There are certain scenes in movies, TV shows and books that are designed to evoke tears in the viewer/reader. When on BTVS Buffy finds her mother’s body, for example. Or Rose letting go of Jack towards the end of Titanic, or the deaths in Grave of the Fireflies. If you cried over these scenes, no one is surprised.
But sometimes scenes catch you by surprise when they prompt waterworks. Some of them aren’t even particularly sad, yet you find yourself tearing up anyway.
For me three come to mind:
At the very end of the first Harry Potter tale, Dumbledore tells the students that it takes courage to stand up to your enemies…but a great deal more to stand up to your friends. For reasons I’ve never quite determined, this scene made me cry both when I read it and watched it in the movie.
In the show Dirt, about a tabloid magazine, the main character’s best friend had a severe mental illness. At some point during the show he adopts a kitten, and he hallucinates that the feline can talk to him. Later on, he finally agrees to get help, and begins to take medication to control his hallucinations. As he’s beginning to take the pills, he tearfully apologizes to the kitten because they’re not going to be able to have two-way conversations any more.
During an episode of Third Watch there’s a riot in the city, and several rioters begin to attack a police cruiser. Another cop comes to the officer’s rescue…but he refuses to leave the cruiser after she gets him out of it. “I can’t leave my partner!” he yells, pushing his way back through the mob. Once he does, the back end of the cruiser, which had been blocked by bodies, is revealed, and you see the words “Canine Unit” a couple of seconds before he retrieves his four-footed partner. Fortunately all three cops are able to safely depart in the second officer’s vehicle.
Toward the end of the movie Creed, Adonis explains his motivation for boxing. It’s just one brief sentence and the actor delivered it without fanfare. But I cried all the same.
Pitbulls and Perogies. An episode where there was a major storm and the daughter was left alone to deal with the flooding and she and her sister were left alone to move the dogs because none of the perogies showed up. Later on she gathers them all under a bridge and tells them all how let down she felt. I don’t think I was supposed to cry but I did.
I know it isn’t Perogies but that’s how my hard-of-hearing self heard it and I choose to hold out hope of a Cooking Channel and Animal Planet mashup.
Jack Nicholson’s speech at the end of ‘As Good As It Gets’. I’m a big Nicholson fan so have recently been going through his repertoire of movies. He’s a talented actor that can do both ends of the scale but its his humour and devilish charm that’s always appealed most, would love to be able to achieve that same vibe. But anyway, yeah, I watched this film for the first time last month and was smiling throughout but then the last scene surprisingly got me as Nicholson delivers his lines with perfect precision and shows his softer side. Great movie if you haven’t seen it.
The Two Towers: When the elves arrive to help out at Helm’s Deep and when Pippin lights the beacon and all the other beacons light up one after another.
The final dance scene in The Full Monty. There’s just something so sweet and triumphant about it. I’ve probably seen it close to fifty times and it never fails to make my heart and eyes swell.
That five-or-ten-minute scene in Groundhog Day when Phil repeatedly tries (and fails) to save the old homeless man. It takes that to finally make Phil realize he’s not a god after all.
The “Valse Triste” section of Allegro non Troppo. A cat walks through the ruins of a home, remembering the family that lived there. The cat keeps getting caught up in the happy memories only to have them fade away, leaving only the ruins again. At the end the cat itself fades away and a digger approaches to destroy what’s left of the derelict building.
Always guaranteed to turn me into a soggy mess no matter how many times I watch it.
I never expected to cry when I saw Pretty in Pink, but toward the end when the Duckman steps from behind the column at the entrance to the prom … to be there for Andie … that scene makes me cry every single time I watch the movie.
Another surprise was The Muppet Movie. When Kermit sang The Rainbow Connection I started crying. That song still brings tears to my eyes any time I hear it.
Conversely, I had expected to cry all through Schindler’s List, but remained dry-eyed … until the very end, when the relatives were placing the stones. Then I started sobbing so hard I couldn’t leave my seat for about five minutes.
The one that gets me is just before that, when Schindler looks at his car, his watch, etc., and realizes that he had resources that could have saved even more Jewish lives.
I don’t recall tearing up when I originally read this or watched the movie. But recently I’ve started reading HP aloud to my pre-teens each night and we just finished book 1 last week, and damn it if I didn’t get all teary and choked up at this part. My kids were like, “What’s wrong with Daddy?”
The other one that came to mind - and maybe it’s not a surprise - is the end of Toy Story 3. Not when they’re all holding hands in the incinerator, but the very last scene where Andy is getting ready to go off to college and leaving his toys behind with their new owner. Really, as a parent, any scene that dwells on kids growing up and moving on has the potential to destroy me.
I watched The Lion King with my kids for the first time. I had remembered that movie as funny, not sad! But watching Mufasa struggling to save Simba while my son was holding me because he was scarred . . .
I dunno if it’s unexpectedly crying or just over the top crying but an old old tv special. Garfield’s nine lives or something like that. One of his lives is a beautiful white cat who just…grows old and dies peacefully. I swear to god, I was bawling my damn eyes out.
Dammit I just found it on Youtubeand watched it. Now I’m crying.
