And that scene at the end of The Rugrats movie where the whole time they've been trying to find the "lizard" (wizard) to make a wish to go home, but instead they ask for their dog Spike back (who apparently just lost his life defending them from a wolf). Gets me every time.

I cry rather easily.

One off the top of my head, in "The Patriot" when the little girls says "papa."

(not to mention William's music )

quote:

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Originally posted by Justin:
I feel sorry for your woman

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Well, I'm a Trek fan, a computer geek, and like science fiction and film scores. What makes you think I have a woman? Don't I just scream loser? I think so.

quote:

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Originally posted by Crono/Kyp:
Yeah, I cry, so what?

One off the top of my head, in "The Patriot" when the little girls says "papa."

(not to mention William's music )

--Bri

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Oh dude! I know! that part was great! And same with the death of Thomas!

Movies aren't real and I find it difficult to get emotional in them. Laughs and gasps yes, but tears very rarely. But it has and does still happen even to leathery Lou.

The ending of East of Eden always makes me cry--put upon Dean returning to take care of his mean old father strikes me as an amzing gesture of love.

Many moments in Marnie still make me cry--although the film has flaws, I really feel for the character and her situation. Although you can't cure obsessive-compulsive disorder like it's done in the film, the fantasy of clearing up one's neurosis is still too strong not to let a few tears out over.

There are other moments in films that have kicked in the tear ducts or warm feelings as well.

But I'm forever on the lookout against cloying manufactured moments. A lot of Spielberg movies revolve around the idea of homecoming--seperated parties coming back to each other. It's manipulative and I always reject it. The mother getting Barry back in CE3K or everyone getting to Devil's Tower in the same film, the two sisters reuniting after 30 years in The Color Purple, the android "son" and the "mother" clone meeting in the future in AI--all of it is engineered for tears and none of it works, the wheels of their machinery get in the way.

Another thing that takes me immediately out of any drama is to see someone on screen crying. It's glycerin or acting skill. Some tears have to do with the story, and that's one thing. Using tears as a kind of "tear track" the way TV uses a laugh track is shameless. The calculation of it erases any real emotion I can feel myself. this goes for killing characters off or having them suffer diseases, amputations, and other tragedies. These things happen in real life, but using them for emotional mileage in movies is almost obscene.

There are many times I reject it, too. There was no scene in Pearl Harbor that made me even slightly emotional. I didn't buy into the ending of A.I. at all. But Rugrats still gets me every time.

I recently had a very unusual experience with tears. I rented Ghost World and loved it. I loved it so much, in fact, that I watched it three times in the two days I had it. There is one scene in the film that brought tears, and it brought tears all three times. I can't tell you what happens in particular, as it would give away a seminal moment in the film, but the odd thing was that it is not an emotional scene. At least, it is not emotional in any convential sense. I've been turning it over and over in my head, but I still can't figure it out. Perhaps the emotional impact of the scene was so subliminal that I have yet to figure out exactly why it made me so sad.

The only thing I can tell you for sure in that scene is that I know David Kitay's music added to the scene immensely. He scored the film mostly for piano and strings (I can't recall hearing any other instruments) usually with the piano in the foreground and the strings just a backup tool. In this scene, however, the strings suddenly come into the foreground and steel the show. It's a subtle shock, if there is such a thing, and that alone was almost enough to bring me to tears. I just wish I could figure out what else about the scene made me feel so washed out.

I agree that too many films employ the ole’ emotional manipulation machinery.
Sometimes I succumb (i.e. E.T.) and sometimes I get tired of tear duct manipulation
and feel frustrated. It is happening too often in films. It seems to me that “sometimes”
emotions emanate from portrayals that are not arranged nor calculated in order to squeeze
the most H2O from its audience. (And music can be the worst offender.) I teared in
Memento because of the possibility and pathos of such a disability, but the movie did
NOT PLEAD for my sorrow. (Oh, I hope this disability isn’t possible.) Even the sad
Death Be Not Proud didn’t push the sympathy meter into overdrive. It’s sadness came
from knowing this was a true story, that such a disease exists, and that kids do die, leaving
such an empty space in the lives of parents. Some movies intentionally wring emotion
from the audience, and some just allow the medium to speak for itself.

I have to disagree with Howard about resisting a film and cheating myself of an experience.

I don't go into films resisting them. The film itself either registers with my emotions and intelligence or it doesn't. A lot of things in movies have made me thrill which is why I'm into them in the first place, but those things earned their way into me. Cheap and easy attempts just don't work on me. I can't force myself to give up that much disbelief. Those things just rip me off--better they went back and thought it through a bit more than expect that I'll fall for the crap. I'm not getting anything out of dumbing myself down and shutting off my critical faculties just to get a good cry out of a film.

Imagine it like this. You go to a bar and the only available girl is the snotty-nosed turn-off. What am I supposed to do, take her home anyways and try to enjoy screwing her just so I can feel I didn't blow the cover charge to the bar? Emotions just don't work that way. There are film scores I wish I could enjoy after paying $16 for the CD, but they suck and I can't make it otherwise.

Plus, as James said, EVERYTHING in a film is manufactured. I could avoid the whole media and return to nothing but reality, but I don't want to do that--drama and fiction do have a place in my life. But one must be careful of what one puts in ones brain. The un-reality of cinema can blend in with one's interface to reality. Politically and personally, one has to be on-guard always that a film doesn't warp what you know to be true about people and the world.

That doesn't mean resistance--only that the film has to work to gain your trust. There is a thin line between manufacture and manipulation and between film drama and film propaganda. And just because something happens on a screen doesn't automatically mean that I will care.

Also, I'm not trying to be better than the film, saying 'Ho-ho, you won't out-fox me', but just because I go to the movies doesn't mean I can go along with every inane stunt or feel I'm not getting my worth out of it. Some experiences with films are simply a waste of one's time and money and an insult to one's brain and that can't be avoided by pretending it ain't so.

I know the difference between the films that work on me and those that don't and I have some idea as to why. Like James, I don't always know why something is touching, and sometimes when I do, I can't articulate it very well or else it's counterlogical (as in, "I know objectively to most people this would suck, but I understand and like it."), but the experience never leaves me feeling bad.

"I've seen Elia Kazan's Splendor in the Grass at least ten times, and the only thing I find 'guilty' is the excess of sentimentality I get when Natalie Wood recites her poem. At that moment, without fail, I start to cry over nothing. And for me, real guilt is crying at movies. I'm horribly ashamed of it. There are films where you cry, and it doesn't mean you like them. Splendor in the Grass is completely different, because I like it a lot. I'm ashamed to cry because what makes me cry is something I hate: stupid sentimentality. I think you always cry out of a kind of self-pity: you relate what you see in the fiction to yourself, you pity yourself, and that makes you cry."

I remember reading some critic (maybe it was Stanley Cavell) who said that we cry in movies out of the shame of knowing we wouldn't cry over this if it were happening in real life. And it is odd that we can be cold about real people and sob like anything over fictional constructions.

I think there are some films that we all do. Come on, you were in no way prepared to like A.I. and that's the same thing, for all intents, as actively resisting. And a helluva lot of SW fans were totally unprepared for the disappointment of Phantom Menace. They are conditioned to like anything & everything about the franchise! And I resisted Titanic for reasons I won't get into but I am looking forward to giving it another look on my own & in private, if for no other reason than its effect on so many millions. And to be more critically honest with myself.

I'm not getting anything out of dumbing myself down and shutting off my critical faculties just to get a good cry out of a film.

Exactly why I put in the "cloying" disclaimer. But Lou Man, your last sentence unwittingly bespeaks of exactly the defiance I'm talking about and you're attempting to rebut. And my point wasn't directed at you, per se, unless I was directing it equally at me! This is where we may actually be on common ground: For a movie to have penetrated beyond our respective barriers, it really must have had something going for it. My impression, right now when all's said & done to this point, is that your barriers are thicker. Not a defect. But a cheat. CHEAT CHEAT CHEAT...

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I think sometimes a movie comes along that is totally novel and then the
ubiquitous offshoots begin, turning novelty into formula; hence, I too
experience too much, “been there, seen that” too often in films. Semi
cloning should be forbidden in movies.

THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY

Two films from 1944, that ALWAYS get the waterworks goin' are:

1.THE FIGHTING SULLIVANS.....when old man Sullivan is on the kaboose of the train, looking up at the watertower where his son's always played when they were young....and

2.SINCE YOU WENT AWAY.....When Claudette Colbert learns that her husband is MIA and possibly dead in WWII, and again when she finds out that he is indeed alive.....also, when (Mom) Claudette, tells (Daughter) Jennifer Jones that her beau Robert Walker has been killed in the war......That's only two of several occassions in this film, that prompt tears.

AND YES, I AM ALSO A MAN....for many, many years.

NP: LOGAN'S RUN (FSM)...Jerry Goldsmith

kyri