Clapboard and... cry

“I’ll never understand why Kate had to die and we had to live. There’s no reason for it, I guess. Death’s just death, nobody understands it.”

                                                                                              Anne’s decision (2009)

Hello everyone! My name is Nora Huarte and i'm going to talk about cinema and how feelings, emotions and many more can be express through it. as pilar previously said, we'll talk about a different feeling each week. Enjoy!

Cinema is a parallel universe to life itself, a mirror of our world. Many things can be reflected on it, from the most little and insignificant problem of a rebellious teenager to the world’s biggest issues that worry society and government. Directors and producers look for a good story, a story that wakes up feelings inside the viewers: hapiness, impotence, wellfare or unease..., or, as this week we’re going to talk about, sadness.

When we watch a movie that makes us cry and people ask us: “Was it so sad?” we automaticly answer “yes”, without thinking if it’s really the correct answer. There are also happy endings that move us..

There are a lot of types of “sad” movies, but noone of them would be described as such. They are not “sad” movies but movies that cause sadness in those people who have the sensitivity enough to feel it. The images, the music –or the absence of it-, the script, the planes and, of course, a good performance of the actors are what make up a good scene that make this feeling born in the expectators’ hearts, that these feel that pressure on their chest and that tight sensation on their eyes when they know there is a tear on its way and they think: “I’m not gonna cry, I’m not gonna cry”.

What kind of films cause sadness? Films that deal with explosive subjects, important subjects, emotional subjects... from a human point of view, but not necessarily moral. Subjects that need to be seen from every single angle, every point of view, not only from the correct or accepted one, because people have always longed to know both sides of reality.

It’s not rare that these movies are asociated with subjects like death or illness. Both are subjects that people don’t like to talk about in real life, and that’s why they are reflected in cinema, and why people feel specially vulnerable when they watch them, becuase they fear everything is real. Nevertheless, these subjects are often shown from a close way, almost tangible, we feel them nearer us than they actually are, as if they could turn into something real from night to morning, and it may be the fear or, more probably, the powerlessness, what causes that shattering in which that “I’m not gonna cry, I’m not gonna cry” becomes, with a great sob, a “I’m crying, I’m crying”.

And that’s why, generally, movies “based on real facts” are those that cause this feeling of sadness, sadness to know, or to remember, that they were facts that happened in this world many or not so many years ago, things that were good or bad, things that can’t be errased, things that are there and will remain there forever. But not only things about the past, also things about the present, subjects that are out there nowadays, subjects to which we turn a deaf ear to, we don’t want to know anything because they are so dangerous, awful or, simply, sad to bear with, to treat them, to understand them.

            There’s a separation of this type of films. I’ll put some examples:

            PAST:
            -  Historic: Yesteryear wars (Troy, King Arthur...), First and Second World War (Pearl Harbour) and the most atractive of all –and maybe because it was the most terrific one-, the Holocaust (Schindler’s list, Sophie’s decision...)

-  Anecdotical: Titanic, 11s...

PRESENT:
-  Nowadays subjects: Death and illness (Mar Adentro, Anne’s decision, The elephant man...)

Finally, I must add something.

Many of these “sad” movies involve a subject that it’s, nowadays, compulsory in almost every film: love.

            And this is another big worldwide topic that goes directly to the heart and causes such a variety of feelings that it’s incorrect to mention just one. A one-sided love, an unrequited love, an impossible love, the separation of your love, the distance... are, maybe, the most sad nowadays subjects.

            Why?

Well, maybe because of the opposite of what I have just said. Maybe because it is something so close to us that impacts us on such a special and direct form.

What do you think?

Nora Huarte Castro
35 ways of silent scream
Aka: how to express onself through...
cinema