I have never cried during a film. It’s a part of me that I’m really not all that proud of. In fact, I kind of consider myself to be a monster, despite not being all that scary or a fan of Lady Gaga.
In a screening of Les Misérables (which I ended up liking way more than I thought I would), I felt an awkward sense of isolation when everyone else around me bawled their eyes out after Anne Hathaway’s much-lauded rendition of I Dreamed a Dream. The scene rattled me to my core like it intended, yet I just sat there like a totem pole.
I can’t tell you what specifically makes me cry, though I could give you real-life examples: the death of my dog, breaking a collar bone, exiting the uterus. But despite having seen many soul-shaking films in my time, none have provoked tears from me. There have been a select number of films that have come close:
Finding Nemo
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Toy Story 3
Monsieur Lazhar
I Am Legend
A Clockwork Orange
Life of Pi
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2nd time I watched it)
The Descendants
Up
Like Crazy
Before Sunset
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (7th time I watched it)
However, I’m still waiting for the one film to break me.
* I was originally going to use the term “cry like a bitch” but I didn’t want to be derogatory towards bitches
So what the hell is preventing me from having a good cry in a film?
Blocked Tear Ducts
Maybe I suffer from some sort of eye-liquid clogging, preventing me from crying at a usual rate. I ain’t no physiotrician, but I’m sure ‘tear duct blockage’ is a thing. Sure enough, it is.
But ironically, a blocked tear duct somehow usually causes you to excessively leak eye juices, along with yellow mucus that can build up in the corner of the eye. Since I clearly show none of these symptoms, I’ll assume I’m physiologically fine.
Masculine Arrogance
Maybe it’s my male ego. The V-drinking, weight-lifting, steak-eating, supplement-hording frat-boy inside of me might have more of an influence on my mentality than I know (he kinda looks like Mark Wahlberg in Pain & Gain). Whenever my lips begin to tremble in the theatre, I can hear a voice in the back of my mind saying “Whatcha doin’, brah? Crying’s for the weak (i.e. women). Be a man. Be a man.” But as easy as it would be to blame this all on my inner Mark Wahlberg, I just don’t think this is the case.
I’m not ashamed to cry (I’ve passed puberty). If anything, the true weakness is feeling ashamed to let a movie provoke you in such profound ways. Being engulfed in a film is the entire reason us geeks love the medium. Fortunately, we live in an age where most dudes have no problem admitting when a film has teared them up, from Schindler’s List to FernGully.
I Haven’t Reached My Breaking Point
Perhaps I simply haven’t found a film capable of breaking me yet. I’ve seen many provocative movies, but nothing on the level of A Serbian Film. So maybe I need to isolate myself in a room and expose myself to some soul-destroying cinema.
However, knowing me, my sense of reality would kick in if a film got too extreme. Mass slaughter and extreme torture often doesn’t affect me (I blame/thank videogames). It’s only when a film can make me empathise with a character’s doomed plight that I’ll be provoked. So I don’t think a ‘breaking point’ is really the issue.
Total Desensitisation
Then again, I’m part of a generation that actively looks for Two Girls, One Cup. Perhaps I’m just desensitised to being provoked in any extreme ways, sadness or otherwise. A film can affect me. Hell, some films have changed my entire outlook on life. But maybe I internalise it all. Maybe my exposure to so much vile shit has made me a visually emotionless wad of bone and flesh, incapable of relaying inner turmoil through tears.
Probably not, though. If I was truly desensitised, most films would not evoke anything from me. While the vast number of films I have seen may have made me jaded in some ways, I still LOVE good filmmaking because it CAN evoke something from me.
Intimacy
Perhaps I make a conscious (or subconscious) decision not to cry in front of others. Even though I’m in a completely darkened room full of mostly strangers, there’s always that lingering feeling that someone’s watching me. But why would somebody watching me cry be a problem (assuming I’m not an in-the-closet frat-boy)?
The only answer I can come up with is that I never like other people seeing me cry. That leads to them asking “What’s wrong?” which leads me to say “Nothing’s wrong,” though that would clearly not be the case. I’m pretty selective to whom I talk to about my sorrows, so if something has me down to the point of tears, I’ll suck it up in fear that I might alarm someone to how I am feeling. So maybe I’ve conditioned myself to not cry near people in general.
If this is true, it would be a weird truth. I have no qualms with telling anyone (spoken, written or otherwise) how I almost broke down to the sheer beauty of Kung Fu Panda 2, but physically expressing the tearful joy this film supposedly elicited from me proved problematic. If I think a movie’s funny, I’ll laugh. If I think a movie’s horrifying, I’ll tremble. But if I think a movie’s deserving of my tears, I won’t shed them.
For all you normal folk that can competently weep in the cinema, I’m curious to know; what is it like to cry during a movie?
