10 Films It's Okay For A Guy To Cry At
Jul 01 '03 (Updated Jul 03 '04)
The Bottom Line Look ladies, we blokes do have a sensitive side. Now get off our backs will you?
It’s often said that we guys don’t get in touch with our softer, more effeminate sides enough, choosing to hide behind machismo posturing and flippant humour in order to cover up our emotions. To this, I have four words by means of response. Yeah. And. So. What. Bloody hell, only a couple of centuries ago men were rebuilding the world with their bare hands; fighting to the death in the coliseums; exploring corners of the earth so deadly that few have lived to tell the tale; and engaging in all out wars in the name of freedom. Do you think any of these people would have been caught dead wiping away floods of tears over a soap opera?
Just wouldn’t happen would it? And yet these days women the world over collectively tut and roll their eyeballs at the lack of compassion shown by men. So you want your bloke to act more like a woman do you? How about this, if you want to date someone who acts more like a girl, someone who understands your inner feelings and your wants and needs, then date someone of the same sex. Don’t start spouting off to us if we try to cling to our last remaining shreds of male rituals. As Tyler Durden puts it “We’re a nation of men raised by women”.
But, y’know, as much as we try not to show our innermost feelings, there’s no denying that on the odd occasion, we men have been known to get a lump in his throat: the sight of a pristine condition Ferrari being smashed and crushed into little pieces; a full pint of beer accidentally discarded all over the floor; a vital field goal missed in the dying seconds of the Superbowl… hell, it has been known that on the rare occasion a film has packed so much emotional punch on the sensitivity scales that it has genuinely moved us to the extent that we forget our manliness and allow ourselves a little sniffle or two.
So, in accordance, here are 10 instances from films which are all but certain to have your average male, no matter how tough they are on the exterior, blubbing like a bitch with a skinned knee:
American Beauty
After spending the entire movie beefing himself up and transforming into the kind of guy his daughters jailbait best friend would sleep with, suburban anybody Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) stares at a picture of his wife and child and realizes that for all of his efforts to make his life so much better, he’s had the potential for never-ending happiness from these two people all along, so distracted by their beauty that he doesn’t even notice the gun placed to the back of his head...
Betty Blue (37°2 Le Matin)
Dressed in women’s attire in order to avoid detection and suspicion, the estranged Zorg sneaks into Betty’s hospital ward and, witnessing her mentally deranged and masochistically mutilated limp body, defies every emotion in his body and delicately smothers her face with a pillow. Yeah, like you’d have the balls to do the same thing, ya coward.
Cinema Paridiso
Flaunting the strict censor laws of the local community, cinema owner Alfredo (Philippe Noiret) unleashes a montage of screen kisses to an open-mouthed auditorium. A stiff two fingers to draconian rules everywhere, a sly indictment of an overly censored society and a bloody good way to end a bloody good film.
The Crow
After finally defeating his nemesis Top Dollar (Michael Wincott), the man responsible for the brutal rape and death of his girlfriend Shelley, the undead Eric Draven (Brandon Lee) slumps against his own gravestone, finally allowed to rest in peace, his transition back into the land of the dead delayed only by the apparition of his life-long love appearing in front of him and planting one last kiss. “If the people we love are stolen from us, the way to have them live on is to never stop loving them. Buildings burn. People die. But real love lives forever” goes the voiceover as a warm and fuzzy feeling envelops you.
Edward Scissorhands
As our blade-fingered protagonist (Johnny Depp) delicately carves away at an ice sculpture, the angelic Kim (Winona Ryder) dances in the descending flakes. Visually arresting and almost dream-like in its execution, you’ll never be hard-pressed to find a more accurate image of what love is all about. Drop the macho attitude, you know you loved it.
Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain
Having searched for the infamous Bretodeau, the owner of a box containing childhood memoirs she finds stashed in her apartment wall, Amelie (Audrey Tautou) lures him into a phone box and watches as his boyhood memories come flooding back to him. And if that doesn’t get you dewy-eyed, then Amelie’s narration of the surrounding city to a local blind tramp, the result of which sees him bathed in a brilliant flash of light, almost certainly will.
Leaving Las Vegas
Drunk and on the brink of alcohol-related death in a seedy hotel room, Ben Sanderson (Nic Cage) weakly fumbles around his crotch in order for one last hit of sexual pleasure. Having tracked him down, mentally-and-physically-exhausted prostitute Sera (Elizabeth Shue) slowly moves his hand away and climbs on top, easing him through his dying moments and ending a whole films worth of tender but as yet unexplored love. As she climaxes, he shuffles from this mortal coil and she is left with nothing to do except hold his lifeless corpse for what seems like forever. That breaking sound you hear? That’s your heart.
Platoon
Whilst in the middle of a bloody gunfight, Sgt. Elias Grodin (Willem Dafoe) gets peppered with enemy fire, reaching for the heavens with both hands as the bullets rip into him. Makes whining like a little girl when you hit your finger with a hammer seem a bit pathetic. Which it is.
The Sixth Sense
No, not the last reel revelations, but the scene that directly proceeds it, namely the conversation that occurs between Cole and his long-suffering mother Lynn, in which he confesses to her about his spook-orientated eyesight, his proof coming in the form of a message from the other side from his dead grandmother: “She said you came to her where they buried her. Asked her a question. She said the answer is ‘Everyday’... What did you ask?” “Do I make her proud?” replies Lynn through a fountain of tears. Genuinely moving.
Terminator 2: Judgement Day
After defeating the liquid-like T-1000, the victorious but seriously mangled Ahnuld turns to a tearful John Connor and demands that he be lowered into a vat of lava, thus wiping out any evidence of his existence for good and ensuring the apocalyptic future never comes to be. Stony-faced and without emotion as he is disintegrated into nothingness, he raises a hand into the air and gives John a final thumbs up before submerging into the molten pit. “No, really, I have something stuck in my eye” you sniff to your equally watery-eyed mates.
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10 Moments That We Guys Just Don’t Get:
Bambi
Bambi’s mother, a cartoon creation, gets shot. Off-screen. Like this sort of thing doesn’t happen hundreds of times every bloody day. As Chandler from Friends so accurately put it “Yes, it was very upsetting when they stopped drawing the deer! See also: Simba’s fathers death in The Lion King
Beaches
Bette Midler singing. ‘Nuff said. Biatches, more like.
Dirty Dancing
“Nobody puts baby in the corner” squeaks the decidedly unmanly Johnny (Patrick Swayze) before hoisting said 'baby' up into the air, accompanied by the requisitely humdrum ‘uplifting’ soundtrack. Would have only worked had he rounded the maneuver off with a body slam onto the wooden floor.
Forrest Gump
Another dying girlfriend, another case of “you-got-what-you-deserved-you-silly-cow”. Had Gump’s missus been able to keep her legs together for five minutes and stopped loafing around with a load of no-good druggies then maybe she wouldn’t have caught AIDS in the first place.
My Girl
Macaulay Culkin gets stung to death. Cry? I bloody cheered.
Old Yeller
A dog dies. Okay, so dogs are cool, but so what if a fictitious mutt barks for the last time, shouldn’t you be happy that the mutt was finally out of its misery?
Patch Adams
The titular doctor (Robin Willams) convinces his by-the-book girlfriend to ditch her conventional healing ways and follow his lead. She ends up snuffing it. Serves her right for jumping on such a ridiculous bandwagon then, don’t it?
Steel Magnolia’s
Manipulative, over-the-top weepie from start to finish, but the funeral scene has got be the clincher. Yeah, the film has spent its whole story showing us what a ‘wonderful’ person this Shelby is, you really don’t need to spell it out for us.
Terms of Endearment
Look, the mother is a stubborn old cow, and the daughter is a spoilt little brat. They need their heads smacking together, simple as that.
Titanic
“I’ll never let go” blubs Rose (Kate Winslet) to her frozen lover Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio), seconds before doing exactly that and throwing him into the depths of the ocean. Jesus woman, you saved his sorry ass so many times what more did he want you to do? Now go and freeze your lips to a whistle, silly wench.
Note: it has been brought to my attention that a similarly-themed list was recently published in a recent edition of British film magazine “Empire”. I assure you that this is nothing more than a coincidence, given that I stopped reading this publication - now nothing more than a monthly Star Wars love-fest - a good two years ago. Check my entries if you wish, you won’t find any of them in there anyway, so to anyone wishing to bandy around accusations of plagiarism, and you know who you are, I present to you my two middle fingers
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Location: Peterborough, UK
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