I just read Amy Poehler's list of sad movies on the Daily Beast and it got me picking my own. In the middle of the night. But I realized that I can't think of any sad movies I've seen recently, or at least of any movies that made me cry. Which is weird, because I feel like that's all I do is tear up. But recently, it's the snippets Oprah that I catch, or radiolab stories, or articles on Gifford's recovery that have been getting to me. So my list of sad movies seem to hover around titles that were released when I was in my late teens to mid-twenties. It must be admitted that I've become a big wuss and refuse to see things I know will make me cry. I still haven't seen "Boys don't Cry." Cause I'm not a boy, I guess.
Anyway, here's what I came up with. In the middle of the night.
> A Heart in Winter -- This is a super stereotypical French film with little dialogue and a lot of non sequitur shots of beautiful things that symbolize sad things. But for some reason it's one of the first movies that launched me into the realm of the sadness of adult sexuality. I think I watched it three times in a row when I was seventeen and I doubt I really understood what was really going on. It's about two classical musicians -- a cellist and a violinist, maybe -- who have a sexy affair. But it doesn't work out for some reason I don't remember. Because of Daniel Auteil's cold heart? Whatever happens in this movie, it made me really sad to realize at the time. (And thinking about this movie made me remember "Damage" with Jeremy Irons and Juliette Binoche -- which is not a sad movie, but came out about the same time and revealed how fucked up adults are.)
> Persuasion -- The saddest Austen book. A middle-aged spinster (she must be closing in on 28 years old) runs into an old love who she rejected a million years ago because she thought she was such hot shit. But really he was the One (played by a dashing Ciaran Hinds. Don't ask me to pronounce it). He's learned to get over her and is now into some bubbly young thing, which breaks her heart. The end.
> The Piano Teacher -- My mom's a piano teacher and when I was watching this movie I was thinking, "Oh no! She's probably seen this. Oh no!" I called her up and asked and she said "Yes! But what is wrong with that woman? The music was so beautiful." This movie is more disturbing than sad. In fact it's not sad at all, unless you take many steps back and think, "Wow, I would not want to be this woman [Isabelle Hupert]. She's a sad, fucked up lady." But I just really like it and think about it from time to time. Does she get what she wants at the end -- provoking her love-interest until he "gives her what she asks for"? Or is his violence a cowardly admission of his inability to enter into a true, if messed up, relationship? And what was the very end all about? I dunno.
> Billy Elliot -- Cause I cried a lot and didn't mind so much about it. This seemed to come at the end of a string of UK movies that revolved around the working class plight during the Thatcher era. But the only other one I can remember is "The Full Monty." And some other weird one with Ewan MacGregor in a marching band.
> And then finally two movies from Down Under that made me cry more than I've ever cried before. "Heavenly Creatures" and "Shine." I missed the first couple of minutes of "Heavenly Creatures" during which, apparently, we are informed that the daughter brutally murders the mother. So when, after an hour and a half of watching how much the mother loves her daughter, how worried she is about her well-being and behavior, she is brutally murdered in the end, I was shattered. I remember sitting in the theater crying my eyes out while my friends were waiting near the exit for me to finish. Embarrassing.
And "Shine." Come on. Probably the least sympathetic portrayal of a holocaust survivor ever. I saw this movie by myself -- which gives my tears more freedom to flow -- and had to tell my friend about it the next day, which made me cry again. I think, with both these movies, it's the being misunderstood and persecuted theme that gets me. So, don't persecute the innocent people, it's the moral of my movie watching.
(I have to reluctantly include "Dancer in the Dark" here because it destroyed me but also made me hate Lars van Trier and decide he was a sadist who hated women. He takes the theme of persecuting the innocent to a whole new -- and perverse and stupid -- level.)
(Oh! And "13 Going on 30" made me cry. But I was in an airplane at the time.)
