Lose Yourself

There is raw power in this scene.

To truly appreciate that Jimmy found the strength to persevere in a moment like this, one has to really contemplate the weight of the pressure on his shoulders.  Seriously.  Think about the odds against this poor guy.  First, he has no family support.  His father is completely MIA, and his mother is a drunk whore.  Add to this the responsibility of providing for his baby sister, and you have a situation that plays itself out across America everyday.  Almost - almost - always, a guy does not rise from this situation.

But it gets worse.  His first love interest in the movie, Janine, claims to be pregnant and they breakup.  This forces Jimmy back to the house where he grew up, a very humiliating experience.  And it is there that he breaks out the pen and pad, jotting his lyrics, thoughtfully scribbling rhymes that so eloquently express such hard times.

And it gets even worse.  After he gets booed off stage, after one of his friends is shot, he keeps going.  He keeps fighting.  And after all of this, on his trip to the music studio, he finds his new love interest - played by the now-deceased Brittany Murphy - he finds out that she is not only running around town getting drunk with some nigga... he finds actual visual evidence that she's fuckin' this guy.  He walks in on it, and sees it with his own eyes.  The truly messed up part about this is that this is the same girl who looked him in his eyes and told him that he was going to be great, and helped him believe in himself.  And here she was, handing her pussy out to some lame, wack ass nigga not going anywhere in life.  As Jimmy whooped the dude's ass, whatever pain he felt in the moment was probably heavily outweighed by intense anger.

All of this should have broken the main character.  His so-called friends are nowhere in the same galaxy of talent, and their laziness, stupidity and lack of ambition clearly begin to bother and anger him.  Combined with the indignity and disrespect of seeing his girl fuckin' some dude... this is enough to psychologically cripple the man, enough to literally crush him emotionally.  In fact, it is difficult for me to imagine what could have possibly gone worse.  With friends like these, who needs enemies?  With loved ones like these, who needs haters?

A misunderstood, pissed off, betrayed, lonely, hurt, extremely talented genius focused on success.  That is the main character in this movie.  And what makes this scene so raw and powerful is the fact that we know how this story ends.  His circumstances do not crush him.  His enemies do not beat him.  His hoe's disloyalty does not flatten his soul, as it very well could have.  He does  not give up.  He refuses to lose, no matter what.  He fights and fights until the very end, until that glorious moment when all of the years of hard work pay off, when the light finally illuminates the darkness.

He went after the moment with everything in him.  He seized the "once in a lifetime opportunity," and he lost himself in the music.  Despite everything, he won.

That's why this scene is so raw and powerful.