One of the things feeding into male emotional repression and shaming is the idea that men aren’t supposed to cry. Now, of course, that’s bullshit, but one overcomes bullshit by confronting it, so let’s start openly listing the stuff that chokes us up. Doesn’t have to be full-on tears, a good lump in the throat totally counts.
Myself, I’m always reminded of an old Roger Ebert line, where he said that he’s more likely to be moved to tears by characters being good than characters being sad. People in movies showing moral courage or even just a little basic human decency… that’s what I find moving. The Marseillaise scene in Casablanca, of course, but there’s also a bit in the 1995 HBO original movie Citizen X that invariably gets me. Stephen Rea’s character is a detective in the Soviet Union who has been pursuing a serial killer for a decade in the face of official opposition. In this scene, Donald Sutherland, the only official who’s supported the investigation, has finally gotten to talk with the director of the FBI, and tells the detective what he’s learned. That clip actually starts halfway through the scene, but it’s the best I could find. That apology just kills me.
Oscar Wilde’s “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”, about his experiences in prison and a man he knew there who was sentenced to death, especially this stanza:
The Chaplain would not kneel to pray
By his dishonored grave:
Nor mark it with that blessed Cross
That Christ for sinners gave,
Because the man was one of those
Whom Christ came down to save.Don’t like ads? Become a supporter and enjoy The Good Men Project ad free
I’m a crabby old atheist, and that always gets me.
Music doesn’t make me cry much, even sad music, but ever since my mother died, I can’t listen to this song or this one without losing it. I’m kinda teared up right now just from finding those links, and I didn’t listen to more than a few seconds of either one, just to check sound quality.
So that’s my list, or at least what comes to mind off the top of my head. What are yours? Let’s quit being ashamed or shy and just admit to what makes us tear up.
Moderation warning: not that I think anyone would, but do not make fun of other people’s list items. If I can be moved to tears every time by a serial killer movie from the 90s, anything goes.
These two videos get me every single time. Not just tears to my eyes, but sit down, contemplate the awful choices people are faced with and let the rest of my day ache with shared emotion.
Last Minutes with Oden – http://vimeo.com/8191217
A man deals with the loss of his dog. I’m sure many of us can relate.
Choosing Thomas – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToNWquoXqJI
A young couple’s newborn passes away from complications with Trisomy 13. Their confidence moves me in their action.
Coming out of a depression. (Acknowledging hopes I’d previously denied). Thinking about people I’ll never see again, who I’m slowly forgetting and conflating. Thinking about time wasted and opportunities not taken. Hairless Heart, by Genesis (also IT from the same album) The whole idea behind the Ghost Shirt Society. The ending of some video games, like Earthbound. The story of Glenn in Chronotrigger.The story of Glenn in Chronotrigger. Harlan Ellison stories, esp. “All the Sounds of Fear” Hamlet. Ray Bradbury – Pillar of Fire The Fisher King Le Roi des Couers 12 Monkeys (end of it) The Big Lebowski –… Read more »
I forgot something else – the storyline of Shadow of the Colossus.
If you just watch the ending, you won’t get it. If you watch someone else play most of the game, you won’t get it.
But if you start a new game from scratch, play it alone with no one watching all the way until the final credit rolls – it will hit you HARD.
Some of David Drake’s- the science fiction author, not the playwright- stories. Partly because they’re often very sad, and partly because he can capture the feeling of a person’s conscious emotions shutting down because there’s other way to keep going in a way I haven’t seen anywhere else. Our life experiences are radically different, but when I started reading him in my late teens he spoke to me like little else before or since. The ending of the movie Unbreakable. I just came apart like a little kid. Everything Samuel L. Jackson says from “Now that we know…” onward was… Read more »
The last scene of Citizen Kane. Just thinking about what was lost.
“Someone Like You” by Adele, for kinda personal reasons.
And, long before Family Guy made a joke about it, the damn closing music to the Incredible Hulk. Damn that music.
Danny Boyle’s “Sunshine”. The end of that film, with Cillian Murphy’s voiceover from the message he sent at the very beginning, has me welling up just thinking about it. It’s a humbling moment and one which always makes me picture all of humanity united in hope and happiness for just a few moments.
I totally agree about the ‘Le Marseillaise’ scene in “Casablanca” – I am far more likely to cry then than at any of the beautiful scenes between Bergman and Bogie. Another movie scene is in “It’s a Wonderful Life” at the end of George’s vision of what life without him would have been like – he sees his brother Harry’s grave, and learns that because he wasn’t there to save Harry as a kid, Harry wasn’t there later to save all the men on the Navy ship that was bombed in the war, so all those men died as well.… Read more »
Ooh, Fathers’ Day, the Doctor Who episode. It’s totally unsubtle, but it gets me every time. Floods of tears, which is really not like me at all.
Or the ending of The Time Traveller’s Wife.
@Tobias: “Brought up in a conversation about LGBT History Month: Alan Turing. When I see his name I have to hold back the floodgates.”
The University I work for have a stutue fo him (he was a local lad).
The two things that set me off are the end of Atonement and the opening paragraph of Love in the Time of Cholera.
Here’s an incident which, while it didn’t actually make me cry, did leave me feeling sad and helpless. It is, in many ways the flip-side to the one I described earlier. Yesterday, I was sitting in the nearside front passenger seat of the minibus my partner uses to transport children to and from the drumming group. My partner was in the driving seat, and we were stationary in the carpark getting ready to return the children to their homes after the drumming session. Between myself and my partner, in the other front passenger seat, was a fourteen year old girl.… Read more »
When I was younger, sadness and loss would make me cry, but at 27, the only thing that makes me cry consistently is kindness, is love, especially when I don’t expect it. Last year I was having a hard day, exhausted from work and missing the girl I’d loved. I was behind the wheel and on the phone with my father, and out of the blue, he told me how proud of me he was. And just like that. Weeping. Same thing when a teacher I admired, who was ordinarily very harsh, told me that he believed in me, believed… Read more »
Bambi….’nuff said 🙁
This makes me cry. It makes everyone cry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtgJlKtHa4w
Noah, ditto on the songs… made worse since my mother was a singer, and any song she sang in her band I now strongly associate with her, even against my will… starting with “Blue Bayou”, segueing to the entire Patsy Cline catalog (esp “Walkin after Midnight” which she practiced a lot, messing up on one of the chords; I can still remember the exact point in the song that she made the error) and ending up with Apartment #9 by Tammy Wynette. Warning, if you are of a certain age, there is a good chance this might be the *most*… Read more »
The end of the movie Ghost Dog always makes me tear up. I strongly identify with how hard he sticks to his code and to his own sense of honor, but seeing the result always gets me.
The song ‘Rumour & Rapture 1650’ by New Model Army. Its written from the perspective of a foot soldier in the Parliamentary army during the English Civil War. Particularly these lyrics: Through those November rains, we were on the march again To Putney with our elected men And in the Church the leaders talked And outside we stamped our feet against the cold And dared to hope They are talking about the Putney Debates of Oct-Nov 1647. See the wikipedia article for more http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putney_Debates Especially note the quote from Col Thomas Rainsborough. Imagine you are an ordinary 17th century person… Read more »
@Noah Brand
As soon as I read you first paragraph I was thinking “oh! oh! oh! I know what song I have to post!”
But I got to the end and found that you had already posted it.
“White Wine In The Sun” is fantastic. I used to have problems explaining why, despite being atheist, I like and celebrate Christmas. But this song sums up my feeling perfectly.
@Dysgraphic: Amen. It’s wonderful because it emphasizes the thing that’s central to mid-winter celebrations across cultures: it’s about hanging close together with the people you love, and reminding yourself that life does go on, spring does return to the world, and you all made it through another year together.
The problem is that I first heard the song around Christmas 2010, the first Christmas I’d ever spent without a mother, so the first Christmas where, from my perspective, we didn’t all make it this time. Hence the not being able to listen to it without crying.
I tend to lose it over space-related filks, especially old favourites like Fire in the sky https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ryd_p20XEU or Hope Eyrie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXteSV8rBwY . It’s that mix of hope, pride in human achievements and fragility of our existences that gets me more often than not.
I’ll second “The Fountain”, the 2006 Daren Aronofsky movie. Also, the movie “Ink”, right towards the end.
“So it’s very personal, and I understand that many don’t see why this song is particularly sad, it’s actually upbeat in its message.”
It’s poignant rather than sad, and for me poignancy is a lot more tear-inducing than sadness. I totally get why this song would get to you. In your place I couldn’t stand to listen it to it except when I was good and ready.
Dream Theater – The Spirit Carries On, more precisely this part (repeated in the song) “If I die tomorrow I’d be all right Because I believe That after we’re gone The spirit carries on” It didn’t use to be this way. But when my father passed away of cancer nearly 4 years ago, he talked to me and each of my brother individually, and this is basically what he told me, that he had Faith that he would continue after death and that he wasn’t afraid. He died the next day. I listened to the song once after his death,… Read more »
As for the Wilde – his childrens stories are also big on the themes of redemption. The Selfish Giant is particularly moving.
I easily get teary from moving moments in books or movies or TV shows or documentaries.
But when it comes to personal sadness, I’m kind of “hardened”- whatever that means.
The ending from Of Mice and Men. The first time I read it I just stared at the book and then started sobbing for about 10 minutes straight. It makes me cry every time I re-read it.
When I finished reading ‘1984’.
The night John Lennon died.
Some recordings of Pachelbel’s Canon in D.