“The Five Heartbeats” is one of my all-time favorite movies. I’ve wanted to include it in this series for a while but had the hardest time deciding which scene I would choose. At one point, I was just like I’ma just choose the entire movie. Of course I never got around to that either, but lately the thought has revisited me – not choosing the entire movie but choosing a scene from this movie for this series. So that’s what I did…well, kinda. You see, I just couldn’t pick one. So for the first time in Movie Scenes I Love history, I’m giving you two. That’s right, two scenes from one movie that I love!
This movie came out in 1991 when I was 11-years-old. I remember seeing it in the theatre either at the South Bay Galleria or the Old Towne Mall, for those of you who grew up in the LA area. Even at that tender age this movie touched me. It’s about a group of boys from working-class families with hopes of becoming a professional singing group and all the things that come along with pursuing and achieving soul-star dreams in the 1960s.
This film, for me, is simply a masterclass in storytelling. It’s just seamless storytelling. As a storyteller myself, I have never taken any classes on storytelling and I don’t think I ever will. When it comes to writing, there is just something about being self-taught that I find more attractive than formal training – not in all cases, but in many cases. I feel like in formal training people teach you their way, and their opinion of what they think is good or best. Whereas when you are self-taught, it’s easier for you to figure it out and decide for yourself what you like. I watch movies like “The Five Heartbeats” and marvel at them. It influences my own writing. When I write a script, I hope it will make others feel like movies like this make me feel.
The emotional journey that Robert Townsend the co-writer and director, takes you on in this movie is top-tier. It’s funny, it’s sad. It’s light-hearted, it’s heavy. It’s tragic, it’s triumphant. And it all flows. Nothing, not one scene is wasted. The story moves along so beautifully, so compellingly. These two scenes I’ve chosen are just an example of that.
And so, without further ado, here are two of my favorite scenes from the movie “The Five Heartbeats.”
The Bedroom Singing Scene: We Haven’t Finished Yet
In this scene we find Duck, one of the members of the group, and his little sister in the bedroom that they share with their other siblings. But in this moment they are alone. Duck, who writes all the songs for his group, is at his desk, hard at work churning out lyrics by hand, none of which seem to be satisfactory to him. Meanwhile, his little sister is directly behind him sweeping the floor, trying to clean their room before their parents get home, when she finds herself in the line of fire of Duck’s crumpled discarded lyrics. Frustrated with his indecision, she picks up one of the tossed pieces of paper and begins singing the rejected lyrics. Then another. Soon Duck joins in. What ensues is a frantic search and rescue of other tossed lyrics and a beautifully sung inspirational song amongst siblings. See for yourself…
This scene comes towards the beginning of the movie. What I like about it is that it is a marker of that aspirational hope one has when dreams are yet realized. It shows that hope that you have when your dream is still off in the distance, and when what you can see in the distance seems so much better than what you currently have. So much so that in Duck’s case, nothing he comes up with for the song seems to be good enough to help him get there. So much so that he even risks his parents coming home to a messy room to try and get the song right. All this is complemented by the aspirational hope in the song lyrics themselves that urges you to keep chasing your dreams even though the journey is hard.
The Church Scene: I Feel Like Going On
I love a good church scene. Whether it’s a funny one like the one in “First Sunday” where Katt Williams plays a choir director, or one that’s soul-stirring like this one, it all equates to movie-viewing enjoyment for me. In this scene we find Duck many years, perhaps even decades after he was singing in his room with his sister. The dream he had of being a part of a famous soul group had long since come true and went away. He’s currently estranged from all the other members, including his brother. Then one day he gets a letter from Choir Boy, his former group member, inviting him to church and he decides to go. Now, he sits in a church pew, looking down, perhaps at his program, when all of a sudden he hears the hum of an unmistakable baritone and looks up to discover the fate of the most wayward member of the group. Take a look…
What I love about this scene is that it’s at the other end of the story arch that the first scene is on. In the first scene Duck was working to achieve a dream not yet realized. In this scene, he has already realized the dream and now knows that the dream comes with its own set of hardships that he could not have imagined when he shared a bedroom with his siblings. The same is true for all the members, especially Eddie King , who, arguably had the roughest journey of them all. And yet… does anybody have an “and yet” in their spirit? And yet he feels like going on. How many been through something that would have taken others out…and yet.
This scene was so powerful, I almost feel like it could have been the ending scene of the movie, but Robert Townsend knew how to take it another further. He knew how to seal the deal in the most heart-warming way. The ending was perfect and in so many ways, so is this movie.
Have you seen “The Five Heartbeats?” What are your thoughts on these scenes?
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