A Little Princess. Book, not movie. I don’t care what movie you saw; none of them, not even the 1986 miniseries, sells this scene the way FHB did.
Sara finds a fourpence on the ground in front of a bakery. She leaves with six one-penny buns (“I’ll throw in two for makeweight”) and gives five of them to a starving beggar girl. The shop owner comes out and is told what just happened. “Left just one for herself…And she could have eaten the whole six. I saw it in her eyes.”
The Joy Luck Club–lots of tearjerkery in that movie, but the scene that always, always gets me is when June and her mother have a confrontation after a misunderstanding. June confesses her insecurities and feelings of inadequacy, that she’s never been able to live up to her mother’s high expectations, and her mother reassures her that she knows her daughter has the “best quality heart” and that she “sees her.”
I’m doing a woefully awful job recounting the scene, but oh god I’m tearing up right now just thinking about it.
The film version of The Fellowship of the Ring, during Boromir’s death. “I would have followed you my brother…my captain…my king.” It’s, “my captain” where the tears start, because I feel like it was the most meaningful title in Boromir’s eyes.
I’m glad they re-wrote the book for the film to give Boromir a final moment with Aragorn, and Sean Bean sold the hell out of that line.
It’s been literally decades since I have read it, but John Irving’s “Hotel New Hampshire” always made me cry, although it’s been so long now that I can’t tel you precisely when or why. Just that it always did.
Oh, man, Amy Tan stuff wrecks me for mother-daughter conflict.
The scene that got to me was in her novel The Bonesetter’s Daughter, which is best described as a story about how mothers pass their trauma along to their children. The protag recalls how, as a girl, just reaching puberty, she thought she could get pregnant from a toilet seat. She was spending time with an older man she had a crush on, and I don’t remember the exact circumstances but she ended up innocently telling her mother that he got her pregnant, resulting in a massive, horrible misunderstanding. Mother confronted the man, he reacted with outrage at the unfair accusation, mother excoriates daughter for her irresponsibility and spreading lies, but it’s too late, the reputational damage is done and the man’s girlfriend leaves him. The girl goes to apologize to the man she has wronged, per her mother’s mandate, and he responds by viciously sexually assaulting her in retaliation. The girl is bereft, having lost all credibility, and unable to tell her mother what happened.
One of the few scenes in literature that prompted a full on, instantaneous emotional breakdown.
Do we even have to talk about Spiegelman’s Maus, one talented cartoonist’s epic memoir about being the son of Holocaust survivors? God, talk about a tearjerker.
What’s worse than struggling to survive the Holocaust?
Struggling to survive the Holocaust with a wife who has severe clinical depression before the Holocaust even starts, and who kills herself decades after the war.
I remember finishing that graphic novel about 4am and just bursting into tears. Not just, ‘‘this makes me sad’’ but ‘‘I suddenly and acutely feel all of human suffering distilled into one universal experience and the futility and inevitability of man’s inhumanity to man.’’ Sr. Weasel woke up, asked me what was wrong. I said, ‘‘I just finished reading Maus.’’ He nodded. ‘‘That’ll do it. Poor sweetie,’’ rolled over and went back to sleep.
I’m glad you mentioned a science-fiction movie because there is one scene in the movie 2010: The Year We Make Contact (which is just a wonderful movie in general) which really struck me.
“I’m afraid”
A simple, poignant statement, but one that flips our understanding of Hal around entirely, he isn’t merely a computer blindly following its programming but a person who has bravely chosen to sacrifice himself to save the others. Such an under-stated, but powerful moment. I always say 2001 is the more intellectual and worthy film, but if I had to choose a movie to watch it would be 2010 without hesitation.
Oh and to add a scene from a science-fiction book that at right this moment I can’t remember the name of, one of the main characters had a blazing row with her husband who was killed in an accident shortly afterwards when his ship burned up on reentry. This is a running theme throughout the book and they both come across as not particularly sympathetic characters, until the very end when they recover the charred remains of his body and in his hand is grasped the remains of a flower she had given him, he had held it in his grasp all the way down…
I hate, hate, hate crying in a movie theatre - I’ll do all manner of coughs and eye-rubs to cover up the fact that I’m tearing up.
However, both American Beauty and The Ninth Configuration left me absolutely blubbering. I think I managed to hold on to my composure until I got to the car, but then I sobbed all the way home after both movies.
In Stephen King’s The Stand (a post apocalyptic novel that takes place after a pandemic that kills 99.4 percent of the population) there is a scene where a group of survivors has a meeting where they read/ratify the Constitution. It gets me every time…it seems like a good place to start if you’re rebuilding society.