One thing that's been -- not bothering me, but eating away at me just a little bit -- is the role my emotional response played in my naming The Whale my best of 2022. Crying in a movie is certainly an indication that it's doing something for/to you, but it may just be proof of successful emotional manipulation, not laudatory filmmaking. You can cry at a movie that doesn't have much in the way of technique, and sometimes you can hate yourself after the fact for crying.
"Manipulation" is a problematic word when it comes to movies. It is almost always a critique when you say that something or someone "manipulated" you, but I kind of feel like manipulation is the goal of any filmmaker -- any artist, really. If you're an artist, the job entails taking someone who may not ordinarily be inclined to see the world the way you do, and using the skills at your disposal to manipulate them into this new perspective -- or so you hope. Anyway, I think there's a difference between using techniques that could be described as manipulation, and the act of being manipulative.
I didn't get to see The Whale a second time before selecting it as my #1, to see how much more it may have been than the emotional impact it had on me, and indeed, whether it needed to be any more than that to be a contender.
But I did get to do this last year, when I selected Our Friend as my #1 movie -- another film that might not be considered technically accomplished, deriving its power purely from the emotions it generated in me. (Though with The Whale, you could certainly argue that Brendan Fraser's makeup and fat suit are a technical achievement worth acknowledging, though obviously not at a level that factors in to best of the year considerations.) Our Friend may have only made me cry more on my second viewing than it did on my first, so that viewing confirmed it was my slam dunk #1.
But why are tears such an influencing factor for us? Surely crying is not a desired outcome every time we go to the movies. I suspect some people might have been disappointed if they ended up crying during Top Gun: Maverick. (Though maybe some people actually did cry, since most Hollywood movies try to tug at your heartstrings at least a little.)
I'm not going explore today why crying at the movies is so fundamentally gratifying -- there are probably both pat and profound answers to this, but also the answers are pretty obvious. We want art to make us feel, and crying is probably the most genuine and involuntary expression of that feeling.
Instead, I'm interested in how many of my past #1s were movies where I cried.
Because there's one thing a movie where you cry usually does for you: it sets the experience apart from your other viewings. I suppose how much it sets it apart is a function of how easily you cry. For me, I feel myself getting emotional enough to potentially cry, if I pushed it, in about ten movies a year. In half of those at most are there actual waterworks. (I'm not going to do the math, but I did feel tears welling up in four other movies in this year's top ten. None broke through like in The Whale.)
Now let's see how many waterworks there were in my past #1s:
1996 - Looking for Richard - Did not cry
1997 - Titanic - Cried
1998 - Happiness - Did not cry
1999 - Run Lola Run - Did not cry (though I've written subsequently about getting teary when I watch it now)
2000 - Hamlet - Did not cry
2001 - Gosford Park - Did not cry
2002 - Adaptation - Did not cry
2003 - Lost in Translation - Did not cry
2004 - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - Did not cry
2005 - Hustle & Flow - Did not cry
2006 - Children of Men - Did not cry
2007 - There Will Be Blood - Did not cry
2008 - The Wrestler - Did not cry
2009 - Moon - Did not cry
2010 - 127 Hours - Cried
2011 - A Separation - Did not cry
2012 - Ruby Sparks - Did not cry
2013 - Beyond the Hills - Did not cry
2014 - Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) - Did not cry
2015 - Inside Out - Cried
2016 - Toni Erdmann - Cried
2017 - A Ghost Story - Cried
2018 - First Reformed - Did not cry
2019 - Parasite - Did not cry
2020 - I'm Thinking of Ending Things - Did not cry
2021 - Our Friend - Cried
2022 - The Whale - Cried
Well these results are quite interesting, and they may reflect changes in me as a viewer, changes in what I'm looking for in a movie, as I've grown older.
I never would have guessed, before doing this exercise, that I didn't shed a tear in 13 of the first 14 movies I named #1. That's hugely statistically significant.
And it's not like I hadn't recognized how a good cry impacts my experience of a movie. I was a wet mess during my Titanic viewing and that was only my second #1 ever.
Then a dozen straight years without shedding a single tear. Not one.
Oh I likely cried in other movies those years. I'm not a monster. But having cried did not artificially boost the movie, or at least not enough to take out a movie ahead of it that had other things that spoke to me more.
And it's not like I didn't name any movies #1 that might have made someone cry. I could envision someone having that reaction to Lost in Translation, Eternal Sunshine or The Wrestler, just to name three. I just didn't happen to cry in them, though they obviously affected me deeply.
When my tear ducts began leaking at the end of 127 Hours, though, maybe it reminded me of the way a good cry purifies you at the end of a truly engrossing movie experience. I'm wondering if that's what boosted this one to #1, even though history has elevated three other movies from that year (Tangled, Rabbit Hole and The Social Network) ahead of it. Those movies all finished in my top four for the decade, while 127 Hours settled for a still very impressive 17th.
But it wasn't just the tears in 127 Hours that sealed the deal, because I also cried in Tangled and Rabbit Hole. Rabbit Hole was only barely in my top ten that year, though obviously my opinion of it has skyrocketed since.
But maybe this whole "crying in your #1 movie" thing was still new to me and I didn't know how to properly calculate its impact on me. And it wasn't ready to stay just yet. From 2011 to 2014, my next four #1s featured no tears.
Then the floodgates opened with Inside Out and they haven't really closed since. My three #1s from 2015 to 2017 all provoked tears, culminating in a totally surprise bout of weeping at the final shot of A Ghost Story. After three more dry years, I've cried again the past two.
Overall that's still only seven times crying in a #1 movie, out of 27 total #1s. But that's six in the last 13, nearly half.
There's a theory that when you become a parent, you are more in touch with your emotions than you were previously. That seems hard to believe on the one hand, since there are a lot of really emotional teenagers and twentysomethings out there.
I think it's that the sorts of things that make you cry change. Whereas once you were crying over being dumped, now art strikes you with the ways it presents the fragility of life, the ways people show each other unexpected emotional generosity, that sort of thing. And I also think you are more likely to cry out of joy when you're older. I reckon that what some people call "spectacle tears" -- an involuntary emotional reaction to just seeing something big and wondrous on screen -- also do not blossom until you're older and wiser.
Well, the parent theory really resonates with me. See, my first son was born in 2010, just three months before I saw 127 Hours. Since then, my favorite film of the year has made me cry almost half the time.
I do want to continue to have dry years though.
I like to think that in the coming years, my mind will still be blown by some kind of speculative sci-fi, or a movie with outrageous technique, or a script so clever that its sheer brilliance has to be rewarded. I don't want to be the person who is always giving my #1 to a movie about a woman dying of cancer or a man who is trying to reconnect with his daughter before he succumbs to heart disease.
I guess maybe the best possible #1 is a speculative science fiction film with outrageous technique that has the best script I've ever witnessed -- and also makes me cry.
The start of each year is a time of endless cinematic optimism, and maybe the film I've just described will be my #1 of 2023.
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