My History of Weeping at Cinema

ET started my personal history of weeping at the cinema. I was sitting on the first row of a small theatre in a small town with a girl I had just got to know. We watched our necks stiff and our eyes wide open how a wrinkly alien was feeling home sick. When ET finally managed to get on his bicycle and start his long journey home cycling before the moon, teardrops ran on our cheeks. At this phase of life weeping was still civilised because my mother's teachings were fresh in mind and the handkerchief she had given me was ready in my pocket. I even lent the handkerchief to my friend which sealed our budding friendship.

As a tender teenager I went to see La Bamba with my friends. Already earlier the same afternoon I had heard that the main character dies at the end of the film, but as I was young and used to believe in warm-heartedness of people, I refused to believe this. Or at least not that someone would actually be so cruel as to give away the ending to a person who is just about to see the film. The result: my belly flipped and I wept loudly. My weeping continued the whole twenty minutes of the taxi ride home and still in my bed I was troubled by the young rocker's death.

Since then I have sobbed even more, although in a more discreet manner. (Well, if you can call a silently running nose discreet.) Films such as Crying Game, Breaking the Waves, Once Were Warriors, Awakenings, Born on the Fourth of July, and even Titanic have caused an outburst of feeling in me. I saw Titanic in France, but even the strange dubbed voice of Leonardo DiCaprio did not manage to dry my tears or turn my tears of sorrow to tears of laughter. I just get so emotional.

The highpoint of my career as a weeper has to be when I watched Born on the Fourth of July for the fourth time and started sobbing already at the very beginning of the film as the names began to appear on the screen. And I kept on sobbing until the film ended. Maybe films just remind me of something I have experienced in real life. At the latest, I lost my faith in the goodness of people and life when I had the La Bamba -experience. And what touched me in Born on the Fourth of July was the misleading of the main character in believing that the Vietnam War was a good and necessary cause.