Thursday, December 8, 2011

Crying

Mamakat's Prompt: What is it about that movie that makes you cry every time?


Ever since Old Yeller, when I cried for two and a half hours after the movie was over, I've been embarrassed to be seen crying in the theater. I've cried over Terms of Endearment and Steel Magnolias in the safety of my own house, a box of tissue handy. I tend to avoid chick-flicks like the plague. One day, my friend asked me to go and see The Bridges of Madison County with her. I love Clint Eastwood, but really only when he punches and shoots people on screen. This was one of my good friends, however. Sometimes you bite the bullet for your good friend, even when you aren't sure whether she will be okay with a blubbering idiot sitting next to her in a darkened theater.

The basic story--woman in a rut finds herself falling in love with some random stranger she meets at a covered bridge--was all right. Except that the woman in question was married with two children; her husband and children were out of town. Of course the random guy wants her to run off with him, and of course she can't do that to her children. As he walks out, Clint Eastwood's character Robert turns.

"This kind of certainty comes but once in a lifetime." he says. I started bawling, and did not stop until the movie ended.

It is very easy for me to put myself into the shoes of the characters on the screen or on the pages of a good book. I felt a great deal of empathy for Meryl Streep's character, Francesca. I understood the intensity of her feelings. She was up there on the big screen crying, so I was crying as well. I was also pretty angry at her. Robert is supposed to be the "love of a lifetime", and in a colossal display of utter selfishness, he demanded that she leave everything to run off with him. He claimed to love her, claimed to understand her, yet he expected her to leave her children behind without a second thought? A normal person would have become angered by this. Did his selfishness make Francesca turn her back on him? No, she almost jumped out of a moving vehicle to join him, and then she pined over him for the rest of her life. I cried out of frustration that Francesca was an idiot. I so wanted to like her.

Rumors to the contrary, I do have a girly side. I am a woman who likes to be swept off her feet on occasion. I love the idea of true love conquering all and the knight riding off into the sunset with the princess. Thus it was that the majority of my tears that day were of the "OMG! That is SO romantic!" nature. I still can't watch The Bridges of Madison County without getting weepy. Sometimes I find the movie on a cable channel, and I end up watching, and I end up crying. My husband sometimes finds me blubbering; he just sighs heavily and brings me the box of tissues.

11 comments:

  1. When I read or watch movies, it's like I lose the rational part of my brain that reminds me that they are intended to be just stories. My heart aches for everyone on the screen and off, as I always hold the somewhat irrational belief that someone had to feel that pain to write about it...how sad...I should find them and comfort them! Beaches? Was still crying when I got back to my dorm room!

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  2. I cried quite a bit during that movie too...and Steel Magnolias. I think I just felt her desperation at wanting that other life---not that I wanted another life, but I felt bad for her that she was not happy with her life. Sigh.

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  3. I'm seen all those movies countless times, especially Steel Magnolias but the laughter outweighs the crying in that one.

    I bawled my eyes out in Bridges of Madison County the first time I saw it because I'm one of those sappy, hopeless romantic types. She accidentally fell so hard in love with this other man but stayed out of honor, respect, and motherly love for her family...Sigh...

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  4. I avoid movies like that. Unless, as in your case, a good friend insists on dragging me along. That's how I came to watch the Time Travelers Wife. I told my friend no... that I'd cry. And she knows that I hate crying. When the tears started falling she looked at me like I was crazy and said, "What are you doing? You mean you really CAN cry? I thought you were just exaggerating!" She had never seen me cry before and, apparently, didn't think I really could cry.

    She hasn't made me go to another sappy movie since that one.

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  5. I'm giggling at your husband sighing, but still bringing you the tissue. This has happened to me more than once, and usually Steel Magnolias is the culprit. He'll ask, why do you keep watching it if it makes you cry? B/c DUH it's not that kind of cry. And like Andrea says above, Beaches gets me too.

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  6. I loved Bridges of Madison County except for the parts where they went to the present time and her kids were involved. I did like how they spread her ashes where she wanted them though...

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  7. Can't do movies in the theatre either. Restless legs and being MORTIFIED when I or anyone else cries around me just... NO... can't do it!

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  8. Maybe if you're hard-hearted like me (or so people tell me), crying at the movies is the only legitimate outlet!! I even remember crying at the movie 'Splash' years ago - but in my defence, I'd just had a nasty break-up and it caught me at the wrong moment ...

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  9. I have never seen that movie, but it definitely sounds like one that would make me cry.

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  10. I believe I skipped that one because I walked in on my mom sobbing in our living room while watching it.
    Steel Magnolias & Terms of Endearment get me every. single. time!

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  11. I haven't seen that movie but I know some I watch I identify with too.

    Stopping by from writers workshop; I did this prompt too: http://zemeks.blogspot.com/2011/12/i-cry-every-time-i-see-this-writers.html

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