Tears and Fears

It’s been an enjoyable but emotional week for me where movies are concerned. Last night I cried at a film for the first time in ages. I’m not just talking that raw, swollen throat feeling, coupled with the kind of flimsy tears you can blink away before anybody notices, that happens all the time. Last night was an intense, two-tissue situation, I sobbed for ten minutes like a lost child and that’s most unusual. For me, it’s rare for a film to evoke that level of emotion unless it’s a documentary, so it always impresses me when they do.

I can only think of a handful of others that have had me in such convulsive floods of tears, and they’re a pretty random bunch that would probably make an interesting study for a psychologist. There was My Girl, which held a unique appeal to my pre-teen misfit years, and E.T. which has got me every time I’ve watched it since I was three years old. Then most recently, The Green Mile, which remains an infinite source of mockery for the friend who witnessed the uncharacteristically girly meltdown that the final execution scene caused me.

            Thankfully, this time I was alone, and the culprit was a DVD called Perfect Sense. It’s a love story set in the midst of a global pandemic of an apocalyptic disease. But it’s not the usual flesh eating bacteria, or flesh eating zombies, this virus robs the human race of its sensory perceptions, one by one. Each loss is preceded by a disturbing outburst of extreme emotion, starting with a deep spell of depression that signals the imminent loss of smell. Days or weeks later, an attack of paranoid fear and a ravenous hunger steals the sense of taste. Then, a violent rage brings on deafness, at which point the film becomes completely silent. Finally, an outpour of love is the last thing everyone experiences before they are rendered blind.

It sounds bleak, and I expected it to be, but it actually surprised me by being hauntingly beautiful as well. Rather than focusing solely on the devastation and the obvious difficulties brought about by the disease, it is as much about the human spirit and the human condition, and how life goes on even when the end is nigh. While we are shown coverage of the effects on a worldwide scale, it always comes back to the much more relatable story of two people (the beautiful Eva Green and perfection personified, Ewan McGregor) in backstreet Glasgow and how it affects them, so we see the contrast of the human race falling apart and coming together. When all their abilities are stripped away, all they own becomes useless, and all they do impossible, then all they have is each other. That’s what made me cry. Well, that and the terrible impending doom of knowing they would ultimately lose their sense of touch and the human race would all die the worst imaginable slow, tortuous, dark, silent and lonely death. It’s well worth seeing, but only if you’re prepared for the inevitable breakdown, both in the film and outside of it.

           

I also went to the cinema to see The Woman In Black, a good old fashioned dark, gothic horror designed to scare the pants off its audience rather than reduce them to tears, and it fulfils that aim pretty well. It had no blood or gore whatsoever, but enough eerie suspense, mysterious villagers, spooky settings and jumpy moments to seriously disrupt the heart rate. People in the audience actually screamed at several points, which I’ve never witnessed before and didn’t think really happened. The problem was, it made everyone else laugh, so all the tension and attention on the screen was immediately broken.

I think I’d have enjoyed the unsettling, ‘what’s behind the door?’ nature of it more if I’d watched that by myself too, even though it was the sort of film that makes walking to another room in your own house a testing experience. Unlike Perfect Sense, it had a surprise twist at the end that had everyone shouting ‘Noooo!’ at the screen for a different reason. But it was equally ambiguous in leaving the viewer wondering what would become of the characters that were left facing a grim future. Again, I'd recommend it, but only to the adrenaline junkies, and only if you can avoid a packed auditorium. It’s made me want to read the novel on which it was based, which I imagine will be infinitely scarier.

           All this evocative art has inspired me to experiment with my own writing and strive to achieve the difficult balance of tugging on the collective human heart without it feeling contrived and ruining the effect. One of my proudest moments came when I once made my mum cry with the first draft of a chapter from my book, as it proved that I could do it.  Incidentally, there’s only ever been one book that’s made me blub so pathetically, and that was The Amber Spyglass. If there are any mental health professionals reading, I’d be interested to hear your analysis.

If you’d like to see more of my writing, visit: http://www.shelleyirving.com, where I’ll be adding new short stories and articles soon.

Find me on Facebook for updates http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/pages/Shelley-Irving/227455587342847