The bench is one of the most popular furnishing for film directors, photography directors and set designers, hence it is also the most used in film posters. Not only because it facilitates frontal and lateral shooting during two-way dialogues - still the most common and effective narrative expedient for confessions and great revelations - but because it performs an allegorical function: the bench is the place for pause, reflection, awareness and finally confrontation. The physical closeness of the characters, when seated next to each other, moves them to action, to open, confess, touch each other or even just share the silence. This is why the bench often turns into the key place of the film, often becoming its manifesto. This examples, including cult films, arthouse films and independent productions, show it as a main character of scenes that have gone down in history.
Benches, a story through films
The bench in films is not just any piece of furniture: it witnesses the beginning or the end of a love story, is the sets of the greatest revelations or a place of profound inspiration. Ten films tell its story as a leading actor.
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- Marta Milasi
- 14 February 2020
Upper East Side’s Sutton Park, in front of the Queensboro Bridge, is the place Woody Allen chooses to declare his love for Diane Keaton, but above all for his city, which gives the film its name. On the bench they spend the night talking until dawn. A turning point, after which Isaac/Woody will begin his relationship with Mary/Diane.
"I've seen better," replies Mia/Stone to Sebastian/Gosling in front of the breathtaking view on the San Fernando Valley. The couple is about to dance, giving life to the iconic poster of the film. The location is Cathy's Corner in Griffith Park, Los Angeles, but the bench and streetlights are fake.
The first chapter of Antonioni's Incommunicability Trilogy has a bench in the middle of a four-minute mute scene in which the protagonist, the architect Sandro, cries in front of his betrayed lover Claudia/Monica Vitti. The ruins of Taormina - not by chance - stand all around as a symbol of lost glory and ephemeral beauty.
A bench in Paterson, New Jersey, is the place from which Paterson, a bus driver draws inspiration for his poems. Far from being a film about the poetry of everyday life, Jarmusch's latest work is actually a highly refined reflection on poetry as a method and key to understanding reality. Especially if it seems hopeless.
The most representative shot of the film sees the transvestite Rayon/Leto sitting on a bench next to the homophobic cowboy Ron/McConaughey. Two worlds that would never have come closer if it hadn't been for the AIDS as a common destiny. The bench is here a symbolic place of sharing: they have the same future since they look in the same direction.
The wooden bench at the bus stop where Forrest Gump's story begins and ends sends out a precise message: his story deserves to be told to everyone and it fascinates so much that you prefer to lose your bus and wait for the next one. It happens in Greenbow, Alabama.
Michelle Williams, who is poised between a reassuring marriage and the attraction towards the unknown, is sitting for most of the film: on the patio of her small villa in Toronto's Portuguese district, on a fairground merry-go-round, on a bar stool and on two different colourful benches. Her betrayal with his neighbor is thus accomplished, from one bench to another.
One of the most beautiful dialogues between Robin Williams/Dr. Maguire and Matt Damon/Will Hunting takes place (the same dialogues Damon and Affleck won the 1998 Academy Awards for the Best Original Screenplay for) on a bench in Cambridge, Boston, close to the MIT. On that occasion the psychologist Williams tells the patient, the mathematical genius Damon: "You read everything about Michelangelo, his work, political aspirations, sexual orientation... but you can't tell me what it’s smells like in the Sistine Chapel".
Tom/Joseph Gordon Levitt is a young architect and a bench in Angels Knoll Park, Downtown Los Angeles, is the place from which he draws inspiration for his work. That's where she takes Summer/Zooey Deschanel to introduce her to his world and where they finally meet again to take stock and say goodbye, this time forever.
Adèle and Emma meet in a club in Lille but, like all teenagers at their first love, they kiss each other on a park bench, that here turns into a symbol of an existential phase: the years of high school, which often coincide with the first love experiences.