Miracle Max and the Resurrection The Princess Bride (1987)
The midpoint pivot of the entire film
Miracle Max's hut is the second-half pivot of The Princess Bride. Westley dies in the Pit of Despair when Humperdinck cranks the Machine's dial to fifty.b30 Inigo and Fezzik hear the scream, follow it to the grove that hides the secret entrance, and find Westley's body laid out, unmoving.b31 They haul the body in a wheelbarrow to a hut at the edge of town belonging to a cantankerous wizard who used to work for the king before the king's stinking son fired him.b33
Max (Billy Crystal) examines the body and reports that Westley is only "mostly dead" — there is a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. He bargains with the trio, tests Westley's reason for living (true love), and produces a chocolate-coated miracle pill. The wedding is in half an hour. Have fun storming the castle. It would take a miracle.
The structural function of the scene is the rebirth of the protagonist as a member of a coalition. The solo Westley has died at fifty on the Machine. The Westley who wakes paralyzed in a wheelbarrow outside the castle gate is the leader of a three-person team organized by the man who can no longer fight.b34
"Mostly dead" as a structural pun
The line names the midpoint pivot more cleanly than any other line in the film:
"It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do." "What's that?" "Go through his clothes and look for loose change." — Miracle Max (Billy Crystal) and Inigo (Mandy Patinkin), The Princess Bride (1987)
The line is a pun and a structural marker at once. Mostly dead is slightly alive describes Westley's literal physical state — he wakes paralyzed, unable to lift his arms — and also the structural condition of the protagonist after the midpoint kills the old approach. The man who could do it alone is dead. The man who is left is the planner.
How the scene was shot
The scene was largely improvised. Billy Crystal arrived on set in four hours of Peter Robb-King prosthetic makeup — bald cap, drooping nose, age prosthetics, white wisp of hair — and proceeded to invent material faster than Goldman's script could supply it. Rob Reiner has reported having to leave the soundstage repeatedly because his laughter would bleed into the audio track.
"It was so funny that I had to leave. I was crying. He was making me wet myself." — Rob Reiner, Vanity Fair (2012)
Mandy Patinkin has said publicly that he developed an actual rib injury holding in laughter during one of the takes.
The MLT material — mutton, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, where the mutton is nice and lean — was on the day. So was the bit about Humperdinck firing him, the routine about being "the best kisser in Florin," and most of the byplay with Carol Kane as Valerie.
Carol Kane as Valerie
Valerie's intervention — bursting in to break Max's bluff that the man said "to blave" and was a card cheat — is the structural unsticking of the scene. Max would have sent Inigo and Fezzik away with a placebo. Valerie names Humperdinck as the king's stinking son who fired her husband, restores Max's reason to act, and then watches him work the bellows.
"I'm not a witch, I'm your wife! But after what you just said, I'm not even sure I want to be that anymore!" — Valerie (Carol Kane), The Princess Bride (1987)
The Crystal-Kane partnership runs perhaps eight minutes of total screen time and is the most-quoted comedy scene in the film. Both performers have spoken about the experience as one of the best of their careers.
What the resurrection sets up
The chocolate-coated pill works in fifteen minutes. Westley wakes paralyzed in a wheelbarrow outside the castle wall. Inigo sums up the plan ("get in, break up the wedding, steal the princess, escape, after I kill Count Rugen") and asks Westley for assets. Westley's response — brains, Fezzik's strength, Inigo's steel against sixty men — is the moment the post-midpoint approach takes its operating shape.b34
The Holocaust Cloak that Fezzik kept from Max's hut becomes the bluff at the gate. The miracle is not just that Westley is alive — it is that the team that carried his body to the hut is now the operating unit that will storm the castle.