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It’s OK To Cry In Films

There’s been a lot of talk recently about crying in the cinema, mostly spurred on by the release of Pixar’s ‘Toy Story 3’. If you haven’t seen it (shame on you, it’s been out for weeks and it’s brilliant) I won’t ruin the ending, but I will say that you should be prepared to feel your eyes misting over (if not a complete fit of bawling). Yet as I sat there, it suddenly stuck me just how strange what was going on around me was. We were a group of hundreds of strangers, crammed together in a darkened room and unleashing a level of emotion that we usually try and keep from almost everyone.

Think about it. Outside of the cinema, how many people have seen you cry (infancy not included)? I think I can count the number on my digits. Maybe that’s just me being some sort of emotionally repressed tin man figure, but I don’t think so. I have at least some friends and have only been around three or four when they have been crying. And furthermore, how often do you cry at all? Of course some people are more open with their emotions than others, but I’d guess that, for most of you, crying isn’t a daily or even weekly occurrence. Thinking back over maybe the past five years I’d say there’s a realistic chance that I have cried more in the cinema than not (the more I write, the more I think that I: a. must spend less time in cinemas and b. seriously rethink parts of my life). Now this is probably not the case for you, but the ratios must be a lot closer than we might expect.

So what is it about the cinema that does it to us? Are our emotions so easily the playthings of directors and producers that they can exert some sort of Derren Brown mind control on us? We are all totally aware that the characters in front of us are fictitious, yet they are producing a reaction in us that we save for the most real and personal times of our lives. In the ‘Toy Story’ films they don’t even look like people, having instead been generated by a man sitting for hours alone in a room with a computer. This realisation verges upon the creepy.

But it’s not really that, is it? The people in Hollywood know that they cannot simply pull a lever that says ‘Poke Tear Ducts’ and produce films that will set their audiences off. Instead it is empathy that makes films connect with us emotionally. The end of the trial in ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ (which has been freely available to watch for nearly 50 years – if you haven’t seen it, shame on you) makes me well up every time I see it. As the black community of Maycomb stand to show their silent respect for a man who has tried in vain to push against a wall of prejudice, I begin to blub, and I’m lucky if I haven’t stopped by the end of the film half an hour later. It’s fairly obvious that I am not living in 1930’s Alabama, nor do I have any experience of suffering under such racial prejudice, but the film is convincing enough to transport its audience to a world where everyone can understand and be moved by the tale. It is empathy that I feel, not for the fictional characters but for what they represent: the far too real spectre of prejudice.

This is why it’s ok to cry at the cinema. The tears aren’t for the story that’s being weaved but for the realities behind the curtain. It is why you probably won’t see anyone cry at ‘Alien vs Predator’ – it’s rather difficult to empathise with Aliens, Predators or one-dimensional humans. The films that make you cry are, more often than not, the really good ones. Real thought and emotion must be put into the characters for you to be taking any out.

As I was watching the end of ‘Toy Story 3’, I noticed something quite strange. The group of children sitting in the row in front of us, whose attention had been fixated throughout the film suddenly seemed
to lose interest in the last moments. Feet were swinging, arms waving and one even removed his 3D glasses. The last scene means nothing to children still playing with their toys, while it means everything to those of us who’ve reached the day where they must be put away. For our generation, the empathy runs even deeper; it’s not just the symbolism of Woody and Buzz, but a genuine loss of a brilliant set of characters and films that we must also let go. There are few more important things to have a good cry about than that. And don’t worry about anyone seeing. Chances are the person next to you is weeping behind the 3D glasses as well.

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