CRYING at MOVIES

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02 Jun 2020, 17:19 #3425
Well Orbeez, let's have a little discussion about movies that have had serious emotional reactions from you, understandable or otherwise.

I'm generally a pretty emotionally literate guy, I'd like to think. I feel a lot and I make an effort to communicate those feelings, not always effectively, but for the most part they're not something I shy away from. I'm cool with crying, it serves its purpose and I've lived through plenty of things worth crying about.

HOWEVER - I just don't get it with fiction. I connect to characters, narratives resonate with me, I cheer and gasp and feel that little tingle when something great comes together for a hero I love in a powerful moment, I laugh when funny man fall down, but crying at fiction always escaped me. I thought it was kinda weird, to be honest. I couldn't understand bawling at an actor pretending to die because I knew it was fake in a way that was somehow different from me being excited when that same actor pretended they were experiencing something good for the first time.

Whale Rider got me pretty close. I saw it when I was 16 and confined to bed in an uncomfortable back brace after a surgery, which maybe caused my "negative" emotions to be heightened, and the climax made my eyes well up a bit. Not enough for tears to fall, but it definitely touched me in a new way. I haven't seen it since, no idea if it's even as good as I remember, but for a long time this was the film I considered to be "the closest I'd ever come."

Lady Bird is a film I talked a little about my connection to back on t2. This film hit me like a sack of lead, I saw so so much of my younger self in the title character, in particular her relationship with her mother and the feelings of being loved out of familial obligation but not really being liked. This film got me to reconnect with my own mum, it inspired me to finally get back into therapy after 3 years of avoiding it due to a diagnosis that was hitherto too scary to tackle head-on - I mean it literally changed and possibly saved my life. I certainly cried later the same day, after upheaving my entire existence. But NOT while watching.

Then one year after I saw Lady Bird, I had moved out of where I was living back to my home town and was living on the floor of an unfurnished studio apartment with my abusive ex and no internet. So we spent a lot of time being very old school and watching actual DVDs we bought for pennies from a shop down the road. One of these films was Minority Report. It's fun, silly, I've seen it before, seemed like an easy watch to take my mind off of everything else that was happening. And then came a scene where Tom Cruise has the pre-cog woman at his ex-wife's house. Future-SWAT bust in and drag Tom Cruise away. The pre-cog, who was snatched from her family as a defenceless child, who has never been in the outside world, who relies on Tom Cruise (her guardian and carer) to survive and achieve even the most basic of tasks, is distraught, having lost the only person she knew and the only person interested in protecting her. And this scene, that I had seen before, in a silly CGI action film, made me fucking weep. That's what it took for me to understand it I guess, just had to be miserable in the exact same way as a psychic orphan in a Spielberg flick at the exact same time as she was.

Now you talk about crying and/or films or I'll think really hard about doing a crime on you and get arrested for it.
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02 Jun 2020, 17:23 #3430
i cried at fury road no lies
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02 Jun 2020, 17:30 #3436
Interesting topic because for the LONGEST time, I could not in any way connect to fiction. I liked that it made me think about concepts in new ways, but I just could not for the life of me, no matter how hard I tried, get passed the barrier of knowing that it was not real. Movies and TV went doubly for this, I was much better able to kind of play along with literature in some ways. I'd always think the same shit, you know, like "there's an entire world of things of whatever variety that I want to try and feel things about if that's what I'm going to be doing right now with my time." At some point along the line, though, I stopped thinking "huh I guess this just isn't for me" and thinking more like, "I think there's something here that I haven't taken the time to discover yet" because so many other people have these reactions and everything and I don't like to believe that I'm really that different from basically anyone else. It's hard for me to put a date or exact experience to it, but it was definitely some time not too long after my dad died, and I had a kind of similar experience with something, where the situation going on in a movie or something was just close enough to home that it broke me, and I was just losing it and thinking like "oh god this guy is feeling *massive list of shit* no, please don't let anyone have to go through this" even though I knew it wasn't real, and I've been really sensitive to it all since then. Personally I consider it a moment of growth in my life.
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02 Jun 2020, 17:36 #3448
In my case it depends on all the things happening in my life at the moment of watching the film. I can't relate to the people that cries watching dog films
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02 Jun 2020, 17:41 #3454
I recently saw ladybird for the first time. I have been catching up on movies during quarantine. That movie was touching. The last movie to get me really close to crying, to the point where I shed a tear was 50/50. The movie itself is fine, it’s pretty good. But there’s one sequence in it thats really tense and heart-wrenching, especially if you’ve ever been close to someone who is sick.
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02 Jun 2020, 17:43 #3457
I have a somewhat unusual experience of the ability to cry during practically any movie I see
I usually don't let myself cry because I'm a total BadAss Cool Guy

If you liked lady bird you must see Little Women
Also directed by Greta Gerwig, she has a way of writing that is so full of unapologetic emotion - anger, sadness, laughter, joy
Her characters feel so much, it's the antidote to irony poisoning
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02 Jun 2020, 17:53 #3462
stonemagnet wrote:
02 Jun 2020, 17:30
Interesting topic because for the LONGEST time, I could not in any way connect to fiction. I liked that it made me think about concepts in new ways, but I just could not for the life of me, no matter how hard I tried, get passed the barrier of knowing that it was not real. Movies and TV went doubly for this, I was much better able to kind of play along with literature in some ways. I'd always think the same shit, you know, like "there's an entire world of things of whatever variety that I want to try and feel things about if that's what I'm going to be doing right now with my time." At some point along the line, though, I stopped thinking "huh I guess this just isn't for me" and thinking more like, "I think there's something here that I haven't taken the time to discover yet" because so many other people have these reactions and everything and I don't like to believe that I'm really that different from basically anyone else. It's hard for me to put a date or exact experience to it, but it was definitely some time not too long after my dad died, and I had a kind of similar experience with something, where the situation going on in a movie or something was just close enough to home that it broke me, and I was just losing it and thinking like "oh god this guy is feeling *massive list of shit* no, please don't let anyone have to go through this" even though I knew it wasn't real, and I've been really sensitive to it all since then. Personally I consider it a moment of growth in my life.
I totally feel you. I LOVE movies and TV and books. I can get really into stories and I can "understand" how characters are supposed to be feeling, but I never empathised to the point of feeling alongside them before. I even come from a performing arts background, acting and writing, so I'm not out of touch with the idea of fictional characters having lives and inner thoughts and the concept of emotional transferral but watching or reading those feelings never crossed the boundaries of like, getting it intellectually. When I would watch Star Wars for instance, I'd think Han Solo was cool as hell but I'd basically just be thinking "it would be fun if I was him and this was real," there was never a time in my life where I didn't completely accept that it was Not Real. I'm not gonna cry when he dies. Then that one time I just kinda landed in a character's shoes unexpectedly and it totally clicked. I'm with you on it being a positive change, something unlocked.
argtw2 wrote:
02 Jun 2020, 17:36
In my case it depends on all the things happening in my life at the moment of watching the film. I can't relate to the people that cries watching dog films
Absolutely. I guess there's probably something in the fact that most of us only really connect on that level when we can directly relate it to ourselves, but that's for someone much smarter than me to try and analyse. I'm with you about the dog films too. I've had dogs all my life, love dogs to pieces, I just got a message through on the family chat that one of my childhood(ish) dogs is pretty sick at 12 years old and that's very sad. But the dogs in films aren't my dogs.... I can't cry for their deaths any more than I would if someone I knew in real life told me their dog had died. I sympathise, but it's not gonna get the same reaction out of me as if it were my own.
chris wrote:
02 Jun 2020, 17:41
I recently saw ladybird for the first time. I have been catching up on movies during quarantine. That movie was touching. The last movie to get me really close to crying, to the point where I shed a tear was 50/50. The movie itself is fine, it’s pretty good. But there’s one sequence in it thats really tense and heart-wrenching, especially if you’ve ever been close to someone who is sick.
This I completely get. I think the fact that it was written by a guy who really experienced it comes across well. It's not the typical "cancer drama" film but it looked familiar to me too.
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02 Jun 2020, 17:57 #3465
Grocery_guy wrote:
02 Jun 2020, 17:43
I have a somewhat unusual experience of the ability to cry during practically any movie I see
I usually don't let myself cry because I'm a total BadAss Cool Guy

If you liked lady bird you must see Little Women
Also directed by Greta Gerwig, she has a way of writing that is so full of unapologetic emotion - anger, sadness, laughter, joy
Her characters feel so much, it's the antidote to irony poisoning
I know a lot of people like that! My best friend is totally closed off and unempathetic to basically everything (cool best friend choice, I know) but she will cry at absolutely anything on a screen.

Here's where I turn the crowd against me - I have avoided seeing Little Women because I cannot stand Meryl Streep. I realise that's sacrilegious to basically everyone but her acting really grates on me. I just don't think she's any good. However, I know that I must watch it because I love and owe a great debt to Greta Gerwig and Saoirse is a treasure and I've heard nothing but good things about the film as a whole.
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02 Jun 2020, 17:58 #3466
Summer Wars got my eyes misty several times last night. it's difficult for me to describe why but i felt it at the moments when the family unites to fight alongside each other. despite generational gaps, differences in their roles within the family, differences in understanding the stakes of what it happening, they give their full support. it hits me again at the very end when the fight is all over, during which their grandmother passes, instead of solely mourning at the funeral, they celebrate her birthday.
spectacular and filled with love, unbelievable it was made from the re-skinned parts of Digimon 2

The first trailer for Man of Steel holy shit what if the movie had actually been like that. "they will rise behind you, they will stumble, they will fall. But in time, they will join you in the sun" jesus christ dont watch the movie just watch the trailer
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02 Jun 2020, 18:03 #3467
mikeofficial wrote:
02 Jun 2020, 17:57
Grocery_guy wrote:
02 Jun 2020, 17:43
I have a somewhat unusual experience of the ability to cry during practically any movie I see
I usually don't let myself cry because I'm a total BadAss Cool Guy

If you liked lady bird you must see Little Women
Also directed by Greta Gerwig, she has a way of writing that is so full of unapologetic emotion - anger, sadness, laughter, joy
Her characters feel so much, it's the antidote to irony poisoning
I know a lot of people like that! My best friend is totally closed off and unempathetic to basically everything (cool best friend choice, I know) but she will cry at absolutely anything on a screen.

Here's where I turn the crowd against me - I have avoided seeing Little Women because I cannot stand Meryl Streep. I realise that's sacrilegious to basically everyone but her acting really grates on me. I just don't think she's any good. However, I know that I must watch it because I love and owe a great debt to Greta Gerwig and Saoirse is a treasure and I've heard nothing but good things about the film as a whole.
Meryl has a fairly small roll, and she plays a pretty nasty person so your feelings might work to the film's advantage? Idk, but Laura dern plays the counterpart to Meryl and is the embodiment of pure white light beaming from one's heart
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02 Jun 2020, 18:07 #3471
Grocery_guy wrote:
02 Jun 2020, 17:43

Meryl has a fairly small roll, and she plays a pretty nasty person so your feelings might work to the film's advantage?
this is exactly how I felt about jared leto in blade runner 2049. it did work
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02 Jun 2020, 18:07 #3472
SHEDA wrote:
02 Jun 2020, 17:58
Summer Wars got my eyes misty several times last night. it's difficult for me to describe why but i felt it at the moments when the family unites to fight alongside each other. despite generational gaps, differences in their roles within the family, differences in understanding the stakes of what it happening, they give their full support. it hits me again at the very end when the fight is all over, during which their grandmother passes, instead of solely mourning at the funeral, they celebrate her birthday.
spectacular and filled with love, unbelievable it was made from the re-skinned parts of Digimon 2

The first trailer for Man of Steel holy shit what if the movie had actually been like that. "they will rise behind you, they will stumble, they will fall. But in time, they will join you in the sun" jesus christ dont watch the movie just watch the trailer

lydia wrote:
02 Jun 2020, 17:23
i cried at fury road no lies
Hey, I hope it's clear from my OP that there is NO judgment whatsoever about the source of emotion! I know full well what unexpected materials can provoke it. I understand all these examples completely, there's something really powerful in all of them. The idea of hope and togetherness and overcoming something seemingly insurmountable is just as much a cause for tears as death or sickness or any of the more socially approved Things to Cry At.

I welled up the first time I saw the crane operators co-ordinate to create a clear path for an injured Spider-Man in the first Andrew Garfield Spidey film because he'd rescued one of their kids sometime earlier and they were All In It Together so..... y'know...
Grocery_guy wrote:
02 Jun 2020, 18:03
Meryl has a fairly small roll, and she plays a pretty nasty person so your feelings might work to the film's advantage? Idk, but Laura dern plays the counterpart to Meryl and is the embodiment of pure white light beaming from one's heart
I'm sold then. Obviously I adore Laura Dern, I'm not a total monster.
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02 Jun 2020, 18:17 #3477
SHEDA wrote:
02 Jun 2020, 18:07
Grocery_guy wrote:
02 Jun 2020, 17:43

Meryl has a fairly small roll, and she plays a pretty nasty person so your feelings might work to the film's advantage?
this is exactly how I felt about jared leto in blade runner 2049. it did work
Idk why I haven't seen that yet, but I need to
PS. The man of steel trailer is the perfect trailer imo I've cried from it multiple times
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02 Jun 2020, 18:40 #3500
Portrait of a Lady on Fire made me cry when I saw Hélöise crying while watching/listening to “Summer” which was the song Marianne played on the harpsichord for her. Part of it was a raw reaction from such a powerful performance, but part of it came from me hating that Hélöise was living a life that wasn’t really hers. The entire movie was emotional, but it was all building for that moment. This is where i would compare it to the song, but I don’t know the song well enough so just imagine i said something cool
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02 Jun 2020, 19:00 #3513
I've only full blown cried 4 times as an adult, but one of them was when I watched Grave of the Fireflies. I also felt an unshakable melancholy for the next several days. I'm not sure what happened, but I think having a younger sibling is part of what made it hit me especially hard when the kid's little sister died.
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02 Jun 2020, 19:11 #3517
hoo boy had to save a draft for this one because I have an appointment soon but it's a doozy. will be done soon
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02 Jun 2020, 19:14 #3518
buffsrule wrote:
02 Jun 2020, 19:11
hoo boy had to save a draft for this one because I have an appointment soon but it's a doozy. will be done soon
I Await your Post with Bated Breath
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02 Jun 2020, 19:36 #3530
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan really does get me every time.

The film that really made a real mess of me, while I'm not a big Lars von Trier fan, was Dancer in the Dark. Not seen it since it came out and am not sure I can watch it again, especially knowing what a bad man he is and how he treated Björk during filming.

No one is allowed to be mean to Björk.
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02 Jun 2020, 20:35 #3568
This is a little lame but i cried during the Fox fanfare my first time watching The Force Awakens
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02 Jun 2020, 20:57 #3591
impeechjack wrote:
02 Jun 2020, 18:40
Portrait of a Lady on Fire made me cry when I saw Hélöise crying while watching/listening to “Summer” which was the song Marianne played on the harpsichord for her. Part of it was a raw reaction from such a powerful performance, but part of it came from me hating that Hélöise was living a life that wasn’t really hers. The entire movie was emotional, but it was all building for that moment. This is where i would compare it to the song, but I don’t know the song well enough so just imagine i said something cool
I haven't seen this movie but this post has pushed it onto my list. I am very excited to see what it does to me! Thanks for sharing, genuinely.
crow wrote:
02 Jun 2020, 19:00
I've only full blown cried 4 times as an adult, but one of them was when I watched Grave of the Fireflies. I also felt an unshakable melancholy for the next several days. I'm not sure what happened, but I think having a younger sibling is part of what made it hit me especially hard when the kid's little sister died.
I can absolutely see this. While I don't often feel about characters the way we've been talking about feeling, I do have a sort of protective instinct kick in when I see bad things happening to younger people that sits super uncomfortably within me. It's the reason I refuse to watch things like Euphoria (wildly different example to yours, I know,) I just can't shut off that side of my brain and be entertained by kids going through things.
buffsrule wrote:
02 Jun 2020, 19:11
hoo boy had to save a draft for this one because I have an appointment soon but it's a doozy. will be done soon
I'm ready when you're ready!
RadicalFrock wrote:
02 Jun 2020, 19:36
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan really does get me every time.

The film that really made a real mess of me, while I'm not a big Lars von Trier fan, was Dancer in the Dark. Not seen it since it came out and am not sure I can watch it again, especially knowing what a bad man he is and how he treated Björk during filming.

No one is allowed to be mean to Björk.
That's a really interesting example! That's a film where I can feel the power of the scene and be stirred by it, but I couldn't mourn him. I love the variety of answers and interpretations in here!

Agreed on Björk though. She's a global treasure.
impeechjack wrote:
02 Jun 2020, 20:35
This is a little lame but i cried during the Fox fanfare my first time watching The Force Awakens
Did you not read the bit where I admitted to crying at Minority Report? There are no lame reasons to feel in this thread.
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02 Jun 2020, 21:52 #3628
impeechjack wrote:
02 Jun 2020, 20:35
This is a little lame but i cried during the Fox fanfare my first time watching The Force Awakens
I got a bit teary just watching the trailer.
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07 Apr 2021, 22:24 #99636
Millenium Actress, Straight Story, and Fire walk with me are big ones but the biggest of all is Close-Up.



no movie, fiction, non-fiction or whatever has made me feel such a white hot intensity of empathy for someone like this one made me feel for Sabzian. I don't think I got how powerful movies could be until I watched this. I think Sabzian says it better than I ever could here:

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10 Apr 2021, 01:09 #99989
i tear up at ghibli stuff all the time because they do a great job of creatively depicting a very moving idea:

like, totoro is about how we create myths to help ourselves get through tough times in life and the magic of the forest comes from the girls' belief in the things that the loving figures in their life tell them.

i watched ponyo and got a little weepy about the overwhelming power of genuine care and affection to wipe away life's sorrows like a wave of beautifully animated sea creatures.

porco rosso is a great story about how our perception of others transforms us and how we can become better by believing in their strengths rather than focusing on what we think their flaws are.

i love to cry at beautiful things!
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