Emotional Me: 7 Scenes That Made Me Cry

I have absolutely seen The Chipmunk Adventure. It came out the year I was born and played on the Disney Channel all the time in the early 90s. I don't remember crying at this scene, but judging by other things that have made me cry, I totally feel for the toddler in this viral video.



Good gracious, that little girl gives me the feels. In solidarity I want to share a list of all the movies that I cried during.

1. The Secret Garden (1993)

I was about 6 when I saw The Secret Garden, but I don't think I finished it because I was such a wreck after this particular scene. The little girl protagonist, Mary is having a dream that's either a memory of her mother or a representation of how terrible she was (part of the plot is that her parents were rich and self-absorbed, before they abandoned her in death anyway).

My memory of the scene was a 2 or 3 year-old girl walking toward her mother in a forest. The mother at first is waving the girl forward, then she suddenly finds something else more interesting and runs away, leaving the girl in tears. What actually happened is pretty similar (yay for terrible vivid memories!) except the mother gets pulled away into the forest in a filmed backwards and sped up kind of way (as filmed dream sequences are wont to do). Regardless, the little girl is left legitimately weeping and calling for her mother, and nearly made me cry again rewatching it.

Click here to see this scene.

2. A Little Princess (1995)

Believe it or not, The Secret Garden and A Little Princess were written by the same woman, Frances Hodgson Burnett. I say this sarcastically because the two stories are at heart pretty similar in that the main protagonist is a precocious little rich girl who once lived in Victorian India, but then had to move to England for tragic reasons. It's like Dickens for little girls. 

The American 1995 movie was directed by Alfonso Cuarón

who is famous for directing Y Tu Mama Tambien and Gravity, amongst others (wow). In this version Sara is in a boarding school in New York instead of London. I think I saw A Little Princess on TV when I was about 8.
Spoilers ahead:
 It's that part where Sara is escaping her attic prison and finds herself in front of her father - the one she thought was dead - but he has amnesia so he doesn't remember her! It's like you think she's saved once he appears, but then life takes the biggest dump on her. Sara is going through such a frenzy; at first hugging him and rejoicing, then acting like a crazy person trying to get him to remember when he wont hug her back. Her futile screaming is heartbreaking. And then the police are like, this man doesn't know you! Off to jail you go, 7 year-old! She's being carted away by the cops, crying and screaming, and then a magical Indian man stares at him so uncomfortably long with such a judgmental stare, that he remembers Sara just in the nick of time.

3. The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh "Find Her, Keep Her" (1988)

Technically this is an episode from a TV show, but it counts because it made me cry on a Saturday morning; formerly a sacred time for cartoons and children's programing. Rabbit finds a baby bird and decides to raise her in such a controlling manner, I'm surprised they didn't just drive the bird/flight metaphor home by keeping her locked in a literal cage. The bird, named Kessie, wants to fly, but Rabbit thinks it's too dangerous so he scolds and punishes her whenever she tries. Maybe he really just knows if Kessie flies she will fly away from him... Am I right, Rabbit? Aren't you just afraid of her leaving you, so you crush her independence and try to make her feel guilty for being an individual? Pretty deep and pretty dark for Winnie the Pooh.

The scene that really got me was after Kessie goes against Rabbit's wishes and practices flying, he is so spiteful, Rabbit refuses to tell Kessie one last bedtime story before she flies south for the winter. I remember a shot of the outside of Rabbit's house, and all you hear is Kessie sobbing over the snow. Watched this again and discovered it was just as depressing as I remembered it. 



Right between 18:00 and 20:00 things get pretty grim. 

4. 50 First Dates (2004)

This is hard for me to admit, but yes I have cried at an Adam Sandler romcom. Spoilers ahead:
That part at the very end when Lucy (Drew Barrymore) wakes up to learn that she has a young daughter, she's moved to tears, and you know Lucy's woken up to this revelation everyday for years. And then that ukulele version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow plays and - it's just game over!
Also, their daughter in this scene looks a lot like the little girl in The Secret Garden dream sequence...

5. Moulin Rouge (2001)

I was in high school and most likely going through a break-up when I saw this one. Pretty much the last half hour of the movie was what I believed to be the cinematic version of my relationship. In a weird way I empathised more for Christian (Ewan McGregor) than Satine (Nicloe Kidman). Maybe because I felt like someone who's love was being taken from them rather than the one who was being taken away - by greedy creeps or TB. The first time I saw this was at a friend's house and I spent so much time in the bathroom crying afterwards she had to check in on me.

They also sang the shit out of Come What May. Recently I had to concentrate real hard to not cry in a Yoga to Music class where (for some reason) Come What May played.  Thank goodness it wasn't during the Savasana or I would have fallen into a dark place.

 

6. Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind (2004)

It's hard for me to pin point when Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind makes me cry. It's for sure within the last 30 minutes. I cry for Joel (Jim Carrey), I cry for Clementine (Kate Winslet). I feel for both sides, I understand both sides. It's just so sad when you're having trouble in a relationship and you look back at the good times and just wonder what the hell went wrong. I didn't cry the first time I saw it, but the couple times since there have been waterworks for sure. The clip below is a good example.

7. Juno (2007)

I swear the first time I saw the trailer for Juno I cried. A trailer - something that should only capture a very brief sketch of the emotions in a film - made me cry. Someone definitely re-tooled the trailer later to seem funnier, because in all of the subsequent viewings the trailer looked more like a quirky comedy than a movie about a girl who has to give up her baby. Or maybe I was just in a different mood.

The funny trailer probably appealed to my friends like so many others, and that's why I went to see it. But when I actually saw Juno in theaters those tears were bound to find their way back. When Juno hands over her baby... all I have to say is, I held back what would have been audible sobs in the movie theater.

Below is a version of the trailer that is the closest I could find to what I remembered. It has Mott the Hoople's All the Young Dudes in it, which can be quite touching when paired with the right imagery.



Please share your movie crying moments in the comments section below. No matter how silly you might think it is in hindsight, movies make you feel and that's a good thing.