On Crying.

Tom Cruise breaks down in Paul Thomas Anderson's “magnolia”

Tom Cruise breaks down in Paul Thomas Anderson's “magnolia”

Brilliant filmmaker and Twitter mind Kyle Alex Brett (@kyalbr on Twitter) and filmmaking genius Abbas Kiarostami are and were ( In Kiarostami's case) the kind of people that stir in other people what they believe they’ve forgotten. You may have noted it, you’ve definitely seen or observed what it is they display in their one-of-a-kind focus, but it’s not until you see it from their own uniquely esoteric angle that you recognize all that you observed but forgotten, simply because they can see it real time in moment, and recognize and relay as much almost as if they’ve frozen the thing in time to observe and analyze, to feel…such is their focus, their gift. It’s an example of one of the foundational aspects of great directors to me to find the universality in the esoteric. This time it this connection was excavated by a small Twitter thread from Kyle where he elaborated amd theorized about our emotive connection to film after reading a passage from Kiarostami's book. The particular passage's subject; editing, kyle’s focus; crying as a primal urge. Kiarostami's and subsequently Kyle's words got me to thinking about crying, and then to some extent about Men crying. About its power, about when, about why, and about whom. In Kiarostami's book “Lessons with Kiarostami”. The passage read “I keep what I think is good and I throw away everything else. Sometimes the best thing is to remove a shot, even one you have worked hard on, because it turns out to be foreign to everything around it. I might discard a moment when an actors performance is too powerful, or a particularly interesting improvised line or interaction between two character emerges. These are the kinds of things that can distract an audience and overwhelm a film.” Skipping forward he goes on to say “The most effective tear doesn't run down the cheek it glistens in the eye”. In its entirety its a powerful statement not only in its simplicity, but in how it speaks to Kiarostami's style and exemplifies how in the most classical sense of the word Kiarostami is an autuer. There are very few filmmakers whose films are quite singularly their own as Kiarostami, very few who in this very collaborative field of work can say their fingerprint is so acutely successful, not so much for dollars and cents as for nailing down the most detailed minutae of the human experience. I then got to thinking about whether or not for me it is more moving to watch people hold back tears, or let them go. That got me to thinking about whom, and that got me to thinking about the “why's", my answer - typical of my median nature was “it depends”, and then it was also that that “depends” has alot to do with socialization, and I suspect I’m not alone. It’s definitely nobody's secret that men are conditioned far than women to repress emotions, especially crying, and even then 0ne would have to take in and assume cultural differences. Me being an African American makes my experience of what effects me different than what effects Kiarostami, even while there are universal aspects that undoubtedly connect and effect all of us. In that spirit I find what makes men cry, and even moreso men crying 9n screen particularly interesting because in my mind it’s is so rare, far too rare indeed to think of men in real life or thusly film as somewhat of a representation of aspects of human life- giving themselves over to and allowing themselves the sort of catharsis that comes from actually crying rather than the usual which is the form of repression that Kyle would allude to later in his thread, and that to some extent represents itself in Kiarostami's words.

When I thought about all the films I could recall where men do some version of crying, even looking up others so I could find more and recall the emotions- the most effective ones had a range of depictions and looks, and rightfully so because the key words in what Kiarostami says are “turns out to be foreign to everything around it". For instance in the seminal scene from “Get Out” when Daniel Kaluuya's Chris Washington is first introduced to Missy Armitage's (Catherine Keener) “Therapy” it would've been absolutely distracting to have him ugly cry, rather than well up, but tears do roll down his cheek even as he tries to hold them back, but as Kiarostami alludes to the power begins at the glistening of the eye. It alludes to the power of this story and the hold it has on Chris. He could very well have cried and cried hard, but that would displace the power and that would be release and release is not about relinquishing power, it’s about letting go to redistribute it somewhere else.. namely back into self rather than the people or things which hold power over us. But there is also the fact that despite his efforts the the tear comes rolling down the cheek anyway, that is powerlessness. The memory of his mother holds power over Chris, and Keener's Missy understands this and being who she is uses it to hold power over him as well. To have him let go would then not only be distracting, but wrong for the scene.

Where it gets interesting is when you change the dynamics around anyone scene regardless of gender. Now, the first thing that popped in my head reading the quote was the power of watching Tom Hanks absolutely lose it over a damn volleyball in “Castaway”. On its face it sounds silly and like the last thing one would expect any man to cry over, but it is the conditions that lead up to it that make it at home with itself as the only and best representation of that primal urge, and it is one of the most timeless scenes in movie history. The loss of “Wilson” would absolutely have been dimmed by merely having Hanks merely well up rather than go full on ugly cry - but I digress… I decided to go elsewhere and revisit a scene I hadn’t seen in forever because the movie (Good Will Hunting ) was a movie I watched way too much when I was younger, and I had some feeling of unnerving dread that if I watched it again it would not age well… I watched the scene on YouTube for research and well, I need to re-watch this movie. While I don’t know about how the rest of the movie will ultimately come off, the “It’s not your fault” scene was intensely effective, and every bit as powerful and arresting as when I first saw it. Re-watching the scene with none of the erected context that led to it, I somehow still ended up legit crying…not a lump in the throat, not a welling up the eyes, a pure unadulterated holding my hand over my mouth ugly cry…

The dynamics of the scene are about the dynamics of interpersonal relationships between men, fathers and sons and friends. It calls forth my own memories of my relationship with my father, even while I did not endure that type of abuse, the artiface of the conditions do not matter simply the emotional underpinnings. The scene is almost a functioning call and response that forces us to look at the space we hold for each other to be each other, to be our most authentic selves. What Robin does for Matt, what Sean does for Will, and the movie for us is provide catharsis by way of a subjective experience that connects objectively. The dynamics of what makes us cry and subsequently (being that we are all built on such unique and yet similar foundations) what might qualify as the most brilliant and useful technique in getting us and let’s face it especially men - to break our generally well guarded fortresses of composure and facade is endlessly fascinating to me, and of course it would be Kiarostami, whose career put human emotion under a cinematic microscope, who would offer such an audaciously concise formulation on the most powerful form of said emotion while still allowing for a complexity of the factors put together to create it, all while outlining a simplicity to his own processes. Mine own most powerful moments align with those stated in Dolf Zillman's “Excitation Transfer Theory”. In it Zillman goes on to provide the pathway to the emotive connective tissue between us and the movies that bring out such strong and intense feelings in us. He explains what sets us up; “At one time or another, everybody seems to have experienced the extraordinary intensity of frustration after rousing efforts, of joy upon the sudden resolution of nagging annoyances, of gaiety after unfounded apprehensions, or for that matter, of sexual pleasures in making up after acute conflict.” What knocks us down; “Excitation in response to particular stimuli…is bound to enter into subsequent experiences…Moreover, depending on the strength of the initial excitatory reaction and the time, separation of emotions elicited at later times, residual excitation may intensify experiences further down the line.” and why it sticks with us after; “Emotions evoked in actuality by personal success or failure are usually allowed to run their course. A person, after achieving an important goal, may be ecstatic for minutes and jubilant for hours. Alternatively, a grievous experience may foster despair or sadness that similarly persists for comparatively long periods of time”.

Anna Karina's tearing up at the sight of Renée Jeanne Falconetti's performance as Joan of Arc in Carl Dreyer's is both a perfect example of the exact power Kiarostami alludes to, and a fascinating Russian Nesting Doll of the factors that exist to create our relationship to emotive catharsis and release through movie going. Does Karina see herself in Joan? Probably not, does she recognize in the aesthetics of Joan’s pain a certain appeal to her own, maybe? Whatever the reason Anna's own release as a response to stimuli that stimulated her own subjective experience, is so near objectively powerful that it itself became as recognizable and powerful a moment as the film it pays homage to and the particular scene that she was watching. The experience so relatable watching it becomes an experience itself. Nonetheless the factors around it that lead up to it , our own collective recognition, be it conscious or not that’s the killer knockdown, that’s the “Love TKO”. Much like a TKO it’s the build up that matters, the set ups, the small build-up of hits to the body, and wear on the mind that setup the knockout. Whether it’s an aggressively ugly cry or a suspended tear in the corner of the eye, it is what the storytelling has set up before that matters most. It’s the “everything around it" that Kiarostami spoke to. When I watch “Castaway” it’s the everything around Hanks endearing relationship with an inanimate object that became the embodiment of Hanks journey, and a security blanket for his feelings of intense isolation and loneliness that created a directline of passage for which the tears could fall down. The sight of watching all that float away when we do not yet know if he's even going to make it, finds it own subjective nesting place in the cradles of our own recognition of feelings of abandonment, loss, loneliness, and fear. The cry itself is in my opinion not so much a choice as it is itself an almost involuntary and intrusive response. The director is after all an audience member as well, and the actor and director are actively, simultaneously conjuring, responding and creating the stimuli by which they will both respond to in a way that I believe provided them with their own sense of catharsis and release consciously or not. The result is Hanks breaking completely down, and Zemeckis recognizing the moment itself as a proper realization of the created moment by way of his response to it, his own version of “Kiarostami's “what he thinks is good” turns out to be a pretty universal experience of good, hell..GREAT.

The socialization of Men to view crying as directly associated with femininity and femininity itself as an state of inferior otherness rather than a natural aspect of our complex and complete humanity leaves men at an interesting interaction of the conversation because any peek into an acting class will demonstrate how much more difficult it seems to be for men to cry on cue, and to properly crest and create within themselves the conditions that will allow them to act in such a way that it feels authentic. That sits parallel to the male audience member who may find repulsion at the sight of the the breakdown of the social barriers that protect them from the social rot of such a gross display of femininity. But the body and mind respond nonetheless, because the body and mind- even the socialized mind -subconsciously recognize what we may choose to repress. That being the case I ask myself how much of Kiarostami's feelings on the superiority of that particular type of display of emotion have to do with his own unique cultural socialization? Even while also being aware many a woman might also find this to be the superior form of emotional display on screen. The Conversation in my head could go on and on deeper and deeper, but ultimately what works on screen, what surpasses the realm of the superficial emotion, and steps beyond the border of profound emotional content as it regards one of the most fascinating and singular aspects of humanity - the ability to cry is endlessly complex and I feel exactly as Kiarostami feels in regards to getting there as an actor, as a director, and as an audience member keep and hold onto what is good and throw away everything else.