BEST EVER Beer Moments in movies

tasty suds and tales.

When living in a time where the world urges you to #StayHome, your streaming services are no doubt getting the mother of all workouts. Right?

Something stood out to one of our British, beer-lovin’ YHers when digging through his movie archives, which was how many epic ‘Beer Moments’ there are in films.

In his own words/slang/English jargon, here are some of Greg’s favourite beer moments in films…

Shawshank Redemption (1994)

A cold beer after a hard day’s graft is a human right, it’s sacred and definitely something we probably take for granted. Try thinking about how your first cold beer would taste after years and years of incarceration. That’s exactly what Gus van Sant aimed to deliver in that famous rooftop scene from his masterpiece Shawshank Redemption.

Lead character Andy Dufresne, played by Tim Robbins, is the one who ‘gets them in’ and from the iron-like grip of the cantankerous head prison guard, Captain Hadley. Flexing his banking background he manages to save the guard a wedge in tax from an inheritance he’d recently received. Not before Andy nearly gets hurled four stories off the prison roof they were repairing for questioning Hadley’s wife’s loyalty.

Risking life and limb for three beers sounds like silliness, but you try being cooped up for years and years with no suds. A small price to pay when you consider it makes the inmates, as Andy says in the narrative, feel like free men.

Django Unchained (2012)

The blend of ultra-German Christoph Waltz and his homeland’s connection with delicious beer come right to the fore in this vibe-setting scene in Quentin Tarantino’s epic flick.

Coming off the back of a liberation by Waltz’s character, Dr King Schultz, Django, played by Jamie Foxx, was feeling his way out of a life of ownership and into freedom when the affable German takes him straight into a western saloon.

The barkeep, flabbergasted by Jamie Foxx’s entrance on horseback as a free man, has scurried off and so Waltz sits down his new partner and serves him up a fresh pot of beer. The closely cropped in shots of beer flowing from the pump, the glass filling up, then finished with the continental tradition of foam scraping and a double tap on the glass. All delivered as a habitual ritual known by all Europeans. The sound design in this scene has you drooling alone.

It looks delicious and must taste even better to Django, who wouldn’t have tasted a beer in many back-breaking years.

Trainspotting (1996)

This scene with the whole gang harks back to the earlier days in Trainspotting when you get a window into their not-yet-fully-f***d-up lives.

Gathered in the local they’re leaning in to Begbie’s tall tale, swigging lager from mugs and it’s quite clear to the audience what’s going on here. 

We all have that one mate who likes to hold court when the whole group is together and spin yarn after yarn that is such a complex web of lies that you’d rather not awkwardly call them out in front of everyone. You’re having fun, they’re telling stories and who doesn’t like a story?

Beer’s ability to facilitate such occasions is it’s beauty and it’s flaw. The fibber grows more confident of their lies, but then we become more likely to lap them up. Either way we let it play out, then form our own group opinions of what really happens later. Which is what happens in this scene. The narrative cuts hilariously between the present tall tale of Begbie’s and Tommy’s truth. The only similarity between them is that they both end up in Begbie switching and swinging for the nearest geezer.

Fight Club (1999)

Following on from Edward Norton’s cut-and-pasted Ikea apartment getting blown to bits, our hero meets up with Tyler Durden, the shifty soap salesman he met on the previous flight, for a beer to forget his misfortune.

Ed and Brad Pitt, playing Tyler, discuss the pitfalls of mass consumerism over a few cold stubbies in your quintessential American dive bar, before heading outside where Brad asks his new mate to punch him in the face as hard as he can. Claiming to have never been in a fight, Ed apprehensively obliges, before they slug it out for a few minutes.

Bruised and dishevelled afterwards they share a final beer sat on the curb before calling it a night, where Ed says “We should do this again sometime” - something they do wholehearted. 

The best bit about this scene is when you realise, during the twist and recap at the end of the movie was **SPOILER ALERT** just Ed consoling himself over a beer with himself after fighting himself. Poor Ed.

Good Will Hunting (1997)

It’s a case of take your pick from about 68 beer scenes in this indie classic, with Matt Damon and Ben Affleck pretty much playing themselves in their hometown of Boston.

This scene in particular features the full squad, including Ben and Casey Affleck, Damon and Minnie Driver and it’s the latter who steals the show. You pick them up as it looks like they’re a few into an arvo session, Ben Affleck is chaining smokes and they’re taking it in turns to tell a tale. Minnie picks up the baton and tells a well constructed joke with some pretty excellent Irish accenting thrown in for theatrical measure, the punchline of which involves her dribbling Guinness through her teeth. Cue everyone falling about laughing.

It’s the scene that gets Minnie Driver’s character mass acceptance in the friendship group, the basic joke resonating with the jockish group of boys, but the collective seems unbeatable at this point and the ties that bind them ever stronger. Oh but you can be sure they get stretched and tested just a short minute later.