Last night Graham and I decided to watch a movie in bed. We’d heard that Million Dollar Baby was a good film, although we laboured under the misapprehension that it was just a good movie about boxing. Turns out, not so much. It’s a good film about assisted suicide. Yup, Hillary Swank is a cute, ripped, 32-year-old boxer-chick who loses the big title fight and becomes a paraplegic in the process. Clint Eastwood gets to help her die. Of course, there’s more to the story than that, but I sat up in bed next to Graham through the last hour of this film crying my head off. If he hadn’t put on an episode of Scrubs when it was over, I probably would have sat there crying for another hour after the film ended. I do that sometimes…movies and sad television shows really affect me when they’re about death and dying. And so I give you a short list of movies that made me bawl my fool head off.
1. Charlotte’s Web. This is a book, I know, but there was an animated feature for the book that schoolteachers used to show in class near the end of the year or near Christmas vacation when they could justify showing the class a cartoon. I read the book over and over and I just knew I was going to cry at the end when Charlotte tells Wilbur, “You have been my friend…that in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs for you because I liked you. After all, what’s a life, anyway? We’re born, we live a little while, we die.” The chapter ends with Charlotte dying, alone at the fair. That E.B. White really knew how to write a tear-jerker. In school, I would put up my hand and ask to go to the bathroom when I felt myself getting emotional because I didn’t want all the other kids to see what a little crazy person I was, crying at the death of a spider in a cartoon. I haven’t seen the newer film adaptation but I’m sure it will have the usual effect.
2. Titanic. The bawling this time had nothing really to do with the whole Jack and Rose Love Affair. I was more upset at the scene toward the end when you see people preparing to die. An older couple lies in their bed holding one another as water rushes into their cabin. A mother tells her wee Irish babes a story and tells them to go to sleep. That scene where the camera pans away from the wreckage to reveal hundreds of people thrashing around in the water. Oh, and of COURSE the death of Rose in her bed as an old, old lady, returning in the afterlife, of course, to Jack and the ship. (This part made me kind of mad, actually…because Rose went on to marry someone else and have children with that man and live a very full life, and how did she repay them in her life? By going back to the Titanic and the hottie she gave her virginity to! It just didn’t make sense to me, but whatever…) I went home from that movie and couldn’t. stop. crying. It was New Year’s Eve and I cried through Dick Clark’s countdown, the dropping of the ball in Times Square, and for another hour after that. I was a wreck (no pun intended).
3. The final three episodes of Six Feet Under. If I had known how upset the series finale of SFU would make me, I wouldn’t have watched it on a Sunday night. No sir, I’d have watched it on a Friday night, because then I would have had two days to recover before having to go to work, and like, talk to people, and stuff. I think that Monday morning Graham must have really asked himself if he knew what he was getting himself into, because as I was putting on my coat and shoes to go to work, I was still fighting back tears. I honestly had to wait a day before I could talk about it with my colleague who had loaned me the damn thing in the first place. I still choke up a bit whenever I hear that song, “Breathe Me” to which Claire drove off into her future as the scenes of all of the characters’ deaths were revealed to sobbing lunatic fans like me.
4. The Notebook. You knew this list would include The Notebook, the mother of all chick flicks. Didn’t you know that was Allie and Noah telling the story the whole time? How did I not see it coming that they would die together like that? How could Nicholas Sparks do this to me!? A great story, but I felt almost taken advantage of when it was over, sitting in my car, crying for a good 15 minutes more before I could drive home. I mean, it felt as if the movie was designed SOLELY to make people (and when I say “people” I really mean “women”) cry for hours on end.
What movies/tv shows have made you cry?
This one wasn’t reserved only for women’s tears; it made Chris bawl like a baby right along with me.
He’s a keeper!
I have watched the newest Charlotte’s Web movie and I am here to warn you that it will make you cry HARDER than the cartoon version. Stupid CGI makes the animals look emotional and real and Wilbur is so upset about having to leave Charlotte as she’s dying and he’s sad and frantic and… well, crap, I think I might start crying now just telling you about it.
Also, the ending of The Notebook book is different than the movie because there is a sequel book to The Notebook. So, movie = crying but book = not quite so sad but still sad.
I have been known to cry at Hallmark commercials. And CSI episodes. You’re not alone. If you want a good book that will make you sob loudly (I don’t know why you’d want to make yourself an emotional wreck on purpose, but apparently I did), The Time Traveler’s Wife will just tear you apart. In a good way. Kind of. I hear they’re turning that book into a movie, too, but I suggest reading the book first if you plan on seeing the eventual movie to appreciate the heart-wrenchingness. Oh, and make sure you read the last part of the book on Friday night when someone is there to comfort you and maybe make you an ice cream sundae. It’s safer that way.