For more than 20 years, my emotions’ safe was uncrackable, until I watched a very cliché scene in a typical Hollywood thriller and started crying. I paused the film, checked myself, and walked around my house, sweeping tears off my cheeks. I classified that uncanny moment as a glitch, an isolated case.
A few months later, I unconsciously shed tears, while watching a sequence in a “Bollywood” romantic drama. As if that was not weird enough, a year later, I was weeping over a couple of scenes in another very predictable drama.
Six years have passed, and I decided to revisit these three specific films and rewatch them objectively, I will try my best to unveil their capacity to get me back in touch with my emotions.
I grew up with a thin boy called Cyaka. We would meet as soon as we woke up. I knew that he didn’t have a father but we were too young to know the details. When we were 7 or 8, his mother passed away from AIDS. During the service, I remember persuading him to sneak into a room to steal a bottle of “Fanta” for me. For me, it was no different from the usual baptism parties that our families used to throw.
When we were 11, Cyaka passed away too. I was crushed when earth fell on the white tissue covering the little coffin. It made a reverb sound as if the coffin was empty. It started with a handful of earth thrown by the relatives and ended in a drumroll of spades, in concert with dust, some raindrops, Christian songs and cries of dozens of family and friends who knew him. I didn’t shed a tear.
I checked on his bad-ass cousin, who used to bully everyone in the neighbourhood. He turned his back to the crowd and started weeping. I had to find a way to cry.
Very discreetly, I put some saliva on my fingers and wetted my eyes. I fake-joined the crowd with my waterworks.
White House Down
Little Emily believes in the “good”
The very first time I got teary was towards the end of the year 2013. I routinely watched a lot of films by independent filmmakers. However once in a while, I would just hit play on a Hollywood film for the entertainment.
One good afternoon, I closed the curtains, and played “White House Down”. The poster promised Channing Tatum, Jamie Foxx, a white house and lots of explosions. A couple of months back I had watched “Olympus Has Fallen”, so I knew I was not in for the art or inspiration. A burning White House was just irresistible.
I was hooked on the film in the first few minutes when Em started the Hollywood cliché of calling her father John, their conversations are just my kind of wit. Also, Emily Cale is such a smart character, she was more balanced than most of the adults in the film.
Spoiler Alert: The plot is that John, an ex-military is trying to get a job to guard the president of the United States. On the day of his interview, he brings along his daughter Emily, just to visit. The white house gets attacked by domestic terrorists who were rather very well prepared. It’s chaos. John fights to save the president and it’s Emily who saves the day.
Here is the scene that got me weeping like an idiot. When terrorists get full access to the American nukes, the newly sworn-in president orders a serious strike to wipe out the white house and everyone inside. John finally succeeds to save her daughter by killing the chief terrorist. He orders her to run as fast as she can to save herself.
It was a matter of seconds and everybody would have died. Instead of saving herself, Emily does what she had been doing in school theatre performances, but on a massive scale. She grabs a blue flag of the US presidential seal and waves it to the F-22 raptors just in time for the strike. Her father goes desperate, and the commander of the strikers takes charge and aborts the mission. Everyone gets to live.
I couldn’t care less about American politics, but Emily’s heroism is way beyond entertainment or patriotism. It’s about believing in the “good” inside people.
It took two or three seconds in the film but a heart-to-heart conversation was going on, between Em and the pilot. At that exact moment, The pilot was no more military, no more anything other than a mere human. This way, he had no reason to bomb another human.
Emily awakened the human inside me. Maybe that is why I cried. But what do I know about crying anyway?
My Name Is Khan
Mandira felt, the deep depths of love.
Here we go again with drama. Even worse, a Bollywood drama. I had heard about this film back in 2010 when it was out. But I admit, the more a film is hyped, the less I am interested to watch it (I haven’t yet watched anything “Expendables”).
One evening in 2014, I was bored to death. Procrastinating as usual. I perhaps had clients’ projects to edit and I was not inspired. I sat down and hit play on this Indian film. I knew it was a Bollywood melodrama that I would probably not finish. That is how bored I was.
Bollywood has this way to put off any interested, composed audience. I just get annoyed by every scene where characters get unnecessarily intense when they talk to each other and the exaggerated actions.
Maybe that is why I liked Khan’s character in this film. His disorder helped a lot. He talks his eyes down, turning his head robotically and smiling here and there. It is just beautiful.
Spoiler alert (But it’s more than a decade that this film is out). The film’s Islamophobic theme is rather straightforward. Set in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in the US, the premise tempts us to teach grieving and angry Americans that all Muslims are not terrorists. This was notoriously pulled off by no other than Bollywood’s best, Shahrukh Khan.
Khan is an Indian Muslim, a genius prodigy who was suffering from Asperger’s (A mental disorder, very close to autism). He moves to the US, and marries Mandira, a Hindu, divorced single mom who had a son. That’s pretty much the first hour or so.
Their love story goes down the rabbit hole when Mandira’s son is stabbed to death by other kids because his new step-father was a Muslim. Khan apologizes to his wife, saying that he is not a terrorist.
Angry and grieving, Mandira shouts at Khan to go tell that to the president of the United States. Khan embarks on a cross-country journey to actually meet the president. Six months pass by, and the romance of the film turns to be a drama and a thriller and a disaster film.
The sequence that got me teary is a montage. Khan was arrested and tortured by US officials, the news reported his story, and Mandira saw it on TV.
I couldn’t help weeping at every shot of her reaction, as she watches what is happening on TV. After crying to this sequence, I got myself together and kept watching.
Khan is released, and he goes on to help a community that was being hit by a hurricane in Georgia, The same kind of sequence happens again. The news covers his heroism. The sequence doesn’t necessarily show Mandira’s reaction but the one from the previous sequence was stuck in my head.
I found myself snivelling murmuring to myself like a toddler.
Now, why did such a simple montage sequence connect with my inner self?
Suddenly Mandira felt the deep depths of love that Khan had for her. That’s that.
I personally felt what Mandira was feeling, love. This feeling lit up all the little lights of love that were dying out in my heart. I felt alive, fragile, graceful and very welcoming. I was alone in my house but I felt part of everything else.
Pay It Forward
Trevor gives humans a clean slate.
Finally, the last film that turned on my waterworks is this unexpected drama. Despite its naive theme of “Paying Forward”, this film is very well structured to bring out the viewers’ emotions, and it worked on me. It is about an innocent 11-year-old Trevor who comes up with a utopian idea to change the world and it works. Well, at least it’s a trial.
Spoilers ahead, but then again, it is a 2000 film.
A social studies teacher asks 7th graders to think of an idea that could change the world and put it into action. His student Trevor comes up with a “pay it forward” concept whereby he does a very important favour to three people and asks each one of them to pay it forward to another three people.
This helps Trevor’s single mother, struggling with alcohol and his teacher who had lost hope in humanity.
At the same time, the movement is born from Las Vegas to LA until favours reach a daring journalist who decides to trace back the thread and finds the starting point. Trevor.
Now here is a scene that got me shedding tears.
Trevor did not know how far his idea had just travelled and how many people were really grateful for him. In his mind, he was just doing homework in his class. The journalist sits him on a chair in his class, for an interview.
Trevor kept calm, and thoughtful and responded to the far-fetched questions of the journalist with simplicity and sincerity. Every time a shot of adults reacting to him talking was shown, I could not hold back my tears. Mostly his mother and his teacher.
Why was I choked up over such a simple scene of a child in front of the blackboard?
What power did Trevor have on me that real-life people never had?
Trevor is innocent, genuine and daring. In this very scene, he confirms to himself that humans are fundamentally “good” and if offered a clean slate, his generosity plan could work.
This scene brought down walls that were blocking my humanity. Just by watching Trevor’s attitude, I felt strong and invincible. I felt an urgent need to start from scratch and be “Good”
What these three films have in common are their ordinary heroes who risk their lives, against all the odds and succeed, just because they believed in the “good” in people.
Unlike films such as “The Dark Night” whose obvious heroes go out of their ways to shove this concept down our throats, Emily, Khan or Trevor deliver this human value with a certain depth and plant it straight to the heart. If I were to make films, those are the kind of films I would learn to make.
Richard Mugwaneza 