Top 25 Scenes of All Time

# 23: The Swimming Pool Scene (Traffic) (2000)

A very understated scene that lives long in the memory. From its very beginning, with the superbly limned awkward faces on the American cops' faces as they stand uncomfortably in the light-blue water chosen by the magnificent Benicio Del Toro's Javier as a safe haven to chat, this scene eats the screen alive and is for me the film's pivotal moment.

I suspect many readers would find this a surprising choice, at first glance, perhaps a scene many people have not thought twice about. However, much is at stake here. Javier is putting his life at risk and, importantly, the prejudiced Americans naturally assume that this is for money or some other personal gain. The looks on their faces are classic and priceless when he starts going on about baseball.

Although I'm obviously going to say that this is Del Toro's scene as much as it is his film, the two bit-part, lesser known actors, who play the American cops, are brilliant and bring the scene to life with the looks on their faces. So much acting is credited for dialogue delivery, but this just serves to remind you (like some other forthcoming scenes in my list) that non verbal communication and expression is just as important. Kudos too, for Steven Soderbergh and his intelligent and measured direction, which is spot on and brilliantly done.

So, baseball, then. I have written previously about cinema's relationship to morality and ethical thinking and will write about this again. Traffic is, to me, one of the most important ethical and political statements to have been made by Hollywood in the past decade or so, rivalling, perhaps even surpassing, the end of The Dark Knight. Traffic reminds you of the power images and stories have in terms of delivering a moral message, surely, at least in my view, surpassing that of academic philosophers (controversial!), not least because a successful firm can only be successful if it shares the same intersubjective mental environment and therefore typically has far greater potential for speaking to (and, of course, with) the masses than academic moral philosophy. The swimming pool scene is key to this, not fully hitting home until the final scene as Javier sits, quietly and unsassumingly, in the stands, watching a baseball match he was responsible for bringing about. It's a strong point. Poverty can bring people down, even into the hard crime depicted in Traffic, especially when they don't have opportunities, even simple leisure opportunities, something different to do in the evening. Javier knows this and his sacrifice is all the more compelling in that stunningly beautiful final scene, which I've only not included in my list because I think the one I have included is the scene that really, in the final analysis, makes that one so special. Stunning, emotional and thoughtful, a scene that lives as long in the memory as the flash of a snowflake caught falling in a moonbeam formed by the first echoes of winter.