Some movies open with scenes so unremarkable they’re not even worth remarking about. So let’s not. Let’s remark instead about the opening scenes so well-executed–either so tight and focused or so broad and all-encompassing–that watching those few isolated minutes of brilliant cinema has all the emotional impact of watching an entire feature-length film. (In some of the examples that follow, the opening scene is, in fact, monumentally better than what follows; whether the rest of the movie is just bad by comparison or truly horrible on its own merit varies by case.)
A good opening scene sets the stage for the tale to come, but a great opening scene can draw you into its world and tell a complete, complex story before you’ve eaten your second handful of Junior Mints. Here are some of the best.
1. Up
Since we hardly make it to the theater anymore and have to wait for new releases on Netflix, I’d spent entire months of my life listening to a million and one people warn me about the scene in Pixar’s latest tour de force that would, they swore, have me doing the ugly cry into my popcorn, guaranteed. Being not much of a crier, and having seen a movie or two in my life, I figured I’d know to put my guard up near the end of the film, when the orchestration swelled with the Pavlovian strains that signal NOW IS THE TIME FOR THE CRYING; RESISTANCE IS FUTILE. That’s why I wasn’t prepared for the onslaught that is one of the fullest six and a half minutes of modern cinema, which may or may not have reduced me to a puddle of weepy, salty slop.
(Okay, so technically that’s not the opening scene, but it’s an opening scene, and it counts here because one of the reasons it’s such an amazing nugget of moviemaking is precisely because it appears at the beginning, when you least expect it. Disney’s had its share of woeful introductions (Bambi, anyone? the orphan-making bloodbath of Tarzan?), but Up doesn’t just give us background, it takes us into a life.
2. Scream
Speaking of people dying unexpectedly during the first few minutes of a movie, was I the only one totally caught off guard by Scream? Here we have a relatively big star whose name and face are front and center in all of the film’s promotional materials, and then BAM, a dozen minutes into her role she’s gutted and hanging from a tree. Now, I don’t wish Drew Barrymore any ill will, but that was AWESOME.
3. Harold and Maude
Hollywood apparently loves a good hanging. So does Harold. He also loves drowning and self-immolation and hari kari, among other morbid pastimes, like crashing funerals in his sweet but doomed Jag hearse. This opening scene is the perfect introduction to him, and to his mother and to the inimitable Cat Stevens soundtrack.
4. Magnolia
I can’t even count how many times I’ve seen Magnolia, but I always forget it starts with the voiced-over triptych of vignettes that demonstrate the freaky ways truth can be stranger than fiction.
But the end of that sequence is not the end of the beginning of Magnolia (which ousted from this list P. T. Anderson’s masterful no-cut intro to Boogie Nights). Immediately after the prologue monologue on chance and coincidence, Magnolia launches into a tour of its characters that throws us headfirst into the ocean of dysfunction and entanglement that is the rest of the film, and there’s so much going on and so much to pay attention to (and so much to love about the soundtrack–a cover of “One” by Aimee Mann, who is to Magnolia as Cat is to Harold and Maude) that there aren’t even any opening credits to distract viewers from the unfolding drama.
5. Idiocracy
There’s no easy segue between Magnolia–an epic study of the human condition and one of the finest films of our generation–and Idiocracy–a stupid (albeit in parts wonderfully stupid) glimpse at a future in which the tragically dumb have inherited the earth. How did it happen? The first three minutes explain where things went wrong.
Okay, your turn. Tell me what’s better than these.
