and it is true. At several points throughout the film, Maleficent stops everything to pronounce and retort through a regal air. Her visit with the captured Prince Phillip in her castle’s dungeon stands out as such a moment, and the scene serves one purpose: snark!

Maleficent tells Phillip of romance and happily-ever-afters, where the hero saves the day. Voiced by and modeled after Eleanor Audley, who gives a lush performance, Maleficent emphasizes such fairytale endings to undercut and chastise the trapped hero, also showing him, through dreamy visuals, how old and depressed he’ll be before he can leave. This monologue crushes Phillip and the entire romantic idea of true love’s kiss conquering all. She ends with a boisterous cackle as he struggles to free himself of his shackles, causing him to grow all the more frustrated.

“My plan was so simple that it terrified me.” – Amadeus (1984)

Amadeus (1984) F. Murray Abraham — Image Credit: Orion Pictures.

Antonio Salieri’s complex obsession with his contemporary composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, knows no bounds. He sees the musician as an infantile presence among the nobility, but a sense of longing overcomes him each time he speaks of Mozart’s music. The words are simple, but F. Murray Abraham‘s portrayal of this fictionalized version of Salieri infuses the character with such wonder, such passion, that even when he speaks of possibly murdering Mozart, to steal and use his music to uplift himself in society, it sounds like a thing of beauty.

Salieri’s monologue verges on the vampiric, like a performance easily transposed into Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Both dark and romantic, oppressive and freeing, tragic and comedic, the moment represents a fanatical relationship with art, executing a rollercoaster of emotions. The role established Abraham as an award-winning actor among actors.

“Love, the greatest of them all.” – Love Exposure (2008)

Love Exposure (2008) Hikari Mitsushima — Image Credit: Phantom Film.

In a film with themes of religion and perversions, Yōko’s scripture recitation is distinct. Chased onto a drab Japanese beach as evening falls, her moment doesn’t visually embody too much. The shot lingers straightforwardly on her face, but the wind blowing through her hair and the light of the darkening blue sky behind her bring an otherworldly aura to the scene. The long take holds very close to her here for over 3 minutes, leaving Yōko’s reading of 1 Corinthians 13 to demand the audience’s attention. It succeeds, performed by actress Hikari Mitsushima as Yōko and pointedly backed by Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7.

Though made up of a Catholic bible passage, the impassioned monologue sits in a strange place between love, eroticism, and cultish religion. Yōko straddles Yū, the person she self-righteously tells off with emotions heightened and stifled all at once. Her proclamation strives to reprimand him for not understanding love but also becomes freeing as a reassurance to herself in her frustrations.

“No, you’ve said what you had to say.“ – Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967)

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967) Sidney Poitier, Roy Glenn — Image Credit: Columbia Pictures.

As the preeminent Black dramatic screen actor of his day, Sidney Poitier masterfully handled every performance and monologue handed to him, from A Raisin in the Sun to In the Heat of the Night. One that truly stands out is his turn as Dr. John Wade Prentice, a Black man who has just told his parents that he plans to marry a white woman.

Though the specific circumstances of this film pertain to interracial relationships, this generational confrontation stands universal. His father has put him down as someone not living up to his expectations of him. In defiance, John stands up for a lifestyle his father doesn’t understand and for his own agency as a person instead of existing as something of a debt to his parents for creating him. Poitier’s realistic performance makes every part of this monologue enthusiastic, even when admitting how much he still loves and appreciates his father despite all of the drama and disagreement.

“I’ve seen the horrors.” – Apocalypse Now (1979)

Apocalypse Now (1979) Marlon Brando — Image Credit: United Artists.

Marlon Brando’s Col. Kurtz has gone rogue, and while integral to the film, he doesn’t himself appear until well into the movie’s runtime, bringing with him a monologue that many hold to be one of the greatest in film history. More than just Brando’s performance, the darkness of the setting makes this monologue fascinating. Pitch blackness envelopes the screen, and as Col. Kurtz talks about the horrors seen, the horrors of war that have sent him off on this path of escape, the film leaves the audience’s imagination to explore and fill in the gaps in this darkness, to envision those horrors and imbue themselves right into the thick of it.

The monologue drops an exclamation mark on wartime and the movie’s whole point. Brando’s speech is vague enough to work this way, probably because the actor improvised it. In fact, he improvised eighteen minutes of monologue, with only a couple of attainable minutes used in the final cut. Any more, and the audience might go as mad as Col. Kurtz. The whole creation of this scene is proof that less is often more.

“Alright, I’ll take the affirmative.” – The Great Debaters (2007)

The Great Debaters (2007) Denzel Washington — Image Credit: The Weinstein Company.

Denzel Washington is known for delivering heavy scenes and has performed many monologues in films like Training Day and Fences. One of only a few Black actors given the chance to bring Shakespeare to the big screen, Washington also delivered in both Much Ado About Nothing and The Tragedy of Macbeth. In The Great Debaters, Washington plays Melvin B. Tolson, a debate coach at Wiley College who leads a team of all Black students to an integrated debate at Harvard University. When asked to tell his proteges more about himself, Tolson deflects, instead riveting them with a story of where the term lynching comes from that uses painful language also known to bond.

The monologue builds quickly, not letting the listener breathe, and Washington addresses intensely, as he often does. The moment not only shocks the students but tries to inspire their aptitude through tough love while also putting them in their place as Black debaters within the history of American segregation, everything that came before it, and everything that that means. The monologue is loaded.

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe.” – Blade Runner (1982)

Blade Runner (1982) Rutger Hauer — Image Credit: Warner Bros.

Roy Batty sits on a rooftop under a hard rain, surrounded by dramatic neon lights and holding a dove. Mostly naked, the scene could symbolize a birth but is just the opposite. His short but powerful words show the humanity in a character whose purpose is in question throughout the film, a humanity stronger than that of the humans who hunt him. Though they consider him a problem, a defective replicant, he has experiences, motivations, and life. Batty will lose his memories of it all like tears in the rain once he no longer remains.

Backed by an atmospheric Vangelis score and incredibly moody cinematography, almost like an illustration, the moment lets him sit in silence for a beat afterward, which feels just as important as the words, and he lets go of the dove, allowing it to fly away. This end monologue for Batty, played so intently by Rutger Hauer, has become so beloved and studied that it even has its own Wikipedia page. Few movie monologues can boast that win.

“Howard…” – Pearl (2022)

Pearl (2022) Mia Goth — Image Credit: A24.

Pearl has acquired a lot in life that she doesn’t quite like. She’s a star, though things never seem to play out for her that way. When the sister of Pearl’s husband, who is away at war, asks her to confide in her as if she were the husband, Pearl eventually unloads. Her sister-in-law, wholly unprepared for such a talk, desperately tries to interrupt but to no avail. Pearl breaks her seal, and after everything she has been through, she can only let it all out now. Coming from a character heeded as over the top and unhinged at most other times, this monologue becomes an absolute calmness in the middle of a storm, honest and from the heart.

Though Mia Goth’s portrayal of Pearl here is still unsettling, she claims sympathy for a woman who dreams big but remains stuck in a rut. The monologue lasts eight minutes, and Goth rivets the entire time, adding backstory and motivation to the character. Much like her smile during the end credits, Goth’s Pearl knows how to sustain a moment.

“Don’t you swear at me…“ – Hereditary (2018)

Hereditary (2018) Toni Collette — Image Credit: A24.

A major tragedy has struck the Graham family, increasing already looming tensions. When Peter breaks the silence at the dinner table, trying to make conversation and eventually asking for some sort of release from his mother, Annie, she does just that. In a tirade that blows all of the stiff air in the room to the next level, Annie, played by Toni Collette, unleashes on her son all of the guilt and accusations that have been culminating in her since that major tragedy happened earlier in the film.

It’s indeed a release of what both Annie and the audience hold in and a simultaneous indictment of every character in the room and their role in escalating this family’s trauma. Everyone remains silent as Collette inflames the screen with a frightening and upsetting display. Her eyes and mouth contort in almost possessive ways fitting of the film, sending her far beyond being a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. It says something that in a horror movie that also contains outrageously visceral moments, a monologue is one of the scenes that stays in mind the most afterward and sends the film into iconic status.

“Well, I’ve been standin’ with you!” – Fences (2016)

Fences (2016) Viola Davis — Image Credit: Paramount Pictures.

Wife and mother Rose Maxson holds the family together as the household continues its regular goings-on over the years. She feeds and takes care of everyone, listening to their problems and helping as much as possible, especially regarding the many disagreements between her husband, Troy, and his sons. When Troy draws the last straw, rocking the couple’s entire history together, Rose’s plea to her husband for an ounce of respect and visibility socks him right back.

Of course, Viola Davis, who plays Rose, is a heavy hitter of an actor, losing herself so much in an emotional moment that tears and snot coat her face (making it memorable among movie monologues for yet another reason). Everything she feels, the audience feels. Though the monologue starts as a need to be seen and heard, by its end, Rose has decided for herself not to let Troy take from her in the ways he has before. In the type of household where it might be better to keep quiet or face physical retaliation, Rose still chooses to speak up and change their relationship forever.

“I don’t have to tell you things are bad.” – Network (1976)

Network (1976) Peter Finch — Image Credit: United Artists.

Veteran news anchorman Howard Beale has had enough. Through his arc, Beale exposes the underhanded dealings and propaganda associated with the media, which puts good ratings above all else, including humanity. Culminating in a live televised moment, Beale, played by Peter Finch, reaches his breaking point and shares his solidarity with viewers at home of the depressing and disheartening world they now live in. As the cameras zoom in and Beale’s speech continues, his movements grow increasingly erratic around the set, building tension. He asks people to get mad about the things that upset them, mad enough to express it and take a stand, bringing the iconic line, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!” He seems deranged on the surface, but these valid aggravations inspire others to admit the same. And, of course, through all of his genuine pain, network executives smile and exalt this special on-air moment. After all, it nevertheless means good ratings.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor.” – The Great Dictator (1940)

The Great Dictator (1940) Charlie Chaplin — Image Credit: United Artists.

As an icon of the silent era of cinema, one might have wondered at the time how well star Charlie Chaplin would transition into the talkies, adding sound to his pictures. If nothing else great ever came out of Chaplin sharing his literal voice and figurative one, this ending monologue stands strong.

While the monologue, seemingly delivered by a ruthless dictator announcing a change of heart, certainly captures the mood of the time early into World War II, it remains relevant and potent today. He talks of humanity’s capabilities of advancing and progressing but losing itself in progress. He speaks of greed and oppressive brutes that control, where the power should be in the hands of the people. As the speech calls for the world to unite, his attention turns directly to the audience, making it a real-life wake-up call. Chaplin’s monologue inspires and rallies, so how unfortunate that such a monologue still applies decades later.

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