When I Cry

It's okay for guys to be sensitive. A heterosexual grown male can cry when something moves him. Bottling things up is actually not all that healthy. Mind you, admitting you've cried probably isn't healthy from a social standpoint. To this day, I wonder if me blubbering more than my girlfriend after Titanic lowered her opinion of me, although there was something to be said for comforting kisses. Ah, to be 23 again....

Anyway, inspiration for tonight's musings comes not from any recent developments in my life, but from Janet's latest Tell-It-To-Me-Tuesday. This week, she asks, ”What are the movies that made you cry and why?” While people might have seen a lot of these films, I'm going to take an approach that may or may not avoid spoilers. I'm going to give a general list of some qualities that get to me, then list the films that have either wet my eyes, lumped my throat, or set me bawling to the point that I wanted to beat myself up:

1) Music: In college, I took a semester of “Movie Soundtrack” as an elective course. The right music can make or break a scene, and the professor demonstrated this memorably. He described a sunny day, and a little girl getting a treat from an ice cream truck. He sat at the piano, and asked us to picture that scene as he played a happy, bouncy tune. Then he asked us to imagine the identical scene, but he played an ominous, dissonant harmony. “Yeah,” he said smiling, “NOW you're shouting at her, ‘Drop the cone; it's POISON!!!'”

It takes good actors, a good script, and an emotional connection to the characters to break through my shell, but with the right haunting melody, a scene that might otherwise be cheesy can get the tear ducts working before I know what hit me.

2) Reunion: We've seen countless variations of a pair split up by circumstances, finally and emotionally brought together by the end of the film. Maybe that couple we were rooting for finally runs through a field into each other's arms. Maybe long-lost siblings reunite, or a son finds he has more in common with his father, just before one dies. It could even be a pet or some other animal. Which leads to...

4) Animals: Put an animal in peril, in the arms of a child or a beautiful girl, or have it get lost. Whether the ending is happy or sad, the roller coaster ride is bumpy and some tears are bound to be shaken loose however I stop.

4) Death: Sometimes people aren't reunited with their loved ones or their pets. Sometimes they lose them forever. On rare occasions, they're reunited in death. No matter what, factor in the right music and the right last words, and composure is a thing of the past.

5) A Life Fulfilled: Maybe a death isn't in vain, and a sacrifice leads to some important victory. Perhaps a hero dies but the heroine is carrying his child. Maybe one man tells another to earn the life bought with the loss of others, and he spends his life forging a family and doing just that. Maybe a woman does all the things her lost love with his dying breath made her promise she would, and on her death bed as a very old woman we see evidence of promises kept. Again, these are all vague, shadowy examples that can't possibly refer to any specific movie, but are merely archetypes.

* * * * *

Those are five basic ingredients, though not every ingredient. There are variables, and my own emotional state at the time of any given viewing is important too. As you saw, many of the ingredients I did list can overlap and interact with each other. The film doesn't even have to be a drama. Many times a comedy will have a dramatic moment, be it romantic, familial, or pet-related. Sometimes these are worse, because I don't expect it. Also, some movies lose their impact after the first viewing, but a select few will get me every time.

Judge me not by this list. Here in no particular order are the movies that have made me cry to any degree:

Big Fish

The Death of the Incredible Hulk

Titanic

Saving Private Ryan

Project X

Home Alone

Click

50 First Dates

The Color Purple

La Vita è bella

Somewhere in Time