At the movies, I fought the tears and the tears won
You’re sitting there in the dark, finishing your popcorn, resisting the urge to check the time, when suddenly something on the screen strikes your emotional nerve center. Maybe good has triumphed over evil against all odds. Maybe your favorite character didn’t make it to the finish line. Maybe the combination of sound, vision and words sparks a memory you haven’t revisited in ages.
Whatever the reason, you feel yourself losing little bits of control. You don’t care what time it is anymore. You feel a bit of pressure behind your eyes, perhaps a tingle in your shoulder. The tears well up. And just like that, you’re crying at the movies.
It’s a funny feeling, no matter how many times you’ve done it. You might feel a pang of shame, especially if you’re a guy who was taught to keep emotions close to the vest (as most guys are.) Crying in public is always awkward, at least in broad daylight. Embarrassing.
But a movie theater isn’t your standard public place. For one, it’s dark in there, so unless you’re heaving uncontrollable sobs, which does happen, there’s a good chance nobody will notice. Plus, if you’re crying, there’s a good chance other people are also crying, which means they’re too busy managing their own outbursts to notice yours.
The equation gets trickier if you’re a critic. The crying often occurs at the end of the movie, when a culmination of story factors have ideally settled in and converged. When critics leave after a screening, the first people they see are colleagues, and then publicists who want to know what you thought of the film. I try to go all poker face with these exchanges, and I’d be chagrined if a publicist jotted down “Vognar cried like a baby!” in his or her notes.
So I’ve come up with some strategies. My favorite is the stretch-wipe: I stick my arms out a little in a “Gee, I’m tired” motion, and then rub my shoulder against my tearsoaked eyes and face.
Then there’s the something-in-my-eye maneuver, in which I act like a pesky eyelash has burrowed under my contact lens. I call this move the James Brown, in honor of “Papa Don’t Take No Mess”: “I saw Papa cry when he/thought that I would die/He says something was in his eye/I knew it was a lie.” Sorry, Papa. You can’t pull a fast one on the Godfather of Soul.
Sometimes the tears arrive like an ambush. The classic example is Pixar’s Up, which has been known to make theaters full of viewers bawl during the first five minutes. In a wordless sequence, we see a man and woman fall in love, get married, realize they can’t have children, live a happy life, and make plans to travel the world before the wife dies too young.
It’s a graceful distillation of the stages of life, perfectly rendered in five minutes. If you’re like most people, you started weeping within moments of taking your seat, and then muttered some variation of “What the hell, Pixar?” I just watched the sequence on my computer, sitting at Starbucks, and I’m now performing a stretchwipe/James Brown medley.
The healthiest part of crying at the movies can be boiled down to one word: empathy. It seems to be in short supply these days. But when you can relate to what other people are going through, it stands to figure you will go on to treat other people better. Studies have found that those who regularly read literary fiction have developed a strong sense of empathy. Movies can have the same impact. They can help us feel.
So bring your tissues, or practice your stretch-wipe. And enjoy a cry in the dark.