Films that made me cry
These 3 were seen before I became a more discerning film viewer, there was just something so touching about these romances, where the whole world seemingly said no, but the weight of it all still stood with those 2 people
Benny & Joon
What's Eating Gilbert Grape
Untamed Heart -- baboon heart, sounds silly right? Well not when you're crying yer eyes out!!
Awakenings -- now this takes the cake for me for what made me cry the most!!
The Mask -- the one with Cher, damn!!
The Elephant Man -- what can I say about this, ending haunted me, with the decision to sleep with less pillows. You don't wanna be doing that when your head is shaped like that, it means you don't wanna wake up.
Pasolini's Mamma Roma -- I melt when Pier Paolo puts Bach on the soundtrack during a mother son kind of story where the mom is enslaved to a pimp bastard and cannot escape from him, that pimp guy has a small role in The Godfather when Pacino goes to Italy for the first time, he's his guide.
I'm composing this btw as I watch a movie called Happy Go Lucky, this should reveal my true stripes, I love comedy, but a truly sad movie that doesn't bring to the table anything especially annoying will always be a memorable experience. Happy Go Lucky was directed by my prizewinner -- Mike Leigh, I like this guy's films more than Derek Jarman in this point of my life, this is a refreshing movie too, the characters are REAL, they're what real people are like, who aren't zombies. The metaphorical zombie I mean, those who were traditionally couch potato's and stuff like that. Very nice, and I thank my good friend here for letting me know about it.
Derek Jarman has given me the feelies quite a bit, the homeless man in Last of England while you hear a mixture of mournful choir music, a tv ad for jewellery, and a televangelist, mixed with bdsm kind ofpeople pouring what looks like cheerios on themselves dressed in those leather get up, well put all that together, and ya need to bring over the tissues!! War Requiem has a few moments that just tear my soul apart, one is where 2 soldiers have a tragic meet, and one accidentally shoots the other, and the rest is that evocative music of Benjamin Britten while we see the soldier mourn over his deed, and at the end where they're drapping flags over coffins, the music in that!! And the scene where Tilda cries, i've shared that a few times.
In the epilogue of Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz the part close to the beginning where Franz Biberkopf is searching for his Mieze who Reinhold murdered, sorry i got to spoil it for ya, i can't talk about it without those details, the story of Franz and Mieze goes down for me as the most up and down romances i ever saw evolve in the movies, and in this case miniseries. They're such a mismatch, but there's such genuine connection in their scenes, and then when she has to work, he goes nuts, crazy how Franz can turn evil when jealous, and then they make up at the place where Reinhold will be with her later, a resort type of place, Fassbinder's films are usually inside a house so it's neat when he takes us outdoors.. Franz and Reinhold have some kind of weird relationship going, they would share wives with each other, so Reinhold felt he needed Mieze, even though they stopped the wife sharing for quite some time. That scene with him and Mieze in the park, no one else around, how long it lasts, just so heartbreaking, and so in the epilogue it's in a fantasy kind of reality, beautiful look to the little scraps of stuff on fire on the cobblestone roads, people hanging from nooses from streetlamps, so the exact moment that hits me is when he's digging furiously in aflowerbed, crying out for Mieze, played by Barbara Sukowa who was Lola in another film, and then what happens, a grand and chipper Salvation Army song bursts out, with a bunch of the other characters in this mammoth 15 and a half hour film had, the words, in that how there's this hope that is sung out which we've spent so many hoursseeing no proof of such things as existing.
But what is the finest tear jerker to me, well hang on, 1st i have to mention a few Japanese films
Late Spring by Yasujiro Ozu, a daughter and her dad, very sweet, he insists though that she move out and start her own life, and she finds this achingly hard, not because she's a lazybones, like i am, but of her affection for him. Ozu was one of the greatest directors to have lived btw.
Ugetsu -- the ending is where it all comes to an emotional highpoint the wife of the guy who was seduced by a ghost, music that seems to be the instrument in pain as the camera lifts up
Sansho the Bailiff -- this is Mizoguchi's greatest film, it can be a real assistance to showing how being brutish and unfeeling is, to connect with this, you will see the enormity of the tragedy of being a brute.
Ikiru -- Kurasawa's tale of a man with a terminal case of stomach cancer, finds out after all his life being a lifeless business man who hardly ever spent time with his kids and stuff, well it takes his diagnosis to gradually discover what living the good life is about, and ends up buiding a park for the nearby kids where there used to be yucky muddy stuff.
Now we come to the prizewinner
Secrets & Lies -- i won't try to paint the picture here, but basically the main story here is how a middle aged racist finds out she has a black relative, and you see her become a good person. AMAZING!!
I want this to be as complete a list as possible so as I remember more ....
Carl Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc, also his Ordet, when a dearly loved wife who has passed is resurrected, her husband was an atheist, and he sees a miracle right before his eyes, Dreyer like Ozu and Mizoguchi are at the top of the cinema pantheon. And in his Day of Wrath, when the young woman who is unfortunately married to an old minister spends some time with the minister's handsome son, they walk around in nature with sweet melancholic music playing, her's is not a happy end, as she is to be burned at the stake, like the "witch" earlier in the film, she sends me in the feeling spirals too, how she hollers at the minister as she's roped on a wooden grill to be dropped on a bonfire, while a children choir sings a hymn about the judgment day.
Cassavetes' A Woman Under the Influence has some of the most explosively emotional scenes, and at the epicenter is the scene with some relatives of the main stars, and all that yelling!!
Werner Schroeter's Malina shows an exquisite interior pain in Huppert's character which is set in a bedroom with things on fire, with Opera music, the slow aria of a soprano voice while seeing such artistic anguish. And the use of mirrors for an added touch.
I Am Sam -- a beautiful film with a great Beatles soundtrack and Sean Penn doing an amazing acting job.
Benny & Joon
What's Eating Gilbert Grape
Untamed Heart -- baboon heart, sounds silly right? Well not when you're crying yer eyes out!!
Awakenings -- now this takes the cake for me for what made me cry the most!!
The Mask -- the one with Cher, damn!!
The Elephant Man -- what can I say about this, ending haunted me, with the decision to sleep with less pillows. You don't wanna be doing that when your head is shaped like that, it means you don't wanna wake up.
Pasolini's Mamma Roma -- I melt when Pier Paolo puts Bach on the soundtrack during a mother son kind of story where the mom is enslaved to a pimp bastard and cannot escape from him, that pimp guy has a small role in The Godfather when Pacino goes to Italy for the first time, he's his guide.
I'm composing this btw as I watch a movie called Happy Go Lucky, this should reveal my true stripes, I love comedy, but a truly sad movie that doesn't bring to the table anything especially annoying will always be a memorable experience. Happy Go Lucky was directed by my prizewinner -- Mike Leigh, I like this guy's films more than Derek Jarman in this point of my life, this is a refreshing movie too, the characters are REAL, they're what real people are like, who aren't zombies. The metaphorical zombie I mean, those who were traditionally couch potato's and stuff like that. Very nice, and I thank my good friend here for letting me know about it.
Derek Jarman has given me the feelies quite a bit, the homeless man in Last of England while you hear a mixture of mournful choir music, a tv ad for jewellery, and a televangelist, mixed with bdsm kind ofpeople pouring what looks like cheerios on themselves dressed in those leather get up, well put all that together, and ya need to bring over the tissues!! War Requiem has a few moments that just tear my soul apart, one is where 2 soldiers have a tragic meet, and one accidentally shoots the other, and the rest is that evocative music of Benjamin Britten while we see the soldier mourn over his deed, and at the end where they're drapping flags over coffins, the music in that!! And the scene where Tilda cries, i've shared that a few times.
In the epilogue of Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz the part close to the beginning where Franz Biberkopf is searching for his Mieze who Reinhold murdered, sorry i got to spoil it for ya, i can't talk about it without those details, the story of Franz and Mieze goes down for me as the most up and down romances i ever saw evolve in the movies, and in this case miniseries. They're such a mismatch, but there's such genuine connection in their scenes, and then when she has to work, he goes nuts, crazy how Franz can turn evil when jealous, and then they make up at the place where Reinhold will be with her later, a resort type of place, Fassbinder's films are usually inside a house so it's neat when he takes us outdoors.. Franz and Reinhold have some kind of weird relationship going, they would share wives with each other, so Reinhold felt he needed Mieze, even though they stopped the wife sharing for quite some time. That scene with him and Mieze in the park, no one else around, how long it lasts, just so heartbreaking, and so in the epilogue it's in a fantasy kind of reality, beautiful look to the little scraps of stuff on fire on the cobblestone roads, people hanging from nooses from streetlamps, so the exact moment that hits me is when he's digging furiously in aflowerbed, crying out for Mieze, played by Barbara Sukowa who was Lola in another film, and then what happens, a grand and chipper Salvation Army song bursts out, with a bunch of the other characters in this mammoth 15 and a half hour film had, the words, in that how there's this hope that is sung out which we've spent so many hoursseeing no proof of such things as existing.
But what is the finest tear jerker to me, well hang on, 1st i have to mention a few Japanese films
Late Spring by Yasujiro Ozu, a daughter and her dad, very sweet, he insists though that she move out and start her own life, and she finds this achingly hard, not because she's a lazybones, like i am, but of her affection for him. Ozu was one of the greatest directors to have lived btw.
Ugetsu -- the ending is where it all comes to an emotional highpoint the wife of the guy who was seduced by a ghost, music that seems to be the instrument in pain as the camera lifts up
Sansho the Bailiff -- this is Mizoguchi's greatest film, it can be a real assistance to showing how being brutish and unfeeling is, to connect with this, you will see the enormity of the tragedy of being a brute.
Ikiru -- Kurasawa's tale of a man with a terminal case of stomach cancer, finds out after all his life being a lifeless business man who hardly ever spent time with his kids and stuff, well it takes his diagnosis to gradually discover what living the good life is about, and ends up buiding a park for the nearby kids where there used to be yucky muddy stuff.
Now we come to the prizewinner
Secrets & Lies -- i won't try to paint the picture here, but basically the main story here is how a middle aged racist finds out she has a black relative, and you see her become a good person. AMAZING!!
I want this to be as complete a list as possible so as I remember more ....
Carl Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc, also his Ordet, when a dearly loved wife who has passed is resurrected, her husband was an atheist, and he sees a miracle right before his eyes, Dreyer like Ozu and Mizoguchi are at the top of the cinema pantheon. And in his Day of Wrath, when the young woman who is unfortunately married to an old minister spends some time with the minister's handsome son, they walk around in nature with sweet melancholic music playing, her's is not a happy end, as she is to be burned at the stake, like the "witch" earlier in the film, she sends me in the feeling spirals too, how she hollers at the minister as she's roped on a wooden grill to be dropped on a bonfire, while a children choir sings a hymn about the judgment day.
Cassavetes' A Woman Under the Influence has some of the most explosively emotional scenes, and at the epicenter is the scene with some relatives of the main stars, and all that yelling!!
Werner Schroeter's Malina shows an exquisite interior pain in Huppert's character which is set in a bedroom with things on fire, with Opera music, the slow aria of a soprano voice while seeing such artistic anguish. And the use of mirrors for an added touch.
I Am Sam -- a beautiful film with a great Beatles soundtrack and Sean Penn doing an amazing acting job.
46-50, M
