Top 5 touching films: if you want to cry
Do you ever find yourself in a mood where you want to achieve some kind of soul-touching film? It happens to me. It so happens that I don’t like to laugh a lot when watching movies, nor do I like rom-coms. I love drama, thrillers, sometimes horror suits the mood.
But there is a special state in which my selection of films that turn my soul inside out helps me. I’m sharing.
Top 5 touching films
Fifth place. “Dead Poets Society.”
1989, directed by Peter Weir
Slogan: “He was their inspiration. He made their lives extraordinary.”
Kinopoisk rating 8.2, 194th place in the top 250 best films according to Kinopoisk, winner of the Oscar in the category “Best Screenplay”
The story takes place in an American college, the kind in which, probably, every parent of the present, and even the present, to be honest, would like to send their son to study.
Only boys, only strict discipline and regime. Everything here is geared towards a quality education and nothing should distract the boys, which is why there are no traces of girls in college.
By the way, they will appear, but later. And so, among the teachers, young John Keating (Robin Williams) appears, completely different from the rest of the prim, conservative teachers. He sees learning his way. He sees children in his own way. He is light, explosive, eccentric and sometimes frightening with his enthusiasm.
John initiates the kids into the secret of the Dead Poets Society, and after that, each of the students who accepted the teacher tries to find their place, meaning and voice in the gray mass of faceless school everyday life.
Surely, most people have watched this film more than once or twice. But the episode in the classroom with the boys jumping on school desks and shouting “Oh my Captain, Captain!” tears my soul to shreds.
Fourth place. “Big fish.”
2003, directed by Tim Burton
Slogan: “Lifelong adventures”
Kinopoisk rating 8.0, 4 Golden Globe nominations
I won’t write much here. You just have to look.
Ed Bloom (Ewan McGregor), having lost his father, begins to piece together the puzzle of his life. Putting together in small pieces everything that he knew or heard about him, he clothed these stories in myths and legends.
The film has an amazing cast (Ewan McGregor, Jessica Lange, Helena Bonham Carter, Marion Cotillard), an incredibly touching and lively story, great music, a stunning picture in the end of which tears flow like a river. But these, you know, are not sorrowful tears, but some other ones. Clean, bright and piercing.
Third place. “Ove’s second life.”
2015, directed by Hannes Holm
Slogan: “The soul always hurts alone”
Kinopoisk rating 8.2, 51st place in the top 250 best films according to Kinopoisk, 2 Oscar nominations
Uwe Lindahl (Rolf Lassgaard) is a typical representative of older people. He is grumpy, picky, rude. Ove hates disorder, and every day must be identical to the previous one. A few years ago, Ove lost his wife and since then he brings a fresh bouquet of flowers to her grave every day.
His usual way of life changes at the moment when suddenly his neighbors become a married couple – an immigrant from Iran and her Swedish husband, raising two children and expecting a third. It was then that Ove’s measured and devoid of any fuss life turns upside down.
I have a special regard for older people (although, in general, 59 years old is not very old yet). And not at all out of respect for old age, as it is commonly called. No, otherwise. I always look at them and imagine what their life was like before.
What truly warmed them, pleased them and made them happy. Same with Uwe. At first glance, he is quite irritating, but take a closer look: “I don’t like children” – but he accepts their help and love; “I don’t like cats” – but it is he who saves a street cat from cold, hunger and bullying by giving her another can of tuna. And this same cat will be with him until his very end.
You can cry starting from the middle. The end of the film – no matter how much I watch it or read the novel, it always breaks. And these are also the same pure tears that I wrote about earlier. Clean and bright.
Second place. “Still Alice.”
2014, directed by Richard Glatzer
Slogan: “Live now”
Kinopoisk rating 7.6, winner of the Oscar in the category “Best Actress”
Alice Howland (Julianne Moore) is a successful linguistics teacher at the university. She is loved by students, respected by teachers, she has found her place in the world and stands firmly on her feet.
Alice has a wonderful family, a loving and successful husband (Alec Baldwin), three adult children (Kate Bosworth, Kristen Stewart, Hunter Parrish). But her life begins to crumble in an instant at the moment when, speaking at a conference, she begins to forget the words.
They say early onset Alzheimer’s disease is a rare case, and Alice was the one unlucky. Another person might immediately give up and give up, but Alice is not like that.
The entire film is a woman’s struggle with a terrible illness, the end of which is obvious and regrettable. It won’t be good, it can’t be cured. Cinema is about struggle, about courage, about the ability not to give up, about care, about empathy and compassion.
Take a look if you haven’t seen it. And I am sure that this story will definitely not pass by.
First place. “Father”.
2020, directed by Florian Zeller
Slogan: “Everything is not as it seems”
Kinopoisk rating 7.8, 2 Oscar awards in the categories “Best Actor”, “Best Adapted Screenplay”
This is the second story in Florian Zeller’s trilogy “Mother, Father, Son”. I wrote a separate article about the film “The Son”
In the film “The Father” we see history through different eyes. In the world of Anthony (Anthony Hopkins), he lives in his beautiful large apartment, chasing out nurse after nurse, communicating with his adult daughter Ann (Olivia Colman), mentoring and teaching her. Anthony lost his second daughter, Lucy, several years ago, and sees her as his new nurse.
One day he wakes up in his apartment, but when leaving it, he realizes that he is in a hospital corridor. It turns out that Anthony has been living in a nursing home for several weeks, where his daughter assigned him because she was no longer able to care for him.
Look around and listen. Increasingly, you can hear and read about older people getting lost, going somewhere they weren’t supposed to, finding themselves in places they’ve only been to in childhood. Most often it is dementia.
They say that this disease, which is faced by more and more people and their families, is humanity’s reckoning for a long life. After all, it’s true that hundreds of years ago people rarely lived even to 50.
What happens to a person’s brain when he ages? I think that due to the abundance of information and events around, the human brain simply cannot withstand the load and in old age begins to turn off consciousness, bringing a person to those moments in which he once felt good and calm.
The sequence where Anthony cries for his mother to take him away from this terrible place is the peak of my tears in the film. This is a difficult story, but I think everyone should watch it.
