Shakespeare’s Sister asks, “What movie scenes always make you cry?”
Well, some might tell you that NewMexiKen can well up watching The Incredibles, but that’s because they don’t recognize the difference between emotions and an allergic reaction to popcorn. With that caveat, I’ll list three scenes that get to me.
Frankie Dunn in Million Dollar Baby: “Mo cuishle. It means my darling. My blood.” (Jeez, I welled-up just typing this.)
Adult Scout in To Kill A Mockingbird: “Neighbors bring food with death, and flowers with sickness, and little things in between. Boo was our neighbor. He gave us two soap dolls, a broken watch and chain, a knife, and our lives.”
(It’s also pretty powerful earlier in that film when Reverend Sykes says to Scout: “Jean Louise. Jean Louise, stand up. Your father’s passing.”)
When Paikea gives her report at the school in Whale Rider and her grandfather isn’t there.
Don’t be afraid to add to the discussion in the comments.
Link via Rox Populi, who links to a couple of other lists (read the comments).
All right, I *acknowledge* that this is embarrassing, so please only ridicule if you can do it with exceptional wit. I cry at the UBER chick flick, “Steel Magnolias”. It’s shameless emotional manipulation, and I fall for it every time. It’s SALLY FIELD, for heaven’s sake, and I weep. The first time I cried at the movies, it was because the bad guy had just kicked Benji’s little poodle galpal and broken her leg. Oh, and “Michael”, a movie starring John Travolta as an angel. I still don’t know why I went to see that. A terrier was run over by a semi. So, two out of the three involved a dog being injured. I haven’t even bothered to watch “Old Yeller”.
How about “The Champ” with Ricky Schroeder? His dad is a boxer and he’s knocked out. I can’t recall if he dies or not, but the boy is standing next to his unconscious father and crying, begging over and over for him to open his eyes. [“Champ? Wake up, Champ. Champ, wake up…(sniff, sniff) Champ, c’mon wake up! (sob) Champ, wake up, wake up, wake up!”] There were grown men weeping so loudly I could barely hear the dialogue. ALL of them. When the lights came up the theatre was completely silent and they all walked out with their eyes on the floor. It was the “Field of Dreams” of the ’70s.
#1 forever: “Sam, I thought I told you never to play that song again…”
#2 might very well be “Your father’s passing.” Great.
I can get a bit misty watching the end of “The Inn of the Sixth Happiness” when Ingrid Bergman leads about a hundred Chinese war orphans into Xian after walking a couple hundred miles through Japanese occupied China.
Ooh, my secret shame must be revealed – I also cry like a baby at Steel Magnolias, when Sally Field is mourning her dead daughter and says she just wants to know, “Whhhhhhyyyyyy?”
I tear up at the end of Saving Private Ryan, when the fifty-years-later Ryan, wondering if he deserved the sacrifices other made, asks his wife, “Tell me I have lived a good life. Tell me I’m a good man.”
Repeated viewings have not staunched the tears that come at the end of Moulin Rouge, when Satine begs Christian to “Listen to my heart can you hear it sing? Come back to me and forgive everything!” Killer.
And if you don’t cry when they put Rudy in the game, well, you have no soul.
Five or six scenes in Million Dollar Baby. Lord, that movie practically killed me.
October Sky jerked quite a few tears, too.
In Empire of the Sun, when the bomb detonates and Christian Bale’s character thinks it’s Mrs. Victor’s soul ascending to heaven — and then again when his parents greet him and he doesn’t know/recognize them. Argh.
And sadly, I cried all through I Am Sam, the teevee movie. Think of me what you will.
OK. I’ll bare my soul…. I cry at Hallmark commercials, let alone sad movies. My husband teases me all the time about how easily I cry over fiction. If I listed all my favorites here, I bore everyone to death, but I have a few that always get me, no matter how many times I’ve seen them. In fact, when I know it’s coming (because I’ve seen it before), I start crying even sooner.
Steel Magnolias and Terms of Endearment are guaranteed to jerk my tears every time—I don’t even have to watch the whole movie—just the ending. The thing in Empire of the Sun—one of my all-time favorite films—that gets to me most is not that he doesn’t recognize his parents at first, but when he finally does embrace his mother, he closes his eyes for what I am pretty sure is the first time in the entire movie. He’s been so manic throughout it all, and that moment is the first time he can finally be at peace.
The Color Purple always gets me when Shug’s father finally accepts her in front of his congregation, and then again at the end of the movie when Celie is reunited with her sister and children. A River Runs Through It gets me every time, too. And Forrest Gump when Jenny dies. And let us not forget the gut-wrenching scenes in Sophie’s Choice and Schindler’s List.
I really could go on and on with memorable sad moments from films, but I will spare you. However, as NewMexiKen warned some time back, don’t see Neverland without a box of tissues….
For the record, NewMexiKen liked Johnny Depp’s performance in Finding Neverland, but it was commenter Mrs. A that suggested the Kleenex.
The thing about me is that I cry at all the movies that try to make you cry — so I definitely cried during Sophie’s Choice, Casablanca, and all the documentaries I’ve seen about great tragedy and/or sadness.
I do, however, have a soft spot for black and white movies and musicals — so I’m fairly sure that I cried when Tootie destroyed her snowpeople in Meet Me in St. Louis, and when Rosemary Clooney left Bing Crosby in White Christmas.