In homage to the breathless scenes thread, are there any scenes that no matter how many times you watch the movie, you still break down?
Ok this may be girlie- but sometimes a scene is so well played by the actor that you feel the emotion right along with them and the subsequent burst of tears is just as cathartic for the viewer as well.
I submit Steele Magnolias for when Sally Fields character loses it after being so tough throughout her daughters coma.
I’m fine… I’m fine… I’m fine… I’m FINE! [sobbing/screaming] I could jog all the way to Texas and back… but my daughter can’t!! She never could!! Oh… God…I’m so mad I don’t know what to do!! I wanna know why! I wanna know WHY Shelby’s life is over!! I wanna HOW that baby will EVER know how wonderful his mother was… Will he EVER know what she went THROUGH for him? Oh God I wanna know WHY? WHY? Lord…I wish I could understand! No…NO…NO!! It’s not supposed to happen this way! I’m supposed to go first!! I’ve always been ready to go first! I don’t think I can take this… I… I don’t think I can take this! I just wanna hit somethin’! I just wanna hit somebody… till they feel as bad as I do!! I just wanna hit something! I wanna hit it HARD!
I get just as upset as she does in this scene when I watch it.
I did crew for The Laramie Project at my school. You know the funeral scene, where you have the angels standing around in front of Phelps, and the woman who organized it screaming excitedly about the event, and everyone else singing Amazing Grace? God, I love that scene.
At the end of American Beauty, when Annette Bening completely breaks down in tears and anguish as she feels her husband’s shirts in the closet and realizes just what it was that she has lost forever. It used to make me tear up every single time I saw it, not so much anymore, but it’s still very moving.
In Return of the King, “I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you!” Even just hearing the music from that scene makes me well up!
I don’t cry at many movies, and I almost never cry upon repeat viewing.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind made a slight revision to that policy.
[spoiler]The beach house scene (the latter one) essentially goes through the day Joel and Clementine, the main characters, met - both are living in the memory, playing it out while at the same time being lucid, and knowing that Joel’s memory will soon be fully erased. It follows to later at night, when they’re both walking along a beach at dusk - Clementine slips into an abandoned beach house through the window and beckons Joel in, but after a few awkward moments, he leaves - or he would’ve, but he stops the memory, and after sharing a few words with each other, Joel and Clementine say goodbye to each other, the goodbye that they never truly had.
The final part of the memory shows Joel riding back in the car with the people that took him to the beach party. They chit-chat while various short clips of tiny moments that Joel and Clementine had play out on the screen. Cut back to the car, as chit-chat transfers to the topic of who Joel was talking to at the beach party.
Carrie: I saw you talking to someone pretty!
Rob: Yeah, man, who was that?
Joel: She was… just a girl.
A certain star-crossed smile goes over Joel’s face right then.
You get to see where the relationship started, how Joel and Clementine still felt about each other, and yet you’re presented with the knowledge that all the memories that they shared will soon be erased. Also aiding this incredible later scene is some beautiful cinematography and very subtle, stirring musical cues. In other words:[/spoiler]
I just watched Dancer in the Dark for what I guess is the fifth time, with my cute German roommate.
Not wanting to come off as maudlin in front of an attractive girl, I put a lot of effort into not tearing up through the whole damned movie.
Of course I still sobbed during the “next to last” song.
Selma’s Swan Song, which is the only one of her songs that breaks throug in the diagetic world of the film. A song of comfort for her son, who she’s saved from blindness with a life of sacrifice, belted out on the gallows to the bewilderment and awe of all attending, and abruptly ended with the snap of the rope.
I’m still choked up. Christ.
I might have squeaked by if we didn’t drink a bottle of wine – but I doubt it.
That funeral scene in Steel Magnolias was one of the first I thought of. ALWAYS makes me break down, right about the part she sobs, “WHYYYYY???” No matter how many times I see it, it never fails to move me to tears.
Another such movie moment is the ending of The Color Purple. From the moment she cries out, “Nett–EEEEEE!!!” to the part where they play their childhood hand clap game. The part where she keeps reaching out to touch Nettie, and keeps hesitating–that really gets me, because I can just imagine how many times she reached for Nettie, only to have her disappear from Celie’s dreams. I could really feel how afraid she was that this was only another dream!