Thursday, October 30, 2014

Tearjerkers? How So? (Essay by Bob Racine)



Without hesitation or qualification and with supreme satisfaction let me report that in my judgment the movie version of “The Fault in Our Stars (2 hrs & 6 min, color, 2014) could not be a better adaptation of the book authored by John Green and reviewed by me in the September 15 posting on this blog.  If you have not read that review, it would be wise to do so before proceeding further with this blog entry.  To put it in good slang terms, the makers of the film really “nailed” it.  The casting of Shailene Woodley as Hazel and Ansel Elgort as Augustus was an inspired choice.  The Director Josh Boone and the screenplay writers Scott Newstadter and Michael W. Weber are perfectly tuned in to the magic, the heartbeat and the dynamic of the novel.  It makes me wonder if Green and these movie makers collaborated from the very beginning, working as a team with one unified vision.  Not that I would be surprised; I cannot imagine how anyone could even begin to improve on that irresistible book and its superb, lifelike dialogue that, as I indicated before, has found a permanent place on my library shelf as well as a permanent spot in my heart.  If you have read the book, see the movie too.  If you have not read it, read it and then see the movie, or vice versa, whichever the case.  They reinforce each other. 

“Tearjerker this is not.”  Here I quote myself from that 9/15 write-up.  I still hold to that opinion.  Which brings me to my theme!

How do we define the term “tearjerker?”  Is it a reference to any motion picture that evokes tears?  Not by any means!

You can consult the dictionary for a definition of that label and what you get invariably is a moving entertainment that makes use of “excessive sentimentality” or some such phrase – something constructed specifically to incite you to get out the hankie or end up wishing you had brought one.  But a more appropriate research for meaning should be applied to the root word “jerk.”  The tears are allegedly being jerked out of you.  So how is that pointed, monosyllabic term defined?  “A sudden sharp pull, twist or start.”  A sudden motion!  A sudden movement producing a sudden aftereffect or fallout!  The giveaway modifier here is “sudden.”  A manipulation that takes the control of your emotions completely out of your hands by a swift grab!  An attack, if you please!  An assault on the tear ducts!

My mother was the first person in my life to demonstrate for me the interplay of watching motion pictures and weeping.  I remember especially when she and I, when I was maybe eight (early in World War II), watched a war romance called “Tender Comrade,” in which Ginger Rogers portrayed a war widow talking to her infant child upon the news of the husband/father’s demise overseas.  It was a kind of aria, brimming with sorrowful words and phrases, and it seemed to my very young mind to go on forever.  I think she was telling the kid, as he slept in the cradle, what she hoped someday to tell him for real and make him understand, about why a man with a family sometimes has to go to war and make the world safer for them and risk making the ultimate sacrifice. 

I was somewhat bored by all the talk.  It was not my kind of picture at that age.  But then my boredom gave way to distress, when all of a sudden my mother reached over, took my hand, clutched it tight, pulled it over into her lap, and turned on the tears, which she dabbed at with the handkerchief she retained in her other hand.  I felt somewhat embarrassed as well as unsettled to have her do that in the presence of other people watching the screen.  Obviously she was imagining that she might sooner or later lose my father, who was draft eligible at that time, and that I would then be all she had left.  (She never did, I am happy to report!)  My being an only child must have made that imaginary trip all the more intense for her.  I wanted ever so much to extract my hand from her tight grip, but I was afraid to try.  Though she indiscreetly did this without my permission, resisting her would have seemed to me at the time most disrespectful, and it was not as if we were alone.  Other viewers would be witness to my conduct.  So I sat there grinning and bearing it.  I chalked it up as one of the most agonizing movie viewings I had ever undertaken.  The world the film depicted and the one in which my mother vicariously participated was completely foreign to me.  The best thing about that flick for me, as I recall, is the fact that it did mercifully end.     

Tears are shed for any one or more of several reasons.  They can be an expression of, or a response, to: Sorrow; Loss; Grief; Shame; Anger; Pain; Affection; or Joy.  A good movie can evoke any or all of these emotions – to varying degrees, in small or abundant amounts.  Rarely do you hear anyone in the movie audience blubber or scream or squall or make notable tear-drenched sounds that impact upon the rest of the viewers.  In all likelihood the most you get, if the crying is picked up by your ear, is a sniffle or a quiet sob or a nose blow.  I suppose that most of the crying I have done over the long years while viewing (yes, I have a lot of my mother in me after all) has been of the silent variety.  I ooze the tears, my eyes water over, I may choke up slightly, but I never boo-hoo.  But whatever the outward manifestation, profuse or minute, crying for me during movie screening is generated by a strong identification with the struggle or the plight of one or more characters in the story. 

Few people go to the movies for the express purpose of dissolving into a crying fit.  Ordinarily they work up to a tearful point, when something they are viewing touches a certain chord inside of them in a way that they probably never expected.  It was, and is, clear to me that that was my mother’s experience on that day in her life and mine.  She used to view a lot of films, of various genres, and few of them ever grabbed hold of her as that one did.  Her experience was unplanned, whatever feminine predisposition to cry may have been hers.  There was no jerking.

A male friend of mine rather recently watched a motion picture that I recommended for him (and others), one that dealt with a family struggle, especially as it impacted upon the children.  It was one that had brought forth more than one instance of tears for me over several viewings of it.  (It has been said that men are less likely to dissolve into a flood or even choke up than women.  I think that is largely true in our American culture.   I must leave it to the behavioral sciences to postulate as to why.  It has to do with upbringing and psychological conditioning and stuff like that to be sure.  I get that in other countries it is often quite different.)  Well, my friend reported to me that before he got very far into the story, he made a vow to himself – a VOW, mind you! – that he would not cry, even as he began to sense that the family’s plight would invade his heart and stir things up.  He confessed his inbred resistance to crying at the movies and he promised himself before the end of the first reel that that resistance would prevail, as it was accustomed to doing.  Humbly he admitted, after the fact, when he gave report, that he could not keep the vow.  He was melted down by what he saw and heard.  His arrival at that moment of suds was the result of a slow, incremental process or dynamic.  He was ultimately surprised by his own capacity for tenderness.

That is what a first rate movie does.  It conditions us, as it exposes us to situations that we perceive as crucial and life-affirming, as the plot thickens.  A real tear-jerk-er is a film that is poorly conceived, manipulative, exploitative and patronizing.  One in which mature people sense very early that the film makers are attempting to set them up!  One in which the human material is so thin and fallacious and thickly, ridiculously sentimental that the response on the part of any self-respecting and intelligent viewer is one of either revulsion or a complete turn-off.  Only those of small mind and shallow perception would become emotional in such a case. 

It is all in the writing and in the eyes and ears and hearts of the audience.   Yes, I cried through the last half hour of “The Fault in Our Stars,” but it is no tear-jerker.   The life issues it examines have to do with living and dying at an early age, no measly subject, and that subject is treated with supreme care and with great soulful imagination.  Everyone should become familiar with it, and I do not very often say that about a movie or book or story I write about. 


To read other entries in my blog, please consult its website:  enspiritus.blogspot.com.  To learn about me consult on the website the blog entry for August 9, 2013.

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