by Rachel Withers

Created on: August 31, 2008

Sometimes we develop an emotional connection with a film and its characters before we are old enough even to understand it. The child inside me will always weep over the death of Charlotte in Charlotte's Web, or Mufasa in The Lion King; from an early age what brings us to tears in a film is the notion of loss and isolation. This law is echoed throughout Hollywood history when audiences were captivated by Rose's loss of Jack in Titanic, or when Antonio Banderas sat by Tom Hank's side as he faded away in Philadelphia.

Film's prey upon our most instinctual emotions - emotions that can be magnified on screen to make us understand ourselves more clearly, and empathise with fictional characters as though they were our friends. Many movie makers manipulate the senses with soppy scores and overacting to make their scenes tearjerkers (eg. Julianna Moore's infuriating performance in Far From Heaven). It is clear a director has done their job, however, when an audience is moved to tears by just one beautiful line perfectly placed in a film. I am often brought to tears by Luke Wilson's utterance "I am going to kill myself tomorrow" in The Royal Tenenbaums as Elliot Smith's 'Needle In The Hay' begins to play lightly in the background.
Wes Anderson's masterpiece is so confronting as a film due to its conveyance of human confusion and loss. You want to cry for every character; for their hopelessness and desperation and sometimes complete absence from reality. Anderson and Owen Wilson have brought a tearful light to the flaws of humanity with other films as well; The Life Aquatic about a newfound father/son relationship and The Darjeeling Limited brotherhood.
You cry for a black comedy with different tears to those shed over the deaths of cartoon animals in younger years. You cry not only for the characters on screen and their situations, but for yourself and all the ways you compare. You cry for all of the regrets and embarrassments that have developed in your life as well as for those ensuing on screen.
That being said, it is nice to marvel at the rawness of human emotion as well as its complexity. I am known to cry in films when very adult emotions are expressed in childlike simplicity. The innocence of characters such as Edward Scissorhands and Forrest Gump can sometimes express feelings often overlooked because we take them for granted. The universal sense of longing portrayed in films like these can make one cry simply out of understanding. Forrest placing his son's letter upon Jenny's grave, or Edward carving ice sculptures of a young Winona Ryder into the night sky, echo the importance of memory, love and acceptance; messages sometimes lost in stories more complex.

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