Lynn Hirschberg asks a series of actors the question: “What movie made you cry?”
(via Hanna @ evil angel)
Featuring: Annette Bening, James Franco, Natalie Portman, Michael Douglas, Mila Kunis, Mark Ruffalo, Helena Bonham Carter, Justin Timberlake, Dakota Fanning, Andrew Garfield, Nicole Kidman, Javier Bardem, Melissa Leo, Vincent Cassel, Julianne Moore, Robert Duvall, Jesse Eisenberg, Elle Fanning and Colin Firth.
Watching the clips, obviously, makes you think about what movies have made you cry, and why. Or at least, it made me think about what movies have made me cry …
As a child I was not a big weeper. I had a finely-honed sense of what frightened me and I would steadfastly refuse to watch any movie, or any scene in a movie, that I suspected would scare me (I was a bit braver about books, but books you can always shut tight and put away. Movies are different that way).
I don’t think I actually started crying at films, publically or privately, until I was in my twenties. I’m not sure what made tears feel more ready-to-hand. I’d like to think it has something to do with the fact I’ve grown up enough to realize that weeping is not shameful, and expressing deeply-held emotion openly is a sign of strength, not weakness. On the other hand, it could just be hormones! In any event, the end result is the same: I cry at movies and television shows. Sometimes fairly copiously. Hanna has forbidden me to watch episodes of The West Wing when I’m home sick, for example, because she invariably finds me crumpled on the couch amidst a sea of tissues.
Sometimes? I don’t even have to actually see a film in order for it to provoke tears. Last spring around Academy Award time I happened to hear an interview by Terry Gross with Colin Firth, who’d just been nominated for an Oscar thanks to his performance in A Single Man (2009). During the interview they played the scene from the film in which Firth’s character receives the telephone call informing him that his lover has died in a car accident. At that point I hadn’t seen A Single Man (I still haven’t worked up the nerve, actually), and yet I sat there at my desk with tears in my eyes just from the silences between the words.
Iron Jawed Angels (2004) always provokes the tears. If you aren’t familiar with the film, it’s an HBO drama telling the story of the final push for female suffrage during the first two decades of the twentieth century, as seen through the eyes of suffragist Alice Paul and some of the other radical activists who advocated controversial tactics (read: picketing the White House during wartime) in order to win the vote. These were women who were sent to prison, went on hunger strike, and were in some cases force-fed (leading to life-long health complications) for full citizenship rights.
As an historian, the analytical side of my brain can kick in an consider the way in which this film contributes to the collective memory of the struggle for suffrage: what it chooses to highlight, what it leaves out, what it represents in ways that bear only passing resemblence to the historical record. And yet, when I sit down to watch the film in the end I am moved profoundly by the story of these women who refused to be silenced or sidelined. I watch them be strapped down and violated by feeding tubes. I watch them refuse to give up. And, in the end, I watch the characters witness the moment when all of that pain and struggle is rewarded by the passage of the 19th amendment.
Securing social justice is never a sure thing; history is not a linear progression toward ever-more-enlightened times. Rights have been given, and rights have been taken away. And while women have had their right to elective franchise protected by constitutional amendment for nearly a century, I am acutely aware that this legal protection is an historical contingency. There is no guarantee it will remain. (After all, if birthright citizenship is open to question, I will lay no bets on what portions of the constitution might be opened to re-negotiation).
So about once a year or so I sit down and I watch Iron Jawed Angels and I let myself weep. For the women who cared so much and so passionately about changing the world.
What movies or television shows have provoked you to tears … and why?
I’ve only cried over movies or TV a few times. The first, was watching the original “Incredible Journey” (the one about the pet finding their way home) on TV when I was about 5yo. Anything involving abandoned animals really does me in.
The other thing is when a beloved character dies of some illness where they know death is coming (such as Dr. Greene dying on the TV show ER).
Pretty much everything else will move me, but the tears don’t flow. Oddly, I have never cried over a character in a book, and I’m a HUGE reader.
I do feel like the older I get the more weepy I feel, I guess I can relate more to the life experiences of movie / TV characters. I understand more deeply that life is complex and random, and sometimes bad thing just happen.
I never used to cry much at movies (unless it was something really sad and really serious like “Terms of Endearment” or “Steel Magnolias) but ever since I got pregnant and had my son (who is almost 2) I seem to tear up at the drop of a hat. Last weekend this happened at “Tangled” (the scene with the lanterns for those who have seen it) and yesterday I cried at the end of Toy Story 3.
I don’t know if it’s a permanent change in my hormones or if it’s a psychological affect of motherhood but it’s really annoying.
@Kate I haven’t seen the film so I can’t speak personally, but one of my friends just mentioned having wept at the end of Toy Story 3! And she doesn’t have kids, so I feel comfortable saying it’s not just a hormones/parenthood thing
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The last episode of Buffy gets me every single time. Mainly the montage of the potentials (being unspoilery, but you know who I mean, epsecially the baseball playing girl). And Anya.
As I get older I’m definitely getting more squeamish/easily affected by movies/TV/books in that way. I haven’t the stomach for gory horror any more and I have real issues watching animal cruelty scenes.
The first movie that ever made me cry was “On the Waterfront,” when I was a young adult. The ends of “Brokeback Mountain” and “Return of the King” turned on the tears too. The latter reduced our daughter to audible sobs, along with large portions of the female viewers. So cathartic.
I can’t watch the video now, so this may be mentioned, but: “To Kill A Mockingbird.” From the opening bars of music with the crayons, on and off straight through to “Hey, Boo.” Actually, just hearing the music is enough, I have a CD burned from my dad’s LP and I love it, but I rarely play it because it reduces me to a weeping ball on the couch. No, actually, just thinking about it is enough… gtg recompose myself before a meeting…
My grandmother always says that she cries at supermarket openings, and I’m that way too, especially since I’ve been in college–I’ve been dealing with depression pretty consistently, which I think amplifies my usual tendencies a bit.
I especially cry at anything involving outer space. Show me a shot of some stars, or people sitting in a rocket ship, and I go straight for my handkerchief. I cried through the first ten minutes of Wall-e, and I even teared up for one of the scenes in the new version of Day After Tomorrow when I walked in on my roommate watching it.
I’m not a big crier in real life, which I think is closely related to the fact that I cry at the drop of a hat during TV shows, movies, and long distance commercials. Also books. I do not come from an outwardly emotional or expressive family, so the crying-at-fiction is definitely all about catharsis for me.
I cried during Independence Day. Yes, the Will Smith movie. Just saying.
If I feel like I need to cry, there’s a movie called The Cure about a little boy with AIDS. I can’t imagine that I need to say more. The West Wing frequently got to me, as did Buffy. Final Episodes of pretty much any TV show, no matter how comedic the show, typically make me tear up.
@Av0gadro: the first time I watched The Cure, I cried for a half an hour, post-movie. Even thinking about it gets me teary-eyed.
Recent movies include: The Secret Life of Bees (I cried through the whole thing, literally), and My Sister’s Keeper (cried through the book ending, too).
One memorable cry came from the graduation episode of Boy Meets World. That was probably my sappiest cry to date.
Truly embarrassingly, Armageddon makes me bawl EVERY TIME. Merely hearing the terrible Aerosmith song is enough to reduce me to tears. I find this extra embarrassing because most movies don’t make me cry at all, unless it’s a few happy tears that everything worked out for everyone at the end of a romantic comedy.
Although I did cry during every TV preview for The Blind Side. I blame pregnancy.
@kate – I’ve been dying to see Toy Story 3 but also DREADING it because of how many people told me it made them cry.
I don’t really cry at movies, but oh man, Wit. With Emma Thomson. Waterworks. Also Sophie’s Choice And Truly, Madly, Deeply although those are tears of joy/sadness.
I love this topic – my husband cries at every movie and tv show, and I cry at many fewer. We talk about it all the time.
If I see some movie or documentary about political injustices and people caught up in them, I just cry and cry.
But if I see the set-up in the movie and I can predict when it will want me to cry – sorry, no dice.
Atonement and Amelie always get me. Even though Amelie has a happy ending…for some reason that scene when she’s baking the cake and thinking about how good their life together would be, that sort of poignant longing really pulls at my heartstrings. Same thing with Atonement — the vision of how they would have been together, but then it’s even worse because you find out that the chance was lost…
It’s not very uncommon for me to cry the first time I see a movie but I almost never cry on subsequent viewings.
@MM – Yeah, I cried through about 2/3 of Return of the King when I saw it the first time.
The first movie that ever made me cry was “On the Waterfront”. I cried at the end of “Brokeback Mountain” and “Return of the King”, and our daughter was sobbing audibly, along with large portions of the female viewers.
It’s very cathartic.
Anything where the mom dies: Beaches, Steel Magnolias, Terms of Endearment, Slumdog Millionaire , even fucking Bambi …
Dead mommy plotlines are my Kryptonite.
A story about baraqiel which she doesn’t remember: when we went to see “Return of the King,” she got into a discussion with the woman behind us about Harry Potter and how they were looking forward to the next movie, whichever one it was. They had a good chat over this, and at the end of the movie, the two of them were still weeping and had a lovely bonding hug.
As I get older, I cry over movies more easily. The ending montage at the airport in “Love, Actually” gets me. (Sorry, emilyanne.)
I don’t cry over books so much, but the HP books got me several times.
Anna, you *must* see “A Single Man”. As good as Firth is in “The King’s Speech,” he was brilliant in the earlier one.
I never used to cry much until I had my daughter; now I get teary at even transparently manipulative things that would have made me roll my eyes before.
I don’t get to watch many serious grownup movies these days, but the one movie that gets me every time now is Up. That opening sequence with Carl and Ellie just kills me!
@Kari – Truly, Madly, Deeply gets me every single time. I love that film so much. I also bawl like a baby at the Stop All The Clocks monologue by John Hannah in Four Weddings and a Funeral, even though I didn’t actually like the film all that much. But I am a total weeper anyway. I cry at teevee shows regularly, Being Human reduced me to a blob on Sunday night.
Oh, Brokeback Mountain is a killer…and I’ll admit, Stepmom, when Susan Sarandon has Christmas with her kids because she’s dying. Oh god. And I get an Amen for Remains of the Day! Oh Emma Thompson, you slay me!
And don’t get me started on TV commercials…
Oh, and the last 7 minutes of the “Six Feet Under” finale.
TEAR TSUNAMI.
@Bite Me Mitchell
John Hannah in Four Weddings requires boxes and boxes of tissues.
…the girlfriend and I have only had the guts to finish season one of Being Human so far … heard it gets darker and as we’re still getting over the trauma of the end of “Children of Earth” (both of us were upset beyond tears or words) we haven’t been able to face it yet!
@ohmysaintedaunt Was just having a conversation among friends recently re: the MSPCA commercials. Pure evil!
Ok, I cry at the drop of a hat, so thos Sarah MacLachlan Humane Society commercials wreck me. I swear, my cats dive for cover when they hear a Sarah MacLachlan song now because they know mom’s going to scoop them up and sob into their fur, and they hate that.
When I was very active in the LGBT community in the late 80s and early 90s, I had friends being diagnosed HIV+ and dying with regularity (pre-working drug cocktail), I went and saw “The Boys in the Band” and “Longtime Companion” as a double feature.
We took our own box of kleenex, and used the whole damn thing.
Other than that, if it has a poignant moment with kids or animals, I’m a sobbing mess.
Torchsong Trilogy also makes me sob uncontrollably.
I don’t cry that much at movies, but anything with injured/dying animals gets to me. And pretty much every Harry Potter movie since “Prisoner of Azkaban” has made me cry. PoA was especially sad because “Order of the Phoenix” had just come out, so I was watching Harry build a relationship with Sirius, knowing how it would end.
Also, the scene in Lost where Jin and Sun drown absolutely DESTROYED me. My then-roommate and her boyfriend came home at the perfect time to see me bawling.
“Big Fish” also makes me cry. In fact, I remember seeing it in theaters with my whole family, and it was one of the two times in my life that I’ve seen my father cry.
On an unrelated note, did Justin Timberlake admit to eating pot brownies in this clip?
I’m a terrible weeper, at books, at films and at TV programmes – all manner of things. The last thing to reduce me to floods of tears was the trailer for Rabbit Hole at 10am in the morning. After which I vowed never to watch the film as the trailer is so traumatic.
MM – I’ll forgive you about Love Actually although obviously it doesn’t have that effect on me.
Oddly I don’t really weep at films like Terms of Endearment which always seem to get everyone else but which seem overly manipulative to me.
I don’t cry at things. Is that weird? I suspect I will someday, though, because I used to not react physically to anything, and now I do get choked up at some things in books and movies. I don’t think I’ve ever had actual tears, though, and it’s not like I consciously hold them back.
I got choked up at the end of Whale Rider, which I won’t spoil for anyone who hasn’t seen it, because it’s an amazing film. Some of the deaths in Mockingjay, the final book of the Hunger Games trilogy, got me choked up. Hedwig and Dobby in Deathly Hallows (the book–I still haven’t seen the movie, terrible fan that I am). The cats in Audre Lorde’s Zami.
In real life, I mostly cry when I’m frustrated or overwhelmed, not when I’m sad. I didn’t cry when my grandfather died. I didn’t cry when my first pet rabbit died, though I was conscious of being very sad (and I still am when I think about her). On the other hand, I cried a lot after my recent car accident–but only while I wasn’t on the phone and therefore accomplishing something. I don’t know what the connection is here. I think I’m just weird.
I cry at a lot of movies, tv shows, etc…
Like Dakota Fanning, I saw Marley & Me on an airplane. Yup….I also ended up quite embarrassed.
Grey’s Anatomy makes me cry all the damn time.
I remember at the end of my soph year of college, everyone was going home, and I was going abroad the next semester so I knew it would be a long time until I saw some of my friends. I had also just switched to new birth control. And then Marissa died on The O.C., which I hadn’t even been keeping up with, and they played a really sad and stark version of “Hallelujah” and I just lost it. I BAWLED for about an hour straight! It was bizarre.
Also, I think the first time I ever cried in a theater was when I was 11 and saw Simon Birch. It also made my mom and brother cry.
Finally, Bright Star. The scene where Fanny finds out about Keats’s death is just heart-wrenching. I also read later that she was thinking about Heath Ledger when she performed that scene, so now when I watch it….gaahhh sob sob sob.
@ididthatonce: Yes, yes he did. Rock star and all, you know.
@GeekGirls: yes to “Longtime Companion”. “Philadelphia” too. The very very bad old days.
I cried for the first time at the movies when I saw My Girl (I’m just like Natalie Portman).
I cried during The Dark Knight, and (weirdly) when they start killing the Nazis in that movie about Russian Jews in the forest starring Liev Schreiber and James Bond. Ever since the Dark Knight incident, I only watch happy movies. THe Bad Guys blew up a truck or something, and I started crying because the anonymous truck driver “must have died” because his truck exploded, and nobody even acknowledged it and we never saw his face or knew his name or anything. And then when some people are taken hostage, I cried because they were probably very scared and confused and didn’t know what was going on, and were just innocent pawns in this ridiculous power struggle (I think they were kids?).
And when they started killing Nazis in Defiance–well, it was the death of the professor guy, who uselessly killed himself, on top of killing Nazis, who all looked about 16 year old. That was when I really lost it and nearly had to leave the theater because I started hyperventilating. The woman sitting next to me (it was a packed theater, because it was a free showing) thought I was crazy or something. But somehow all my latent pacifism just came out, and I was struck by the enormity of the stupidity of war, and how little has changed since the horrors of WWII, and how people are still attempting genocide, and still killing each other because their government told them to, and how absolutely stupid it all it.
I never cried, really, at movies or books*, until I went on antidepressants. Before that I never cried about my own life or fiction, but afterwards holy shit! Hello, emotions! At the end of The Amber Spyglass I was crying so hard that my roommate thought that my boyfriend had broken up with me over the phone or something.
I loved this video by the way. I find the way people get emotional at different things really interesting.
*except for My Girl and a book called I Am Regina, about a European pioneer woman abducted by a Native American tribe that I read in 3rd grade–at the end I was sobbing, and I was reading the book secretly in the middle of math class, which I regularly did, ignoring the teacher and hiding the book under my desk. It was embarrassing, but she thought I was sick and had to go home. I haven’t read it since then, because in my head the book is really sensitive and thoughtful and not at all racist or fucked up, but I’m sure that my memory has just banished all the not-good parts.
Wait! Sorry for the double post, but I just looked up I Am Regina, and it looks like I was wrong about the likelihood of it actually being fucked up. All the reviews I just read are like, “The real tragedy is how the Europeans treated the Native Americans,” which is exactly how I remembered it.
What ShinyObjects said!
“…and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning” <—-and on thru the end credits. Wah!
Once in high school we had to watch TKAM in two halves, over two days. Two days of copious weeping and then going out into the glare of the courtyard, with red eyes and a nose full of mocos. I'd already seen that movie several times by then, too.
I also have the score by Elmer Bernstein on CD & in my ipod!
I cry at pretty much every twenty minutes in What Dreams May Come, and the entire second half of Awakenings, so i don’t watch them anymore. Some of the ones mentioned here get me. The one that I found surprising was RED – the old guard CIA flick (Bruce Willis, Helen Mirrin, John Malkovich, Morgan Freeman) – I teared up a couple of times and actually cried at one point. For a super smart, funny action flick, RED is the way to go. Helen Mirrin’s character is the one the super-assassins are all scared of!
The one scene that just breaks my heart is the end of Serenity. Not Wash, but Zoe’s reaction. Because here’s this kick ass woman, living and THRIVING in a man’s world, and the men around her know she can kick their asses but chooses not to, she can handle anything, and her being a woman is never a problem or even an issue. She’s so powerful and strong, and only ever shows emotion in that moment. And the next moment – “Wash ain’t coming.” Because as a woman in a man’s world, doing a man’s job, facing horror upon horror, she doesn’t have the luxury of a breakdown. And it seemed to me that she NEVER had the luxury of a breakdown until she connected with the Firefly crew. I’m glad there was a moment at the end for her to show her grief. I think I might be reading too much into that moment, but I always identified strongly with Zoe.
The most unusual cry at fiction I had was for a short story by Mercedes Lackey, “Winter Death”. It’s written as though you already know the protagonist’s history, and she’s suffered so much loss she won’t open up to anyone anymore. Every time I read that story I cry.
A long time ago in another career, I worked on a production of Wit, so I watched in eleventy billion times in rehearsal and then eleventy billion more in production. And I wept endlessly.
I can’t even watch the Humane Society commercials. I hear Sarah McLachlan and I have to leave the room.
And the third thing that guarantees tears, despite repeated viewings: The Color Purple. Happy crying, lump-in-throat crying, enraged crying, ugly-red-faced-snot-factory crying, all of it. I am one sensitive white lady, y’all.
No one else cries during Dumbo????
Brokeback Mountain, absolutely. Maybe especially because the happy scenes are so happy and there are so few of them.
Terms of Endearment was the first movie I sat through with tears pouring down my face. The opening sequence to Up was awful for me, but I was about 8 and a half months pregnant at the time. The stuff that gets me now aren’t films, but shots of people coming home to their families, especially ones with soldiers.
Oh dude. Dancer in the Dark. I cried so hard, that I couldn’t breathe.
I also always cry during Lilo and Stitch.
One of the most embarassing experiences was the movie Whip It, which I *loved.* I was so happy that it wasn’t a typical romance, coming-of-age story that I was crying happy tears at the end. Everyone looked at me like I was crazy. The Color Purple is the only film that gives me a guaranteed sob-fest every time. Emma Thompson in Sense and Sensibility makes me cry (the end, when she starts sobbing from happiness.) Anything military-related I can’t watch because my brother is in the army and I automatically associate the actors with him and the water works start. I also can’t stand violence in movies anymore. I just watched the first “Girl Who” movie and my manmate and I had to fast-forward through the rape scene. I don’t know if I can even watch the others because the violence was a little too much for me (but I was addicted to the books and didn’t get so worked up about them.)
oh, and Love! Valor! Compassion!
@jgh2 I cry EVERY TIME I watch Dumbo. It’s just so sad! It’s the movie I thought of first.
I’m a huge crier at movies. I could go on for hours about the movies that make me cry. Return of the King should get special mention though, because upon the third watching of the extended edition (yeah, I was that woman) a friend asked me to count how many times I cried. Final total? 18 separate times. I’d start leaking, get myself together, and then leak some more. Ay that point it’s a dehydration risk!