Theatre of Blub
Sometimes really weird stuff makes you cry at the movies.
What makes you cry at movies?
There’s the obvious factor of identifying with the people on screen and getting caught up in their big sad problems. But for me there’s another element that has less to do with characterisation or plot mechanics, and which tends to reduce me to tears at really inappropriate moments. Such as when Sister Street Fighter kicks a man so hard that his brains come out of his nose, or when Enzo G. Castellari’s original Inglorious Bastards indulge in a particularly vigorous and satisfying bout of Nazi massacring, the admission of which recently caused my podcast co-host, Dan White, to refer to me as a “broken toy”. He’s not wrong, but I put these bouts of blubbing down to something more than faulty wiring, something that can strike at the most inappropriate moments and turn me into an embarrassing wreck.
But first, let’s talk about Spacehog. Spacehog were one of the British bands – the other being the ghastly Bush – that the American people enrolled to halt the demise of the Alternative Rock Nation back in the late ‘90s, following the shotgun aided demise of the movement’s reluctant figurehead. Devoid of any suspicious smelling European originality, these plucky boys were chosen to stick their digits in the bulging dyke of grunge, and to hold back the waters that would sweep the Lollapalooza generation into a lifetime of proper employment. In return they would be promised riches, ridicule at home, and that one of them would be allowed to briefly date Liv Tyler. Nothing came out of this international agreement looking good, least of all music.
Which means that when I went to see Guardians of the Galaxy 3 the other day, and recognised the opening, Penguin Café Orchestra sampling chirp of Spacehog’s solitary hit ‘In the Meantime’, I harrumphed loudly and inwardly with such force that it wobbled my spleen. I’m a terrible snob about the songs that get used in films, and I’m often narked at the deployment of thuddingly obvious needle drops to underscore the onscreen action. It looked like James Gunn – a director whose main weakness is his inability to resist taking a sledgehammer to the viewer’s emotions - was going to go straight into that particular wall. Then the airlock door opened, revealing the Guardians in their correspondingly coloured space suits, time slowed, the giant riff kicked in and *sniff* THEY’RE FLYING IN SPACE AND *sniff* I’M GOING TO… I’M GOING TO… GAHHH DON’T LOOK AT ME!
That it was a James Gunn film that precipitated this Niagara of snivelling is interesting. As I mentioned above, Gunn is a director that will do anything short of bursting into the cinema and pointing a gun at people in order to get an emotional reaction to his work, and his latest is laden with signature bombast. His shameless heartstring twanging was enough to capsize the last instalment in the series, which was so filled with out of the blue father and son revelations that by the end it resembled a vigorous therapy session in an upmarket disco. Thankfully the new Guardians… earns most of its emotional beats, but it wasn’t any of the more obvious manipulations that moved me (OK, maybe some of the animal stuff) but a moment where the combination of special effects, costume design, direction, and all the matter that creates the movies came together and made something impossible happen.
This isn’t to do with the quality of the up-to-date special effects either. It’s not simply an awed response to a particularly convincing illusion. If it was, I wouldn’t have had similar reactions to films such as Mario Bava’s Hercules in the Haunted World (1961), or even Ralph Bakshi’s shonky old Lord of the Rings (1978). It has to do, I think, with the combination of ‘cheap’ modes of storytelling – sci-fi, horror etc - directorial style, and an essential generosity that exists among fans and creators of genre fare. We see it, we see the hand that makes it and we recognise the hand as our own.
While it’s this sense of a shared spirit at work that sets me off down the trail of tears, it’s an aesthetic reaction as well. My bouts of blubbing often mark the point where the film seems to come together somehow. Where it’s premise – which has been inferred by everything from the poster outside the cinema, to what you’ve heard about it, to what genre it sits in – is delivered on and the film becomes more than just a bundle of actors and props. This often happens at times of action. The Inglorious Bastards (1978) scene mentioned above is a prime example. A low-budget Italian World War 2 movie that leaps into life and makes me cry tears of pure pulpy joy when the film really delivers and the titular Bastards start properly killing fucking Nazis. There’s an irresponsibility to it, like the film has been let off the chain and is finally getting some action. Often, it’s that overwhelming feeling of freedom that turns this hardened cynic into a blubbing mess.
But ‘freedom’ doesn’t have to mean ‘fun’. Movies can deliver on a far dourer premise and elicit the same response. Panos Cosmatos’s Mandy (2018) is a film with a lot of emotional resonance for me. Who I was when I saw it and the power of its vision combining in the cinema was one of the most extraordinary and moving artistic experiences I’ve ever had. I also have to ration watching it because I’m a wet mess the moment the credits come up. Its mixture of weaponised pathos, cathartic violence and a suppurating sadness perfectly calibrated to send me into the deep dark places. The transcendence in this case is earthier. The cinematic equivalent of pulling a face like you’ve stepped on a piece of Lego in bare feet when a ridiculously heavy riff comes hammering down. More annihilating than uplifting, but the result is the same: tears a’sodding plenty and total embarrassment for anyone sitting next to me.
None of this is to disparage the far more reasonable reaction of simply crying when something sad happens. Far from it. A broken toy I may be, but I’m no robot and I love a good tearjerker as much as anyone. But don’t you reckon that the end of Beaches would be so much more effective if Bette Midler was stabbing an SS officer in the throat?
