A Crying Game

Before you get excited, no I haven't made it with a chick that turned out to be a man. (boo) I mean, man, what a great film. (yay)

Anyway, Yesterday I was going to do a piece on my influences in comics, that I will still do, but cannot be bothered doing now or later.

Instead I watched Gran Torino, and something unexpected happened to me. At the end, I found myself on the verge of tears and wanting to go out to the garage and sob uncontrollably.

Any sript editor, screenwriter, director or movie goer wouldn't see anything particularly emotional about Gran Torino that I should cry at that and not say every single movie someone could go to including 'The Devil Wears Prada' when Ann Hathaway discovers her nose has it's own post code.

But really there are only three films I can recall that made me cry in my lifetime.

1. Harry and the Hendersons (which to this day I don't understand, but at age 6 I felt really sorry for the sasquatch hunting cryptozoologist and had a cry for him because everyone thought he was crazy).
2. Life is Beautiful (which only a cold hearted robot or a white supremecist nazi wouldn't cry at)
3. Gran Torino.

So number 2 is probably the only one that isn't a bizarre statistical outlier. I think for me Gran Torino just resonated with me personally and was a subtly brilliant performance by Clint Eastwood, who in my view is quickly becoming the best director since Kubrick and perhaps the greatest man in hollywood, a man that could only have been bested if Kubrick and Robert De Nero where one and the same person.

Anyway Life is Beautiful, I feel was not like Gran Torino because the full impact was felt in a very calculated way, right when everyone was supposed to feel it and created that crystal like clarity of just what had been achieved and what had subsequently been lost.

If you haven't seen it yet, shame on you (or alternately, good on you for not only learning to read already after being born after Life is Beautiful, but actually tuning into this blog what with it's gratuitous use of fuck, cunt, shit, arsehole, douchebag and Ann Hathaway).

But basically the first hour is made so you fall in love with Roberto Begninni's character and just wish you could go back to italy in the days of innocence.
Then suddenly, these characters you love are hauled off to the Nazi death camps, and you watch in horror as suddenly these people are plunged into the unmittigated horror of liquifying the Jewish problem. Except for the kid it is mittigated because the father manages to not only survive life in the concentration camp but conceal the existence of his child, sacrifice food and convince the kid its all some kind of game show.

And he nearly gets away with it too, except that his wife who could have been safe and sound put herself in the concentration camp and this indirectly leads to the fathers death.

All of which the kid doesn't understand at all because amazingly his innocence has been preserved in a place where children were literally destroyed and so the kid celebrates completely unnaware that he has lost the greatest father any kid could ever have.

And so you are supposed to cry right then and there.

A text synopses will perhaps ruin the story for you whilst not doing it justice. But for me, being able to make a complete stranger in the audience resonate as such is the holy grail of writing.

Much like Alan Moore's guide to writing comics puts it, you probably don't know anything useful about your audience except that they are a thinking feeling human being. So if you find something funny chances are somebody else will too, and if you find something moving chances are somebody else will too.

But no matter how good you get at empathising, pushing people to emotional extremes is something you can never 'know' as such.

All that said, to do it in film is where you have sound, lighting, motion, voice and everything to help that empathy along. To do it in comics is nothing short of complete mastery.

I know in fowp I have tried clumsily and rather obtusely to make people feel certain feelings that I regard as the entire reason for why I felt compelled to write it. I want the audience to empathise with me. I suspect it may be a bit too cliched and have a bit too prolonged a build up to actually succeed but I can't wait to test it out.

In comics though, I think Alan Moore came closest to really moving me in Watchmen with roujach's final fate, and I suspect the movie will try and ham it up, even though from what I gather they have already miss cast him and misinterpreted the character, I don't intend to see Watchmen but would urge you to read the comic.

Watchmen is incorrectly labelled as the most celebrated comic of all time, this is alas an error given from a western bias. The most loved comic of all time in the world would have to be 'Slam Dunk' by Takeo Inoeu, a comic that many in the west would perhaps fail to comprehend which is why it is unparrallaled.

I don't think I have ever read anything ever that made me feel more, nor have I seen any movies for that matter, than Slam Dunk. And I read an english translation. I broke down crying when Specs hit the three to send Shohoku through to the national championships. This was bad because I read it in Borders.

It still however gets me in its masterful execution after two, three... I don't know how many readings.

I will say this though, there is perhaps no reading experience that will ever rival Slam Dunk in my mind. Many of the classics I haven't read though, so who knows, maybe Watership DOwn is truly great.

That's all I have to say on this now. Back to work.