In movies, “A Man for All Seasons” fills the bill. “The Lion in Winter” pretty much does too. And “Schindler’s List,” in a really nasty way. I’ve never been able to bring myself to watch it a second time.
A few operas, especially “La Boheme” and “Lucia di Lammermoor” have blown me away, too.
I guess the books that have left me most in awe have been “Les Miserables” and “The Sirens of Titan.”
Seeing the film 2001:A Space Odyssey in its initial release in 70mm on a big, curved (though not Cinerama) screen affected me like no other movie ever had before. I was obsessed with it and collected the pressbook, souvenir programs, books, stills, magazine articles, anything I could find to read more about this amazing film.
I didn’t become so overwhelmingly obsessed with a film again until last year when I saw Let the Right One In. Once again, there was no detail to trivial about this film for me to want to know. Months after my first viewing, I still think about it every day. I’ve seen it so many times and know it so well that I regret I can’t find anything new to enjoy when watching it. I wish there could be a new installment every day.
The finale of Six Feet Under left me floored. It wasn’t a perfect series, but that episode is probably the single best episode of television I’ve ever seen.
My reaction to Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru was unlike anything else I’ve experienced. For a good twenty minutes, I was alternating between sobbing at how sad the movie was, and laughing at how wonderful it was. No other work of art I’ve ever seen has affected me that strongly. But some others have come close:
When I was in Spain in 2001, I visited the museum of modern art in Madrid. The gallery where they show “Guernica” is set up so that you enter it from one side, and you see all the concept sketches and exercises Picasso executed while working his way up to the final painting. I came in through the wrong door, and missed all of that. Instead, I just turned around and there it was, twice as big as life. I’d seen pictures of it, of course, but being confronted by the actual work like that made my head spin. I had to go back into the hall and sit on a bench for a minute, until I was sure my legs could support me. A week later, while I was in Barcelona, the WTC was destroyed. I’m glad we went to Madrid first - I don’t know how I would have reacted to the painting if I’d had that horror hanging over me.
Oddly enough, I had a similar reaction to a comic book. I picked up the first trade of Y: The Last Man, mostly because I love a good post-apocalyptic story, and this one had a really interesting twist on the apocalypse. I’m not sure why it affected me so strongly, but when it was revealed that Yorrick’s sister had become an Amazon, it blew my mind. I felt light headed and dizzy, like my center of gravity was located about three feet outside of my body.
100% agreed.
I read a lot and watch a lot of movies so this has happened to me many, many times. One of the most profound and long-lasting was probably Citizen Kane.
I had actually seen it in a theatre when I was 19 or 20 and thought it was ok, but when I took a college course on it (ok it was a history of narrative film course, but we spent nearly 8 out of 16 weeks on Kane) and studied it, and watched it several more times, it sunk in as one of the best pieces of fiction, in any medium, I’ve ever experienced.
Ah, if only the series had stayed as strong as those first couple trades, it would be a classic. Brian K. Vaughn needs to learn to stop making every important character Brian K. Vaughn.
So many. There are so many books, movies, songs/albums that have left me totally transported that I couldn’t list them all and don’t know where to begin…
…but one story immediately came to mind when I saw this thread: Hemingway’s The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. I have cited it in previous threads, but I would hold this up as the greatest American short story. It is about 20 pages and the set up is that Macomber is an upper-class twit - I think he is a Wall St. financier - with his bored-but-dangerous wife out on safari in Africa, replete with native help and a red-faced, seen-it-all British safari guide. The story is about Honor, Courage - what it means to be A Man when you are facing danger right in front of you - and how those around you treat you.
It is short and I don’t want to give anything away, but I remember exactly where I was when I read the climactic scene and how I was startled and blurted out "Holy Shit!!’ out of nowhere, leading a friend to look up and ask what happened…
I respect a lot of Hemingway’s work but dislike and even hate a lot of it, too (his book version of To Have and Have Not is written poorly on a technical basis and also as a statement about Hemingway as a person) But this story resonates with me to this day…
Like you, I’ve had a lot of these moments. I’ll just pick a couple:
Books: **American Pastoral **by Philip Roth, Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates by Tom Robbins, and Ironweed by William Kennedy.
Movies: The Legend of 1900, **The Reflecting Skin, **and Pulp Fiction
I’m terrible at spoiling myself when I’m reading a book. If I want to know what happens at a climactic point, I’ll just flip to the end and read it. Yes, it’s bad. But I was so totally blown away by The Name of the Rose that I freaked out if I accidentally opened the book towards the end, afraid that I might catch a glimpse of something that might give away the story and spoil the mystery and how Eco wanted to reveal the storyline. I was so under the book’s spell.
Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie delighted me in so many ways. I tell everyone to read it. It made me sad that I will never be able to write like that.
Pan’s Labyrinth for movies, for me, too. It was awesome. A perfect dark fairy tale.
Books- the one that comes immediately to mind is Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson. I fell in love within twenty pages, and sobbed for an hour after I finished it. I had a similar reaction to Home, the (sort of) sequel. Oh, and years ago, My Name is Asher Lev.
My husband wants video games included, and wants to say Portal, and In the Shadow of the Colossus (which he’s playing right now, and he’s right, it’s stunning).
I was 11 years old when the adults dropped us kids off at the neighborhood movie theater (which they did once or twice a month in the hot summer, years ago). We usually saw some Disney thing - Swiss Family Robinson, or something with Hayley Mills, or some pirate movie.
“Lawrence of Arabia”. I sat there, spellbound, through the whole thing. I didn’t go get popcorn/candy/soda, I didn’t run up and down the aisles, I didn’t go talk with my friends in the lobby. I was 11 and I was totally blown away.
In a lesser way, me, my mother, and my daughter went to see “Chicago” a few years ago and it was SO enjoyable, we sat there whispering “I can’t believe! how good this IS!” (which is much the same mom and I said to each other when we saw “Cabaret” in the 70’s). We went back to see it again.
Just started this last night. Glad to hear it.
Philosophically, it was For Whom the Bell Tolls. I was an impressionable youngster in my late teens/early 20s when Reagan was president. I was a very gung-ho nationalist and still somewhat xenophobic. When I read FWTBT, it was like a light bulb went on in my brain. Specifically, this scene, when Anselmo is tasked with killing the guards:
My whole childish outlook on war as an adventure changed when I read this book.
No Country for Old Men - They made some decisions in that movie that few of any others would have had the stones to make.
This is the book I was thinking of, but because I was so completely underwhelmed. Boring and tedious with random dialogue between irrelevant characters (that I had to skim to get through). Amazing that we can have such different responses.
I agree with some that have been mentioned like Breaker Morant and Gallipolli. Another ending that left me stunned was Brazil.
You want some television that’ll blow you away? Breaking Bad. The best TV show around right now. Every episode will leave you a puddle on the floor.
I’ll join in with the Pulp Fiction crowd too. Saw it opening night for the wide release. I remember my exact words after the credits ran: I’ve never seen a movie like that before.
Iron Giant for the power of the story and cool factor. Totally wasn’t expecting it.
Good choice; I never even liked the series all that much but the very final moments of the series are about as good as I’ve ever seen it get on television.
The last five pages of Shogun are just mesmerizing, perfect in every way.
A Free Man’s Worship by Bertrand Russell. I’ve read many great works, but that was the first time I’ve ever read something so dense with meaning and where it was so completely apparent that the author was a sheer genius.
Ah. My wife has seen me cry twice in 6 years. Once was when the Iron Giant said “Superman.” Really underrated movie. That is Brad Bird’s masterpiece, not The Incredibles.