When a movie hurts too much

I haven't seen The Passion of Anna yet, but it's definitely a film that I've been wanting to watch. The Virgin Spring is currently my favorite.

Roger, thanks for your post. I've never had an experience where a movie hit too close to home to see it again, but I'm only 22 and perhaps that will come with time as I see more films and as I go through life more.

The movie that comes closest to affecting me so deeply that it's hard to watch is "The Passion of the Christ". I'm a Christian, so it's especially visceral and emotionally draining to see all that happens to Jesus over the course of the film.

I have a similar experience with 1993's My Life. My Life was a unnoticed film from 1993 that starred Michael Keaton as a man going thru the final stages of kidney cancer. As I remember it, it wasn't a particularly great film (save for an very effective performance by Keaton), but it didn't matter, I (as did my girlfriend at the time) cried like babies at the end. Since then, I married that girlfriend and I lost my mother to breast cancer. I've tried a number of times to revisit that movie and just can't. The mere thought of it takes me back to places in my mind that I just don't want to visit. I whole heartedly agree with you, Mr. Ebert, that films are powerful. And that's why I love them so much.

All the best to you and your recovery. I look forward to each new blog entry and review from you.

Sometimes, movies show us the way in these kinds of life scenarios too.

As an adoptive parent, I was blubbering by the end of the scene where Jennifer Garner talks to the baby through Juno's stomach. She shows such love for the baby and respect for Juno. It turned a potentially devastating encounter into a lesson in grace for everyone who might go through something like that. And, the movie also showed us that paint colors and plans don't matter much once someone arrives on your doorstep.

Great movies can bring important parts of life into focus.

Quite a thing the impact that films can have.

I posted this morning on the other thread mentioning "Grave of the Fireflies". I'm not precisely sure why I experience it so powerfully; the reasons could be many and they're well documented by others. It could be in part that I have kids almost the age of the children in the film. Anyway, it came in a lovely Studio Ghibli six disc set that I've owned for the last couple years. I've watched it once, thinking it one of the most extraordinary films I had ever seen and still haven't had the nerve to watch it a second time.

One day...

I guess we all reach a point in life where age quits giving us new experiences and abilities and starts taking them away from us. Thankfully we can often develop new insights regardless, but of course dementia and Alzheimer's can take that away too. What remains but the divine? The belief that we have touched a spiritual reality that remains even if all else is lost, and that this moment or gain is eternal despite what happens to our body and our mind.
When we realize the above at an early age, prior to the losses accumulating to a point where they suffocate us mentally and emotionally; I believe that's when we can look at life, or a movie, or a cloud, or hear a kitten purr, or feel the touch of a friend and really find humanity and redemption.
It's not a fear of potential loss, but a recognition of the inevitability of that loss that often moves us to be most human in our perception and actions.
In this manner, a sports film, a war movie, a buddy flick, a "chick flick", an animated tale, a documentary; all can equally move us if they are self-aware (without preaching or banging us over the head with their point and are not too manipulative).
Sorry, I just started writing and could not stop...

In my capacity as a crime fiction critic, I read a lot of books that have disturbing subject matter: kidnappings, murders, etc. None of it ever bothered me very much. (It is, after all, fiction, and words on a page have more emotional distance than scenes in a film. Not that films every bothered me much either.)

After my daughter was born, though, I found that I couldn't stomach certain types of stories any longer. One book in particular opened with a mother running in to a supermarket to buy a forgotten item. Her daughter is asleep in the car, so she decides to leave her alone. It's only for a few minutes, she reasons. When she returns, of course, her daughter is gone.

I couldn't read the book. It was too painful even to contemplate, and I found I didn't want to contemplate it. Those were images I simply didn't want in my head. So I put it away.

As life works its magic on us, for good and for ill, it changes us -- and those changes can't help but manifest themselves in how we react to the things we watch and read.

The movie that "hurts too much" for me would be "Trains, Planes and Automobiles." Very sad ending.

So I've just had this epiphany and it's all your fault. Let me backtrack to say that Thompson was amazing in "Wit" and I really loved the movie. Like you, watching it again is not high on my list of fun ways to spend an afternoon; but for different reasons.
For me the film which is truly plague-ridden, as in 'avoid it like', is one I love. The actors are wonderful, the story...all of it. It's so weird that this never crossed my mind until now. About four and a half years ago, I found a previously viewed copy of "Moonlight Mile" in a grungy little video store. It was funny and honest and sad, and of course any two hours spent with Susan Sarandon is alright with me.
Then my little brother died. Okay, 28 is not so little, but it was just the two of us. Being the oldest made it my duty to boss and baby him all the days of his life; whether he liked it or not. So little brother it is.
In the early days after his death, when sleep was scarce and Millay's "Elaine" escaped my lips like a mantra; during the days when I was so very angry, I watched "Moonlight" again.
Like most things, during that time, it barely registered. A few months later, I popped it in the dvd player. Within a few moments Gyllenhal was hiding from mourners at the wake. And everywhere were the Italian words she'd taped up in preparation for their honeymoon. I turned it off.
Sitting here pondering your post, I suddenly realize a lot of movies have made my 'no-go' list; any movie I feared would make me feel too much. Historically, my favorite films 'go there', wherever 'there' is, fully and honestly. I never understood people who only wanted the fluffy popcorn flicks. Now I do. But it's definitely time to wake up again.
Before his death, I was just starting to get into Bergman so maybe...
Thank you Mr. Ebert, for sharing your thoughts and your journey.

There is so much here to think about. Some random thoughts:
David: I had the exact same experience once I had children. I can no longer read about violence to a child w/o blenching--it's too close for me.
Re "Wit"--I am an RN but have also been a patient, and so know something of the loss of control and dignity that all pts face. That film crams every minute with the terror of mortality and the fear of lonely loss, coupled with the essential character that is revealed by the crucible in which she finds herself, but I think it finds grace in the end (that's quite a sentence).
My father, (an MD) recommended that film to some of his pts in the gyne cancer clinic. Of those who chose to watch the film, some were grateful for witnessing a voice to their situation; some were devastated. I am left curious as to those who thanked him for his recommendation.

I find as I get older, I prefer my truths to be bleak rather than sugar coated. Or perhaps discovering that truth is bleak and can't be sugar coated is one sign of growing up...? I'm about to turn 46, so I suppose it had to happen sometime. :)

I saw "Moonlight Mile" with 2 friends in the theater. After it was over, we all just sat in our seats rather stunned. I share a liking for movies with my Dad (Mom says she never got over the Wicked Witch, or Heidi dying--not sure if Heidi actually dies, but the upshot is my mother doesn't watch films), and I would like to share MM with him.
I cannot and know I cannot since I haven't been able to watch it again since we lost my sister, the second sister to die within 5 years. I know he cannot watch "Wit" now. My sisters did not die of cancer, they suffered from a chronic illness, but still the reality of the film is too close. I can only admire those pts who were glad to have seen "Wit" as they themselves lived out their own story arcs. I am not sure I would have the fortitude.

To me, this mix of emotions affecting our preferences of film/book choices is like I'm on a high bank and there's an edge to the precipice: certain films show us the light and air and freedom that comes from coming close to the cliff-edge, the sheer joy of feeling alive and shouting into the wind, but other films show us the yawning chasm and certain destruction and our vulnerability that the precipice reveals.

Films like "Good Will Hunting" or "Lost in Translation" or "Little Miss Sunshine" celebrate the one side of that edge; films like "Wit" or "Moolight Mile" or "American Beauty" (well, that one may straddle the metaphor!) show us the "dark side" of that ledge.
Which is not to say that one type of film tends to be happy or sunny and the other dark or foreboding. Just that there is a balance to be had between the natural ease and facility that a cliffside boundary can give us and the danger of the abyss below--one cannot exist without the other. An essential dichotomy? Would we have the joyous feeling of freedom and grace (from films that show redemption/grace) if the chance of wreckage(cutting too close to the bone) weren't real?
I don't think so, but I'm getting long winded and muddled here, so I'll close.

I think I would love to see more of Bergman than I have already, as, if his work touches so deeply as it does with Cries and Whispers, then I must see it. There is something so unbearably truthful in the work. Looking into the Doctor's eyes as he stands in front of Maria, gazing, contemplating his future actions, contemplating whether or not he should truly delve into the situation, let himself be taken, overthrown, or to simply move away. He approaches, but, after a moment, realization strikes him, and he turns from her, making his way out, away from the devil's grasp, a smart man, indeed.

Recently, I saw Pierrot le Fou, Godard's 1965 film. What I noticed that was very interesting about both that film and Breathless was that both have so much resemblence to each other. I may be wrong when I say this, but, from what I've seen, Godard doesn't seem like the perfect guy with plots. He seems to care more about the relationships between people, and how people react, and then he throws something in there toward the end. Frankly, I love what he does with his characters, because he shows some truly astonishingly beautiful moments between people not often on display in films of any nature, especially todays romantic comedies (for the most part...there are exceptions, of course).

But, after I saw Pierrot, I watched the documentary from the second disc that delved into Godard and Anna Karina's life together, and how their films completely went with their relationship at the current moment. It brought forth something that became truly sad to watch. To see Belmondo's looks in the film as he realizes the betrayal...how can one express that? He surely did it well. He probably could have just sat down and observed Godard himself for a while, and realized what to do. It was so poingant and beautiful. No, I did not cry, but just the thought that "This is what the man must have been going through," was enough to startle me, at least.

(Lastly, I will say the film I cried the most, or more like wept at, was Aronovsky's Requiem for a Dream, a film with such a devastating ending that I could hardly fathom anything else to do at that very moment)

Savvy

Roger,

I have been a long time reader of your reviews from Bangalore.

When you talked about movies that made one cry - it reminded me of one of the movies by the Tamil movie star, Kamal Hassan, called Mahanadhi (meaning great river).

There is a scene where he comes to know that his missing teenage daughter was sold off as a prostitute and he goes searching for her and finds her in one of the red light areas of Calcutta. It was extremely moving and I could not help, but cry for the daughter and father. At the time I saw the movie, I did not have kids, but still the anguish hit me hard.

Thanks a lot for your wonderful reviews. I recently saw the movie - 'In Bruges' after reading your review. Your review has never failed for me.. Thank you again.

Regards,
Sathish

I encountered such a situation while viewing Oliver Stone's "Born on the Fourth of July" many years ago. Specifically, the quiet scene when Ron Kovic (Tom Cruise) returns home from Vietnam to his parents' house. Confined to a wheelchair, disillusioned, Kovic is a shell of the man he once was. But it was his father, Mr. Kovic, played by Raymond J. Barry, which caused me to hold up my hands to block the image from my eyes. Barry's character, in short-sleeved shirt and glasses, confused and devastated, tries to help his son while tears are welling up in his eyes. My own tears immediately came, as Barry had perfectly captured my father. It was such an emotional wallop, and I am not sure I ever understood my dad, or fatherhood in general, until that moment. Let's face it, dads are not Henry Fonda, Clifton Webb, Gregory Peck or even Thomas Mitchell. Barry, one of the finest character actors working today, hit the bull's-eye. I am most certainly not a veteran of war nor am I confined to a wheelchair. But by God, that was my dad on screen, and a film enabled me to confront my own definition. Watching the scene today is akin to dancing on broken glass.

There are certainly many movies that resonate with me personally because I understand exactly what they’re about, and what the characters are going through. “Atonement” would be a recent example, due especially to the speech Vanessa Redgrave gives at the end. The scene conveys the thought behind the story with clarity and directness (it’s one of the few movie scenes that I can think of where a character appears at the end and explains the meaning of everything that has gone before that don’t feel preachy or patronizing), and reveals that the movie isn’t just about the separation of a couple, but about someone who, at a very young age, makes a mistake so big that it haunts them for the rest of their life.

I can’t think of any examples of films whose events resemble events in my own life so closely that I can’t bear to watch them. But I don’t think I will be revisiting Stanley Kubrick’s “Barry Lyndon” any time soon because its message (the way I interpret it) is built on thoughts that I would rather not have seen so vividly illustrated. The movie is haunting, a brilliantly told story and a technical marvel, and it also has a message so hopeless that I can’t describe it as anything but utterly depressing. If it can be hard when a movie reminds you painfully of an event in your own life - a tragedy in your family, an uncomfortable experience, a personal misfortune – how much worse is the thought that, whatever highs or lows you experience in your lifetime, in the end, it all doesn’t matter?

The great film editor and sound designer, Walter Murch, observed in a keynote address that when a child wakes from a disturbing dream, the comfort often given includes the reminder that "It's only a dream." When that same thing happens to a child watching a movie, the comfort is "It's only a movie."

Movies, so akin to the natural way we remember and experience life, are often powerful triggers that easily put us smack in the shadowy areas of emotions that we may not voluntarily visit otherwise. Frequently staging an ambush in some part of my inner landscape, movies, like vivid dreams, can recreate the joy and terror of living.

I remember watching a movie on HBO back in the early 1980's that affected me strongly at the time as I was going through a period where my father and I did not get along at all. "Tribute", a Jack Lemmon film. I often credited the movie as a catalyst for a reconciliation with him, and for that I'm thankful; to this day I consider my dad one of my heroes.

Now as far as the movie itself, I had a chance to watch it again a few years ago. Nothing of my initial reaction to the film...which I had included on my own personal "Top 10" favorite films list...had lasted. I actually found the movie to be a big letdown, even a bore. I noticed really bad lighting, cinematography, editing. I guess I grew as a movie fan and have learned to realize qualities in movies that blew right past me when I was 20 and still a relative film novice.

Needless to say, I no longer consider "Tribute" one of my favorite movies, or for that matter even a very good film. But I am still thankful for the chance to see it during a crucial period of my young adult life.

To David Montgomery's point above: becoming a parent has made my wife and I extremely susceptible to any themes involving children.

We used to joke that the only move I'd seen my wife cry over was My Dog Skip. But she recently had to turn off Away From Her. I found it hard to bear as well, and I noticed an interesting point when it was discussed in the office. The 20-somethings loved it, though they admitted to crying, almost in the same vein as The Notebook (which I have not seen). The older 40-somethings found it wrenching and almost too painful. For me: in watching Gordon Pinsent and Julie Christie, I realized that, as lifers, this was in both of our futures, a fact that we both knew, I suppose, but being suddenly faced with it, it hurt.

As you can no longer watch Wit, I can no longer watch Trainspotting, but for a different reason. The brief scene showing the fate of a baby in Trainspotting used to flash by without my noticing it. Life gave me two children, one of whom had special needs during his infancy that led to many scary cribside moments for us. Can't watch it anymore...

On a non-personal level, Zhang Yimou's "To Live" is an emotional wrecking ball. Gong Li put's in one of the most amazing performances of all time, and while I understand none of it without subtitles, her passionate, irrational cries during her daughter's deathbed scenes just kill me. And her reminder to their old friend, who accidentally killed their son and is contemplating doing the same to himself, "Remember: You still owe us a life!" brings my mind to a state of utter confusion as to the state of our place in the world, and how it imparts responsibility to others.

On a personal level, I would submit "The Graduate" (and not simply because, like "Wit", it was directed by Mike Nichols). I'm cheating because, in fact, I can and do watch it with immense pleasure. But it is intensely painful every time. I was Benjamin Braddock 5 years ago, and I've had many struggles since then that, in their way, have left me much like Braddock even at 26. It reminds me of my own failings, which at first glance would seem unpleasant, but the absurdity (and the perfection) of the film also impart a strange sense of hope. Perhaps it's because I know that Dustin HOffman did not succeed either for much of his youth. He was unknown until this film, at which point he is 33. So I have 7 more years until this film can rightfully depress me. :) But the film is great, and I love reading Mr. Ebert's thoughts on it. Perhaps one day Mr. Ebert could write his updated thoughts on the film, on what Braddock's experience might be like for someone in his position in today's vastly different world?

For me, the most painful "movie" is actually a television episode. In the series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the episode "The Body" shows the lead character, a young woman named Buffy, as she discovers her mother's lifeless body in the living room.

It was heart-wrenching to watch at the time - and much more so a few months later, when my own mother unexpectedly died.

One part of the dialogue is particularly poignant to me. It features an ex-demon named Anya, who had previously been immortal, but is now a human girl struggling to come to terms with her helplessness in the face of death:

Anya: Are they gonna cut the body open?

Willow: Oh my God! Would you just... stop talking? Just... shut your mouth! Please!

Anya: What am I doing?

Willow: How can you act like that?

Anya: Am I supposed to be changing my clothes a lot? Is that the helpful thing to do?

Xander: Guys—

Willow: The way you behave—

Anya: Nobody will tell me.

Willow: Because it's not okay for you to be asking these things!

Anya (crying): But I don't understand! I don't understand how this all happens. How we go through this. I mean, I knew her, and then she's, there's just a body, and I don't understand why she just can't get back in it and not be dead anymore! It's stupid! It's mortal and stupid! And, and Xander's crying and not talking, and, and I was having fruit punch, and I thought, well Joyce will never have any more fruit punch, ever, and she'll never have eggs, or yawn or brush her hair, not ever, and no one will explain to me why. (She puts her hand over her face, crying.)

Willow (after a long pause): We don't know... how it works... why.

I am only 23 years old, and though my life has gone through numerous downs and further downs, close reflections of my life have never really affected my ability to see films related to what has happened in my life.

My grandfather died of Alzheimer's disease, and I was there with him every step of the way into the furthest reaches of his dementia, and yet Alzheimer's in film ("Away from Her", "The Notebook", "Iris") does not affect me to the point of tears or depression, oftimes because I can separate myself from the characters and see the plot wheels turning despite the excellent performances involved.

Likewise, my father is an abusive alcoholic who I removed from my life when I was 16, and films about alcoholics ("Days of Wine and Roses", "28 Days", "The Lost Weekend") do not depress me as much as make me want to just reach into the screen, grab the characters and shake them until they come to their senses.

So I find it odd that, in reaction to your above post, the only movie that I cannot bring myself to see because of how deeply it affects my emotions is "Big Fish." Your review on it is slightly negative, and I agree that it is a flawed film that doesn't succeed in its execution, but there was a film where I was able to forgive its shortcomings easily and immediately because I felt an honesty and emotion backing every line of dialogue and shot of film that is so lacking from most major Hollywood releases today.

It is a movie about storytellers from, arguably, one fo the greatest storytellers in film today. And as a young storyteller myself (my first novel was published earlier this year), when I saw the film (thankfully alone) in theaters on its opening weekend I became immersed in the life of this man, this good man, who loves to spin a good yarn and live his life through them.

By the end of the film, when Billy Crudup (who plays the son in the film) picks up the torch for storytelling left by his father (Albert Finney) and, in the process, gives his father the perfect story to act as an epilogue to his amazing life moments before his father's death, I lost it. Tears, snot...all of it. In the theater. I couldn't help myself. Because really, who could ask for a better ending to our lives than surrounded by loved ones embracing our journey and carrying it forward to future generations?

When the movie came out on DVD, I immediately bought it and put it in my DVD player, but could not make it past the first scene. The fact that a movie could affect me so strongly actually scared me a little bit, and I filed it away in my movie room. When the special edition DVD came out, I immediately bought it and tried again, and could not get past the scene with the Witch and her eye.

And now there it sits, on a shelf in my movie room filed alphabetically next to my fifty or so favorite films, right between "Beauty and the Beast" and "Blow Up."

And it sits. And sits.

Maybe one day...but not today.

As I briefly mentioned in the previous comments section, and elaborated on in private communication to Mr Ebert, like he kindly mentions, there are a few scenes in the remake of The Out-of-Towners that move me deeply. It's the way Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn's characters say goodbye to their daughter, leaving home for the first time for college. The way the two deal with the trauma, so succinctly executed in the briefest of scenes, and played to perfection by the three actors. It is, for me, one of the most heartbreaking scenes in the history of cinema (as is a scene a few minutes later when the two come back to an empty home).

The reason is personal, and I prefer to not get into too many details, but suffice to say, the way I said goodbye to my folks when I went to university, the way I saw them walk away as I stood there at the gates (if family is indeed nuclear, then this was like the splitting of the atom): those are memoris indelibly etched into my very being, and in the scenes I mentioned, I saw a perfect mirror image.

We make connections with films all the time, but sometimes, the connection is, indeed, too painful to bear. Once again, I must quote an excerpt from Mr Ebert's excellent review for Frequency, which ends with one of those deeply moving sentences that makes you weep instantly:

The ending of the movie is contrived, but then of course it is: The whole movie is contrived. The screenplay conferences on "Frequency" must have gone on and on, as writer Toby Emmerich and the filmmakers tried to fight their way through the maze they were creating. The result, however, appeals to us for reasons as simple as hearing the voice of a father who you thought you would never hear again.

Hi Roger,

I think what you're getting at is a real human truth. Just more than two years ago, I watched a close relative die from cancer. The process was both agonizingly slow and remarkably quick. She was only 53, young and vibrant, in perfect physical condition (she was a regular marathon runner). But cancer struck her, and she noticed it far too late.

The process was slow given the nonstop hospital visits and then those last few weeks, where she basically was in hospice care, with my wonderful mother acting as the nurse. The process itself I'll reserve out of respect for privacy. Days later, simply seeing pictures of her was enough to make me (and everyone else) cry profusely.

Movies have the same experience. It's not that they hurt too much; it's that they can remind us of life before tragedy and disease. My non-scientific hunch is that looking at "Wit" for you was like looking at an old photograph; you had seen the photo before, admired it, praised it, but seeing it again brought back new feelings because of new experiences.

I graduated college only about five years ago, and was lucky to get to review some movies freelance during that time for some local papers, and of course during college. A lot happens to a young person in college, and in a sense, even the worst movies I reviewed (and I reviewed "The Hot Chick" and "VeggieTales," so I have a solid understanding) were a nice escape.

When a movie deals with pain and death and sorrow, I think audiences are decidedly split. Most "general" audiences want the movies to simply entertain them and lift their spirits; others, particularly critics and serious film enthusiasts, are looking for a film to challenge their idea of what cinema can be. A good friend of mine is as smart and savvy about film as anyone I know, but he's alienated from pictures like "Monster's Ball." When that film came out, I remember him watching it on disc, more or less hating it, and explaining why.

"Why would anyone want to make this movie?" he asked, wondering how a movie filled with so much sadness and pain could ever be seen as not simply entertainment, but a worthy investment of time.

I didn't fully agree with him then and I don't fully now, but I could hear his viewpoint: even serious films for him needed to entertain more so than enlighten. There had to be some larger vision, like in "Far From Heaven" or "Brokeback Mountain," which he did love. Or consider something like "American Beauty," a recent film, where darkness and sadness are all over the place, effortlessly masked by hearty satire and bathed in luminous cinematography. Those elements are intentional distractions, keeping us at a distance from the real tragedy beneath; a movie like "Wit," which I did see and which did haunt me, confronts reality head on, forces us to see what cancer and death looks like, but also what it **sounds** like.

If someone writes you another letter asking for a movie to cheer up their sick relative or friend, I think you should do what I do: default to a movie you've already seen, a movie that makes you feel like you're visiting old friends again. "Sideways" has become a film like that to me. When I see it, I feel like I'm in the car with those two clowns, sipping wine, getting into mischief, exhilarated by the beautiful scenery and fun. More than anything, I want to catch up with them and see how they're doing still; the film is like an update in their lives, even though it's the same series of events. (You touched on this when you reviewed Tati's "M. Hulot's Holiday").

I have not seen the HBO movie Wit. I have seen the stage play twice.

The play came to Los Angeles in 2000, at the Geffen Playhouse that used to be in Westwood, after it had become a success on the East Coast and won a 1999 Pulitzer Prize. It actually premiered on a small stage in Orange County at South Coast Rep's second stage (as opposed to the main stage) in 1995.

One thing I appreciate about plays over TV and movies is that they often tackle topics that aren't commercially viable, but of great social worth. There are many plays and even a musical about AIDS (e.g. Rent), but not so many about ovarian cancer or breast cancer.

There are, of course, the malady of the week TV movies, meant to be weepies, yet there is an immediacy about stage plays.

One of the most moving experiences I had in a small theater was the production of Purple Breasts, a contemplation of the value American society places on women's breasts. It was co-written by Daryl Lindstrom who was a drama instructor at San Jose City College when she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1985. She died of cancer in 1989. She was only 37.

The title refers to the purple markings identifying the area on her breast that required radiation during her treatment.

Performances usually feature a post-performance discussion, usually attended by breast cancer survivors.

Reactions to movies and plays like Wit differ depending upon individuals. There is a blog The Assertive Cancer Patient and the blogger has reviewed cancer movies. I guess she finds some comfort in confronting cancer.

Some people found the play Purple Breasts comforting as it gave them an opportunity to share what had happened to them. It has also been performed for medical professionals as sort of an instructive device. Likewise, Wit became the topic of an article in JAMA about patients and their emotional needs and has been used to train medical students.

There are a number of films, for an array of viewing personas, that are difficult for me to watch: For the American in me, "United 93"; for the expatriate in me, "Last Tango in Paris"; for the small-towner in me, "The Last Picture Show"; for the son in me, "I Never Sang for My Father"; for the brother in me, "Ordinary People"; for the father in me, "Tokyo Story"; and for the human being in me, "Platoon."

Re-reading my earlier post, I've realized that I didn't make it quite clear that the main theme of "Atonement" resonates with me for personal reasons, so I just wanted to rectify that.

As a former Southern Baptist children's minister, now "reformed" and more a Christian of the John Shelby Spong variety (is there a technical term for his kind of exiled Christian?), I have tried three times now to get through a second viewing of "Jesus Camp." But the scene in which that little boy sobs that he sometimes expresses doubts about his faith, only to be encouraged in his inner turmoil by his church leaders, is too excruciating to bear. Because I have both felt that child's pain, and I have encouraged it. Another film that I cannot stand to watch again is "Winter's Light," for the same feeling that it evokes. That opening scene in which the priest ominously looks at the crucifix and says, "What a ridiculous image!" hits me in a place that I can't describe with words.

I'm only 21 and haven't had many harrowing experiences in my own life, so I suppose the most painful movie I've ever watched might be a Steven Seagal film, but obviously painful in a different respect than what is being discussed.
Of my own life's disappointments, though, a bad breakup and my recurring, one-sided battles with ulcerative colitis come to mind. There are hundred of movies that deal with the former, not so many I know of that deal with the latter.

On the note of the breakup, I simply couldn't watch romantic films for a while. Case in point, I had bought a copy of "Se7en," a movie I'd been meaning to see for I while. With it, I bought "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," my reasoning being that I wanted something more upbeat to offset the gloom and violence of "Se7en."
I watched "Se7en" almost immediately, but it was probably more than a year before I decided to dig out "Eternal Sunshine" for a film club screening. I liked it, but I'm certain that it would have had a much different effect on me had I watched it two years before.

So while there are films that move me, whether to tears, thought, or both, there aren't many movies that touch me on a personal level; not yet, anyway (still waiting for that colitis film).

I am a 20 year old gay man who sat in the theater watching "Brokeback Mountain" and sobbed profusely over the beautiful tale of forbodden love that could not be consummated in the society these two men lived in. Watching Heath Ledger in Jake Gyllenhaal's bedroom was one of the most heart wrenching scenes I've ever seen, because I too fear that I may never find love, or that I may lose the one I most care about and never get them back.
In January Heath Ledger died. His death was an absolute gut punch, because I grew up with Heath, starting back when I was 10 and I saw "10 Things I Hate About You" with friends during a sleepover. Recently I tried to watch "Brokeback Mountain" again, and I barely made it 20 minutes into the film before I had to turn it off. The wound of his death is just too fresh, and to see him in such an emotionally raw film that resonantes so deeply with me is too much to bear. I'll be seeing Heath in "The Dark Knight" and watching ihm in his past films in the days to come, but for the time being, "Brokeback" will remain shelved indefinitely.

I am only 19, but there are a couple of movies that hit close to home like that, for me. It might not be the best example, but "Lorenzo's Oil" really touched me. Less than a year ago my grandfather was diagnosed with terminal (colon) cancer, and died 6 months later. Those were the longest months of my life, as I stood by his bedside as his granddaughter and personal nurse. Now when I see "Lorenzo's Oil", watching the parents in despair by their son's bedside brings many painful memories to my mind.

You made me curious to see that movie "Wit". I'll see if I can find it in my country.

I had seen "Gates of Heaven" several times, and usually would smirk as people talked about their deceased pets; not that I couldn't understand their feelings, but they seemed a bit ridiculous to me. Well, my cat (whom I loved dearly) died quite recently, and I thought it might be a cathartic experience to watch "Gates of Heaven" again. As you can guess, I wept (at points sobbed) through much of the film, as each ridiculous pet owner told their ridiculous stories with such ridiculous gravitas. I suppose we're all a bit ridiculous when we lose a significant part of ourselves. I'm sure I will be able to watch "Gates of Heaven" again, but not in the foreseeable future.

It has been a couple years since I saw "The Passion of Anna," but I bought it on dvd just a few weeks ago and will make a point of watching it again soon. For any readers who are interested, it can be bought new for $4.99 at the Fry's Electronics on Finley Rd. in Downers Grove.

Four years ago I was wearily browsing the bargain bin at a supermarket I used to work at. Then I found a gem amongst the trash. It was a DVD of Mike Nichols' "Wit" (2001) - $7.99. I remembered the movie made your top ten list a few years back at the time. The caption on the back of the packaging was attributed by you, Roger: "It reminded me just how strong movies can be."

The experience of watching "Wit" was one of the most visceral and uncompromised. My heart was gripped by the harrowing work on display. I love the scene where Vivian (Emma Thompson), the terminal English professor, shares joyfully with us her discovery of her passion for the "acquisition of vocabulary" - as a little girl, her father explains what 'soporific' means. At the time, the film was more immediate having lost the only grandparent I ever knew, my Poppa, to cancer. I was brought to tears (and still am) when I saw "The Runaway Bunny" scene. Besides the scenes involving the attentive nurse (Audra McDonald), it was the definitive moment when pensive Beverley , so close to dying, received comfort and love by an unexpected visitor (Eileen Atkins). This scene alone might have attributed to my affirmation that "Wit" is one of the very best films of this decade.

I admit Roger that I have been anticipating the inclusion of "Wit" in your Great Movies archive for reasons you stipulated before. I am in sympathy and understand why it would be too painful for you to do this now. Just know that I am grateful for you for bringing this film to my attention and I treasure it.

The Indian Runner was a movie I loved the first time I watched it. Later on when I bought it, it brought up so much emotion that I don't think I'll ever be able to watch it again. Just the story line of watching someone you love continually ruin their life is just too much for me... be it your brother or just a friend. I felt as overcome by emotion during Sean Penn's Into the Wild. Penn knows how to capture the emotion of a story without exploiting it. I can't wait to see what he finds to direct next.

Neil Buckley - thanks for mentioning United 93. It's a perfect example. I had another odd reaction watching United 93: I have seen it twice, and both times, near the end, I was rooting for the passengers who were raiding the cockpit, as if I had no idea how it was going to end. I'm sure we've all experienced this with other movies.

American History X made a huge impression on me when I first saw it in theaters. I bought the DVD years ago and it still sits unopened in its original packaging on the shelf. I believe this is because of my experience as a middle school teacher. Edward Furlong's character is so heartbreaking because he was a good kid who was led astray by family and friends. Through the years I have seen many students with tremendous potential led astray due to their dysfunctional family life. These kids, desperate to feel they belong somewhere, often end up in gangs. Furlong's portrayal of a wounded, impressionable teenager feels so authentic and hits so close to home that I cannot bring myself to view the film again.

I realized a few months ago that the recent movie "Bridge to Terabithia" (2007) is rather like that for me, almost too painful to watch now. I loved it when I saw it first, having read the book way back in 5th grade and recently seen a local children's theater production of the play. The movie surprised me in its faithfulness to the story, yes, but also by its ability to move me not just to tears (since a number of expertly-manipulative movies may come close to that), but to a deep, ponderous melancholy that seemed, in a way, restorative. Just last January one of my old friends died suddenly, the day before his 21st birthday. Now, whenever I see the DVD for "Bridge to Terabithia" lying on my desk, and begin to think it could use another viewing, my hand stops halfway to it, and I think "I can't...not yet. It's just a little too real. Maybe next time."

Earlier this year, one of my dogs died. I couldn't watch a movie for several days afterwards; it's the first time I really had to deal with the death of something I truly loved, that had been close to me for so long, and that had died younger than we'd expected, even though we knew he could have gone for months.

Sometimes, I would put something on from my DVR, then stop. The most notable one was "My Life as a Dog." (I'm sure the fact that I chose that movie wasn't a coincidence, but looking back now, it seems so cheesy.) Near the beginning, the main character is narrating, and he mentions a dog that they sent into space that died somehow (starvation, if I recall correctly). I couldn't bear to watch more. Other movies simply didn't grab me at the time; "Woman of the Year" and "Killer of Sheep" simply weren't as therapeutic as crying on my mother's shoulder.

The first two movies I watched after that event, embarassingly enough, were the "Hot Shots!" movies. I figure that even if Norman Cousins was wrong, and laughing can't heal you, it can at least distract you and keep you from crying for a while, and it can at least nurse you in that way.

I almost didn't remember that I'd watched those, however, because my little "movie log" keeps track of movies I see for the first time. By that measurement, the first movie I watched after my dog's death was only slightly more appropriate: Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining." Apparently, horror filled the same space as humor did; despite the subject matter being death and what happens after, it kept me from thinking so much about that specific death. Perhaps the message is that the best thing to do after a traumatic event is to do things that simply let you escape from life, whether it be laughing, jumping out of your seat, whatever.

One of the very few movies that has ever made me actually sob is also one of my very favorite films of all time. It's Mike Figgis' Leaving Las Vegas. I'm not an alcoholic, and don't even have any close friends or family members with that disease. But somehow, Nicolas Cage's performance in that film just tears me up. There's nothing admirable about addiction or suicide, but oh my God, the humanity of it. The character is so real. He seems like such a decent sort, such a nice guy, that you just can't fathom why he's doing this to himself. I have rarely cared so much about any movie character. The ending is almost unbearable.

Roger, you have definitely touched a nerve with many, including me. Shortly after my mother died of cancer, I watched "Terms of Endearment." The scene in the hospital room with Debra Winger coming so closely after I had to watch my mother die in her room did not make me cry, but made me physically hurt. I do not deny that it is a good film, but I will never watch it again. Interestingly, after I read your initial review of "Wit," I decided to watch it knowing that it would be rough. Emma Thompson's performance in that movie may be the bravest I have ever seen. I am so glad I experienced it but, again, once was enough.

I am one of those people who tends to get very affected by movies. Real events tend not make me cry the way a film can. I could make a list of at least ten that I absolutely love that have hit me hard, but mostly in a distant sense.

When the book Jarhead came out, I absolutely hated it, believing it was contrived garbage and completely unlike reality, so when it was made into a film, I decided not to give it a chance. So a few months ago, I saw it sitting on my roommates shelf and figured I would give it a chance. Unlike the book, I think it did a good job of showing the frustrations with military life and I actually enjoyed watching it even though I thought some parts were a little over the top. The funeral scene at the end though was way too much for me. Immediately I was back at the funeral of one of my military friends who died in Iraq from an IED and watching the scene was too much to bear. I cried as hard as I have in years and had to call friends just to feel okay. The depiction of life after the military the coincided with the funeral scene rang true as well, how we all went back to what we thought were normal lives but would never be the same because of losing that one friend. And like in the film, when that friend died we all saw each other again. I was the guy who went to college and showed up at the funeral with a beard much like Swofford's friend in the movie.

I tell my friends that they can watch the movie with me as long as I am allowed to leave during those scenes. They are too true to what I actually went through. If people want to come close to grasping the heartbreak that military men feel when a friend dies, then watch the ending of Jarhead. It will be years before I can do it again.

Mine connect with personal experiences as well, more than with the films’ intents.

I saw an early screening of A.I. at a time when my mother was under the cloud of cancer, fine at the time, but knowing that it would take her unpredictably, and swiftly, at some point. It is the string between Kubrick and Spielberg’s tin can radios, but I viewed it more in the light of the former’s work, accepting its distance and sudden gearshifts, watching more with the left side of my brain. At the end, little David is given the opportunity to have one more, but only one more, day with his loving mother. It was an emotional body blow for which I was unprepared. I survived, but only now that she has been gone for a while might I even attempt to see it again. It was not her passing, but the immediate inevitability of it which that section of A.I. touched.

I was likewise treated to an advance screening of Peter Weir’s Dead Poet’s Society in 1989. It was to be a few hours of relief from the tension of having a friend who had, for about three weeks, been trying to kill himself. I was his most therapeutic companion, and we would spend time inseparably until he seemed fine. Then it would be triggered again. Of course, no one knew the subject matter of Dead Poet’s yet. I was off the aisle, and sandwiched between two friends I did not know well enough yet to cry around when the character of Neil began his almost ritual preparation to take his life. I was as moved and wrenched as I have ever been outside of real life, watching through water, praying that there would be no gunshot. That, I was sure, would send me leaping over my friend and out of the theater, which would result in explanations I might not have the strength to put into words. Of course there would be that blast, unless there was a sound dropout, or a splicing error. Nevertheless I prayed like mad, and then, suddenly, quietly, the film moved to Kurtwood Smith waking up, asking, “Did you hear something?” I was spared only what would have been too much.
It was no surprise to me that God is real. It was a surprise that night that he was so subtly, and a priori, considerate.

While I have not seen Wit, I can say that HBO is responsible for the television series that has most deeply affected me. Even though I have almost no personal connection to the events portrayed in their phenomenal series, The Wire, it has torn me up inside on multiple occasions. Every season has its share of truly heartbreaking moments, and given that the show is so grounded in realism, it hurts even more. It's the only show I've ever seen that actually made me feel like I wanted to start doing something to helping the kinds of people portrayed on screen. David Simon and Ed Burns deserve medals and more.

I too have been rediscovering Bergman later in my life. And what a treat to experience the power of the wondrous Fanny and Alexander for the very first time at 62. What lingered with me most was the astonishing performance as Helena,the family matriarch,by Gunn Wallgren, an actress totally unfamiliar to me. After I came down from the high of my first viewing,and as is my custom, I read Ebert's reviews, then consulted IMBD to find out more about the film,especially the enchanting Ms. Wallgren. Sadly I found she died of cancer shortly after completing the film. So somewhat ruefully I concluded my memory of her{not unlike the ethereal Falconetti)would be etched forever on just a single extraordinary performance...and yes, I do admit a little bitty tear let me down on my 2nd viewing, especially during a brief scene late in the film between Wallgren's Helena and her dead son,Oscar. I envy any you who have yet to view this great film,hopefully in a theater,but if at home, to definitely see it in HD.

I do not think I could watch Wit. I'm 19 and haven't had cancer, but three women I knew (an aunt, a woman to whom I was very close, and my pastor's sister) all contracted it in turn.
And, also in turn, they died.
It was probably the most brutal experience of my life, not because I felt so badly then, but because my grief did not manifest itself until a year or two after the last of them passed away. When it came out, it was in the form of bleak depression. I was afraid I was dying. Clearly, I did not, but one of the best forms of catharsis was film - specifically, two films. In Finding Neverland, though Sylvia Davies does not look particularly ill at any point, she is a mother who dies. Her son says something along the lines of "Why did she have to die?"
Why did she? Why did they? I still don't know, but through the asking of that question by Freddy Highmore some sort of dam was broken, and I was finally able to cry. Later I watched The Polar Express, which one of the three women had very much wanted to see but never did, and that thought helped me to cry once more.
I don't think it was so much the quality of the two movies, though they are very high quality. It was the fact that they related to my experience. Wit hits too close to home. Seeing it may be a good idea, but I'm not sure I want to find out.

Are there any films I can't watch again, because of how strong they impact me? Maybe, despite the things I've seen, I've yet to see the worst. I think that there are high and low boundaries for everything, and that includes emotion, and when it goes so far in one direction it can be too much for those who are far down the road to begin with. But I also think that you can come back to a middle ground. It may be hard to watch "Wit" now, but I hope and pray that you will come to a point where the beauty in the pain is no longer painful. Of course, since you know what it is like you don't need a movie to give you an example. I think some films that deal with struggle can be uplifting. The film that comes to mind is "What's Eating Gilbert Grape", because I see myself in it, and yet there is an undertow of hope, even as the house burns down. I only take my struggle as a glimpse of true sorrow and grief, and I hope that when I become a film maker I can bring relief that people ask you about. Thank you, and God bless.

I'm only 22 and I've loved films ever since I can remember. I have always turned to films to be calmed, provoked, saddened, humoured, comforted. I could always count on them to always be there. In some ways, they're a lot more reliable than my friends and family.

There are a few films that I cannot bring myself to watch again (e.g. Million Dollar Baby), but Grave Of The Fireflies is on the top of the list. A relative was somewhat angered by the 'sympathetic' depiction of the Japanese in the film because she herself has a history of violence associated with the Japanese invasion in Malaysia (where I'm from). I didn't try to explain to her that that wasn't the point of the film. We both represent contrasting emotional reactions to this fine Ghibli film and that was fine by me. We both have different reasons for not wanting to watch the film again. However, she did cry when the elder brother died because she could identify with their plight. Either way, it was painful for the both of us.

On the other end of the spectrum, there are 2 films that I continuously revisit to lift my spirits and that is Amelie and My Neighbour Totoro (also by Studio Ghibli), especially the latter. I am transported into a different place whenever I watch Totoro, I feel like I'm on vacation. It's simplicity and quiet pace is just enchanting to me.

Roger,

I had, and beat, kidney cancer the same year you beat yours (and the same year I attended my first Ebertfest), and thus have taken a personal rooting interest in your recovery. So glad to have you back at work in triumph. I can safely say I wouldn't have returned to "My Life" anyway, though Karl (above) is absolutely right; it's some of Michael Keaton's best work.

The more surprising one that I can't come back to, though, is Will Smith's "Hitch." Perfectly enjoyable romantic comedy, I had wanted to see it when it came out...but the place I finally saw it was on the in-room on-demand movies at the hospital, after surgery. Strangely, I have no trouble re-viewing "Mean Girls," despite seeing it in the same place. I think it's because "Hitch" involves those things I stood to lose had the surgery not been successful.

There are several movies which come to mind as being simply too personal for me to bear watching. When I was young, my parents and I spent a winter taking care of a large, isolated hotel in Colorado. It wasn't all bad, as I had an extremely active imagination to keep me occupied, but the isolation eventually got to Dad, sending him into a bit of a psychotic frenzy. He eventually died. I have not since been able to view "Life is Beautiful" without weeping uncontrollably.

Later in life, in my teenage years, I had this wonderful, sweet girlfriend whom I adored. Then this freak with scissors for hands moved to town and stole her away from me. He had this really skewed view of reality which everybody else seemed to love but which I knew was all a shallow sham. It really upset me at the time, and I did some immature and self-detrimental things I have since come to regret. So that movie "Crimes and Misdemeanors" really opens a bag of worms I'd rather keep tied shut (I do watch the Martin Landau parts of it, though).

Finally, I was, until recently, occupying the mind of John Malkovich. It was a wonderful, beautiful experience, which made it all the more painful when I was forced out by other intruders on his mind. It is just so difficult to have such a wondrous mind, wondrous experience, and then have it all yanked away in the blink of an eye. This is why I have never been able to watch "Charly" in its entirety.

I have seen many films in my day (well at least for a 19 year old), but few have really have moved to a deep extent. The one I would name as the one that has impacted me the most perhaps is I, Vitelloni. It is a film that just seemed to have such truth to it about love, family, small town life, human nature, and most importantly human nature. Tied with I, Vitelloni I would also sight Do the Right Thing as a film to impact me as it made me look at race as I never have before. As a white kid from the Chicago suburbs it really made me think outside of my own world and look at race relations more seriously then I did before. It is the kind of film that made me think and want to understand. Even more importantly be a different kind of person.

I made the mistake of watching "Wit" in my college library.
I wept in that cubicle.

An old one that I've had a difficult time watching since I was a teen is "Becket." Once I knew the ending, Peter O'Toole's excruciating pain and self-hate at the end made the largest part of a wonderful movie too hard to watch from the beginning.

Mr. Ebert, Thank you very much for your reviews and opinions. I must thank you, especially, for turning me onto "Ikiru." I think you mention in your review that it is one of the very rare movies that has the power to move the viewer to adjust or examine his own life. I most likely would have never seen the movie were it not for you. Thanks again.

My mother's father was a WWII veteran. After he came from the war, he was violent to my grandmother and uncle and was committed to a psychiatric hospital. My grandmother refused to allow my mother and her siblings to watch any war movies. To this day my mother refuses to watch any sort of war movie. I don't know about movies that deal with mental illness, though. I wonder if my mother or grandmother could sit through "A Beautiful Mind."

I don't think I can cry, but three films have stilled my response to the world in the immediate and lasting moments afterwards. The first was Schindler's List. The horror of it all had me sitting on the edge of my bathtub at the age of fourteen wondering how and why? I still do. The second was Grave of the Fireflies. I remember watching it at work. Someone came by as they noted my absorption on the laptop I was using and asked if I liked the film. I smiled and said yeah. They soon left and I was left with that yeah to contemplate during the sorrowful ending. The third was Nobody Knows. I was silent for a half hour after watching it. It was the least heart-wrenching film of the three, but amazed me the most for its intimate portrayal of the immutable spark alight in all children. Where was mine, I asked?

Years ago, Roger, you wrote a review of Michael Apted's "28 Up" and the first lines of that review stayed with me. You wrote: "Somewhere at home are photographs taken when I was a child. A solemn, round-faced little boy gazes out at the camera, and as I look at him I know in my mind that he is me and I am him, but the idea has no reality. I cannot understand the connection, and as I think more deeply about the mystery of the passage of time, I feel a sense of awe."

Those words, and further my introduction to this wonderful film series, have profoundly given me a certain deep perspective on my place is this world and the mystery of time. I have also used my first experience seeing a film as a timeline for my own life

I am now 36, but when I go to my mother and father's home and look at the pictures that my mother shows my wife, I feel as though I am staring into a mirror of time. They take me back to a time and place that I wish I could remember with deeper clarity. I am looking at a child locked forever in a moment in time and I think to myself "He has no idea of the times that lay before him."

Movies take me to a time and place, I remember every film that I saw, when I saw it and often who I saw it with. The passage of time as I draw further and further away from that particular time in which I see a movie I can often look back over the gulf of time and I put a timestamp on each one.

"Ghost" was the first film I ever took a girl to and when I see the film I am elated with the sense of falling in love for the first time.

"After Life", oddly enough, was the first film I saw after my grandmother passed and in that deeply emotional state it gave me a lot to ponder. It should have been difficult to to watch but it was strangely comforting.

"Raiders of the Lost Ark" is painful for me. I saw the film when I was nine years-old and during that time, a schoolmate of mine died in a fire in his home. That melting face takes me to a painful moment in my life and it has been a scene I cannot bare to watch.

Dick Clark once said that "Music is the soundtrack of your life". Well, movies often are the timeline of my life.

When I was young, I got roughed around quite a bit. This turned worse and worse until I became a refugee of the guidance office and my parents were starting to ignore the problems I was having at school.

One day when I was 11, three kids followed me into the bathroom and decided to take it up a notch. They found some dirty girls underwear, pushed me down, kicked me until I couldn't get up, put the underwear over my head and cut my left shoulder with a knife one of the kids had. I'm going to be 24 soon, and the scar is still there.

I barely made it home hiding what had happened to me under my jacket. A few weeks later, I learned how bad my temper could get and I finally lashed back out. I ended up spending the next few years using that aspect against anyone that I thought was disrespecting me. That was at least until the day I left my brothers crying and bleeding on the floor because of my temper.

Flash forward, it's years later, and after a few girlfriends to help me keep things in check, I finally have things under control. The night terrors are less and the anger finally feels like something I can channel into writing.

I hear about Denzel Washington's new movie. At this time I'm working at a movie theater, so I see everything that comes through no matter how bad it is. My manager calls it the greatest "male weeper" since Field of Dreams.

With a trailer unseen, and a plot unknown, I decided to go see a matinee of the film and sit down.

By the time Antwone Fisher stands there in the doorway talking to his mom in that calm and commanding voice I know I'm watching myself. He's not angry anymore, he just feels the need to let her know who he is, and what he stands for. Calm and strong, he slowly goes to her and explains that yes, he is a good person, that he tries to make the right decisions, he doesn't smoke, doesn't drink. After years of searching he finds where he is welcome and loved, and can finally be at peace.

There are movies I like more, are better constructed and will ultimately obtain a classic status that I think time may deny this movie. All I know is that I was by myself in that theater, and watched someone find the same strength that I had to find to get over these problems.

Which is why to this day, no matter how hard it is to watch; Antwone Fisher provides the single greatest catharsis that anything can possibly provide to me in those darker moments.

There are some days I just can't bring myself to do it, but it taught me something very important. I might have been the only person watching the movie that day, but I found out that I wasn't really alone.

I do hope that you find yourself watching Wit again soon, and I'll continue to pray for your good health.

-K. Andrew-

I know what you mean, Roger. Movies usually don't have the power to shatter you unless they directly tap into or evoke an experience of yours.

As an example from my own life, one of the most devastating and painful movies I've ever seen is- don't laugh- "The 40-year-old Virgin".

It reminded me of how shy and uncomfortable around men I was as a teenager, how unattractive and unwanted I felt, how desperately I sought to have sex for the first time, how I sought advice from older and more experienced "friends" who were actually incredibly unqualified to give it and how cynically I practically threw away my virginity to the first man who wanted to sleep with me. And how after him and a one night stand, I never had intercourse again. It's been almost 4 years now and I haven't had sex since I was 16 years old.

My mother died of breast cancer. A few years later my dad took me to see the play Wit. I'm still really angry with him about that. It was pure pain to watch. Maybe in some abstract sense it's a good play (or good movie, haven't seen the movie), but if you've actually had some personal or family experience with cancer, stay away, it seems to be nothing more than deliberate salt in the wounds to me.

A comment, Roger, not directly related to the subject of your post, but to this aside:

"I used to smile at reader letters saying things like, "My husband is sick and I need a movie to cheer him up." I doubted the Norman Cousins theory that laughter is curative (I still do)."

While laughter may not cure your cancer (or my heart disease) there is significant scientific evidence that it can have a positive effect on a person's physical and mental well-being.

To cite just one such study, in 2005 researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore showed for the first time that laughter is linked to healthy function of blood vessels. Their research showed that laughter causes the tissue that forms the inner lining of blood vessels, the endothelium, to dilate or expand in order to increase blood flow. "The recommendation for a healthy heart may one day be -- exercise, eat right and laugh a few times a day," says Michael Miller, M.D., F.A.C.C., director of the Center for Preventive Cardiology at the University of Maryland Medical Center.

For more, visit http://laughterreallyis.com

My experience of living in a hospital mental health ward certainly changed me deeply. I know what it means to lose your dignity and humanity in the service of a bureaucracy.

I watched "Cuckoo's nest" afterwards to compare it to my own experience. There is one scene where McMurphy has an opportunity to escape but has a moral crisis and decides to return out of loyalty to other patients. I think a truer ending would be if he simply left. That is what would really happen and that is what he should do. You make friendships of convenience in a place like that, you often stand up for other people, but ultimately your only responsibility is to yourself. I don't think it is right to try and save these people, if they wanted saving they would have done it themselves. That is the meaning of Billy's suicide: having committed a crime against conformity, he does the only thing that is available to him to recreate it, because he depends on it. McMurphy's disillusion at realising most of the patients are voluntary should have taken him to a different conclusion. We are afraid of our own insights.

The lingering effect of hospital authoritarianism is that you become more tolerant of conformity and authority in the outside world, because it has been tortured into you that this is the path to healing, to the resumption of your autonomy. That is a crime.

A more life-affirming film about the verge of psychosis is "The Hawk is Dying". I felt Paul Giamatti's rage, every inch of it. This is how I would respond should anyone ever again try to take away my liberty. I loved the way people responded with petty concern to his eccentricity, I loved the way he turned them away with anger and argument with lines like "You can't FEEL anything." or "Of course I'm not calm, only a madman would be calm." I found catharsis in this film, it articulated all my anger.

It was wonderful and sad listening to a recording of Sylvia Plath's poetry this year, being so familiar with her work and life. She died twenty years before I was born and yet I found myself mourn for her. Ted Hughes "Fulbright scholars" and "Blue" got to me. Perhaps only a minor poet in the final analysis, I felt the immensity of his loss. Or Plath's final poem "Edge" with lines like "Her bare feet seem to be saying we have come so far, it is over."

"Wit" is profound. It is an unravelling. She is the kind of character for whom literature and intellect have preserved her from strong feeling. I find this irritating and yet, knowing this is unjust, suppress these judgements and simply watch and listen to her. I don't think life ever lets you off the hook. It exacts from you everything it can. It is cruel and no-one is guaranteed an easy death. The process of dying has some kind of value. In one of Courtney Love's songs she sings "Tear the petals off of you and make you tell the truth". Part of that value I'm sure is truth. The final scenes where her Mother reads a children's story to her are unbearable.

I had a similar response to Anne Deveson's book "Tell me I'm here" about her son's schizophrenia and death at 24. She was a successful journalist and her personality and professional equipment seemed to me to obstruct her ability to tell her story and I found it irritating. The underlying material was so compelling I finally forced myself to read it, accepted her as she was, and found that she had made me feel her loss and how hard it hit her.

Scott Fitzgerald wrote: "One writes of scars healed, a loose parallel to the pathology of the skin, but there is no such thing in the life of an individual. There are open wounds, shrunk sometimes to the size of a pin-prick but wounds still. The marks of suffering are more comparable to the loss of a finger, or of the sight of an eye. We may not miss them, either, for one minute in a year, but if we should there is nothing to be done about it."

I am tempted to agree as I am not sure anything that ever hurts us deeply can be healed. Something else can be done. Words fail me here and I cannot find the right word but think "healing" is wrong. Healing is what we desire, it is not what we find.

I think most of our lives we live in a cycle of pain and temporary relief. We get by in this way until we can't any longer. How it feels to know fully the truth of our lives, our mortality, the things we have lost, is something I feel only occasionally, momentarily. To feel this emotion in a lasting way, properly articulated, for an hour, a day, a week, a month: this I don't know, not yet. That is the point where my competence to speak about this ends.

Oddly I recall at about 16 I watched "Clueless" and one scene caught me off guard and I felt that unbearable emotion. Alicia Silverstone sitting on the stairs, alone, holding herself. I wasn't touched by the sadness of the scene, the situation, but something deeper about the happiness and life in the film. I think if I were to make a film that would really hurt, I would use happiness and laughter as my weapons of choice.

On that point Stephen King has a wonderful line in "Desparation" (otherwise a pretty God-Awful film). "Do you want to know how cruel your God is? How fantastically cruel? Sometimes he lets us laugh." If I misheard this line I am glad.

It is amazing to read the effects of film and how each artist manages to go to the very soul of so many people. I imagine for me it was taking my dad to see "Saving Private Ryan" My ailing father in his eighties at the time never saw the complete movie ..he became violently ill in the opening scenes. I remember as I took him home wondering to myself was it the movie or the chemotherapy he recently underwent that made him ill ? My own curiosity drove me back to the theatre to view the movie in its entirety ..and it was in that film that I learned more about the quiet enignma that was my father than I had ever known before. I lost my Dad soon after that but I will never forget the insight that Speilberg gave me into my Dad and history . They really are one and the same..

There is a scene in Sandra Bullock's movie "While You Were Sleeping" that makes me cry. She is at the church and the truth is revealed that she never was involved with Peter Gallagher. She explains that she was looking to belong. Looking to belong to a family. That scene just rips me apart as I have no family. They are still alive, but we have no relationship. The need to belong and form a new family of strangers is strong.

I tend to be most moved by moments that reflect a shared experience, often suggesting that while existence is often a lonely and scary experience (no matter how many close loved ones you have), the fact that everyone is having the same experience makes it less lonely and scary.

Off the top of my head, examples of this (for me) include the final scene of Nashville, the final shot of The 400 Blows, the singalong in Magnolia, most of Tokyo Story, most of The Royal Tenenbaums, the Seven Up documentary series, Roy's plight in Close Encounters of The Third Kind, the Kurt character in Old Joy, and a whole lot more.

Oddly enough, the film that absolutely wrecks me is Garry Marshall's Nothing in Common.

It's not the most well-made film, but it connects with my experiences of parental divorce, and a fractured relationship between father and son. I can't watch the film without breaking down into those from-deep-in-the-chest sobs.

I don't think I've ever seen the final scene ("You're the last person I ever thought would come through for me") clearly, because tears have always gotten in the way.

I feel that I am alone in regarding "All the Little Animals" as an overlooked masterpiece. I first saw it at a film festival in Palm Beach during my senior year of university. I have seen it more times than any other film, and when I shared it with my older sister, during her final year with brain cancer, she laughed at the scene where Christian Bale cries out to John Hurt for friendship by falling onto the grass and shouting "I just want something to do! I have nothing to do!" She said "He reminds me of you."

Several months later, I was at a friend's house, one block away from the apartment where my sister and her husband lived. Watching it, I felt more than ever before, the clash between wickedness and purity in this world. I was angered and saddened by evil, and cancer, and toxins of every kind. I followed Christian Bale's character's emotions ever closely. I understood how one who would never have hurt a fly, could, over time, be driven by intentions to murder the murderer. His grief over being powerless to save the one thing that mattered most to him, was exactly how I felt at that moment in my own life. By the end of the film, we have been put through an ordeal, and then, our anxieties are given to rest. The first credit rolled, and my friend said, "Your mother is on the phone." My mother said, "Peter, your sister just died. You need to go over and see her." I made it in time, to feel her, and kiss her, while her blood was still warm.

For me, there are a few films I can't watch. 'Blue Velvet', because it was my first 'transgressive' film, seen with and at the behest of someone who is no longer in my life. 'Lost in Translation' (which I view as a spiritual sequel to 'The Graduate' - I am right now exactly halfway between Ben then and Ben now). 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind' because there are memories I can't stand and can't stand to lose, mostly related to 'Blue Velvet' above.

And one that kills me every time, but I can and do watch it, even though it gets more poignant the older I get - 'More', a short film I saw on IFC, eventually released on the 'Film Fest' DVD #2, Cannes.

Concerning your recent comments about Mike Nichols' superb film "Wit," I was reminded of a similar experience which I encountered. Your feelings concerning the movie altered as you in fact had undergone a similar experience, and I wonder how people who undergo the very subject of the movie view that film. How do Holocaust survivors experience "Schindler's List" or "The Pianist"? How do parents who have lost a child experience films like "In the Bedroom" or "Moonlight Mile"?
I have found myself in an analagous situation, although slightly different. Your mentioning "Grave of the Fireflies" was the initial stimulus. I have been a high school English teacher in Japan for about three years now, preparing to return to the United States, and feel that I have undergone a change in my experience of film and books in regards to subject material dealing with Japan. My first experience began with "The Thin Red Line" (the James Jones book). I found myself, while reading, mentally creating the novel's characters in my own mental images but, unlike prior war novels I had read, placing the faces of people who I'd met and befriended on the faces of the relatively anonymous Japanese soldiers of the story. One cannot escape the fact that, if this were 60 years ago, a mere drop in the expanse of time, the very students to whom I teach English would be bitter enemies, at the other end of a gun. Here I was, seeing the faces of my friends on the visages of these minor characters.
These revelations were furthered when i watched such films as "Grave of the Fireflies," but also such war pictures as Imamura's "Black Rain," the bitter film "Fires on the Plain" and even the recent "Letters from Iwo Jima."
Prior to my experience in Japan, it had been a challenge to humanize the characters which had been faceless in my experience of them but, having lived among them, separating the people I have met from the characters I have experienced had become impossible.
What I am in a sense driving at is, how much of our own life experiences determines which films we enjoy? You commented that, upon watching the film "Ikiru," you had felt that Kanji had become less like an old man, and more like yourself; I have met enough Kanji's trying to build parks, so to speak, that the film's final revelations are all the more powerful.
Obviously, one needn't undergo the subject of the film to be moved by it. But, in our search for healing and redemption by film itself, do we sometimes misunderstand and overappreciate a film because of our prior experiences? Do we tend to overrate films which, at a timely moment, play on our emotions? Will we enjoy films like "United 93" ten years from now? I admit to feeling frustration, anger, and, with the bravery demonstrated by the film, ultimately pride. But how will my children feel about the film, not having exerienced these events?
These are a few of the examples I could initially think of. What other films which, covering a subject relevant to the current time, could consequently be relegated to obsolete status? Or what films of the past have become just such? Does anyone still watch John Wayne's "The Green Berets"?

One movie affected me deeply at the very end, and I remembered it for over 4 decades. I just had a chance to see again this overlooked treasure of American cinema --The Heart is a Lonely Hunter -- which I last saw in theatrical release in 1968 (I believe was finally released on DVD this past January, 2008).

The movie features Alan Arkin's incandescent, profoundly moving performance in a role as a deaf mute in a small Jim Crow Southern town who provides a sounding board for the the problems of so many other people (of all races, ages, mental abilities and social classes), but who has to suffer silently his own deep sorrow and loneliness.

Once again, this was as painful story to view. But beyond all its sensitivity and sadness, I now realized that this movie achieves a lasting importance by generating in the viewer a deep necessity for an abiding, empathetic feeling in life.

The one movie I couldn't stand to see again is almost embarrassing. I was probably eleven when my parents separated. They weren't divorced at that point, and we still had outings as a family, and one of the first things we did was all go to see Mrs. Doubtfire. I had thought it looked funny from the commercials, and never really considered what the circumstances were that lead to Robin Williams dressing up as a woman. It occurs to me only as I write this that my parents must have known what it was about, and I'm not really sure what they were thinking. My sisters and I must have pressed the issue.

I don't remember being devastated by it when I saw it - I thought it was pretty funny at times. But the movie ends without the parents getting back together, and as I recall, with a speech about how it might never happen. I was a bit rattled. A couple years later, though, the movie came on TV, and I was thoroughly depressed in minutes. My parents were still in the limbo of separation, and now the desperation of a man trying to spend time with his kids was more or less a cruel caricature of my dad during that time - always eager to have my sisters and me over at his apartment, which I, at least, never really wanted to do. The movie's portrayal of his end of the equation was what got to me. I had mostly thought in terms of the fact that I didn't want to be sleeping in a sleeping bag in a place that was not my home, and tried to ignore the fact that he was being uncomfortably nice and patient with us when we visited him. The movie made it impossible not to think about.

The only good thing about the whole situation is that I'm pretty sure that if I could stand to see Mrs. Doubtfire again, I still don't think I'd want to.

I can become very sensitive when I watch movies and I cry easily. However, I don't think I've ever been brought to tears by a movie because I identify with the situation (maybe later. I'm only 17 now). With some movies, like Grave of the Fireflies, most people are moved by it without having to identify. Sometimes it's just a matter of reacting to the emotions of the character--and I suppose that's a good way to measure the quality of a performance, if you're watching an actor and you can't keep from crying in sympathy. I don't think I can watch the scene in Whale Rider where Pai is singing and crying without crying too. On the other hand, I couldn't cry during Schindler's List. I thought I ought to, since I'm Jewish, but I just watched the whole thing numbly.

The most disturbing movie I've seen recently is The Orphanage. I cried so much at the end, even though I didn't identify with it on any level, and my mother didn't cry at all. The ending of the Sixth Sense is similar, and it always makes me cry, too. I think it's the concept that some people can only find happiness and satisfaction in death is what affects me (and fascinates me) the most.

Hi Roger. I didn't read your original column, but this one really brought up some memories for me as well.

While my mother was struggling with breast cancer, the movie Titanic came out. I rather innocuously asked her if she had seen it. She almost barked back at me something to the effect of, "Why in the world would I want to go see a movie where all those people die?" Well, THAT shut me up.

Secondly, although I thought that Wit might be too painful for me to watch, it came nowhere near the effect that Spielberg's "AI" had on me. While "Wit" was merely uncomfortable, "AI" hurt so much I cried violently for 30 minutes straight after it ended. I felt so sorry for all the other patrons around me as we left the theater, they must have been so uncomfortable.

An unlikely film to invoke such a reaction! But it hit me only a couple of months after my mother passed, and the memory of the final scene where Osment gets to spend one last day with his mother is, even now, bringing tears to my eyes.

I understand that Spielberg made "AI" partly as a result of his mother's passing, and I've often wondered at what point he experienced such a release while working on the project. When he read the script? When he filmed it? When he saw the first rough cut, or after seeing the final version?

All I know is that I have avoided watching it again ever since.

"Brief Encounter"

Roger, thank you for saying what too few people realize: "Courage has nothing to do with it."

My wife (who has several chronic illnesses) has hated it for years when people refer to someone "battling" with cancer. The problem with the metaphor, she says, is that it implies that someone who dies from cancer has somehow lost or failed. I have to agree; you endure cancer, but it's not exactly a battle in the sense of the RAF fighting the Nazis over London ... it's more like you're one of the people in the street, praying that your house isn't the one that's bombed and doing the best you can in the wreckage.

Regarding "Wit": my wife and I found much that was true and powerful in that film. Although we've noticed that our medical technicians tend to be nicer than the ones Emma had. Weird, but nice.

Movies have evoked many powerful emotions in me, but I have not yet found one that I cannot return to because of those emotions. I am not saying this to brag ... I am sure the time will someday come. Probably all too soon.

I don't know if I myself have ever had a film that has ever hit as close to home as some of the wonderfully insightful and sensitive posters above have, or your own recent experience with the film Wit. But this may be because I am blessed in the sense that nothing has happened to me in my life that I would be able to classify as a tragedy. So I come to those type of stories with a certain sense of detachment, or just a lack of life experience.

Certain films move me to tears, but usually not expressly because of sadness but an outpouring of all kinds of emotion. The final scenes of City Lights, E.T., and Titanic spring to mind for me. But I don't think those are necessarily 'tear jerking' endings in the traditional sense as they are hybrids of tragedy and joy, and it's that emotional intensity that usually has the ability to move me to tears.

But I felt the need to share one instance where a film can 'hurt too much', but it wasn't in regards to myself but my father.

There is a substantial age difference between my mother and my father. My father was born in 1942 and my mother in 1965, and their 20 year marriage ended recently in a rather catastrophic manner (not that I would imagine there are marriage separations that aren't catastrophic, but I digress) and one day after my mother had left I asked him if he would like to watch Manhattan with me. He looked visibly upset when I asked him, mumbled 'no', and just shook his head. I had not seen the film for several years, and re-visiting I was glad he hadn't watched it with me because he would have undoubtedly found the film's central May/December romance, and Woody Allen's constant hang ups with it that he expresses throughout the film, extremely upsetting.

I recently watched Housekeeping for the first time. Few films that I've seen have evoked childhood so well, and as a result few have provided such a warm emotional release.

Soloman,

Your line from [u]Desperation[/u] is one word off. Instead of "laugh," the lines goes like this: "Do you know how cruel your God is?...sometimes, he lets us live." I've always found it one of the more meaningful (and troubling) things King's ever said in his stories.

I was able to see Mike Nichols "Wit" FINALLY last summer (on the basis of your top ten list placement in 2001, incidentally). I thought it was sad, yes, but also funny and powerfully acted and made by Thompson and Nichols.

I have racked my brain but I'm not sure there's a single movie I can't watch for fear of re-living a personal pain! Weirdly enough, a favorite film I can identify with a particular time in my life is "Magnolia" (1999) because Tom Cruise and Jason Robards (my two least favorite characters/performances when I first saw it) have a relationship that reflects what I feared (at the time) my relationship with my own father might someday become. That final scene between them, with Cruise careening between melodramatic crying and calling Robards a "f---ing a--hole" over and over, was gutwrenching and had the most resonance for me - personally - at the time. I can still watch the movie as a film I love for its technical prowess, its brilliant performances, its wonderful music by Aimee Mann, its interlocking character-based stories that involve me for all 188 minutes of its running time, and, ultimately, for the genius of Paul Thomas Anderson. Here is a film, I think, that gets close to - if not a personal event - one that could be on the horizon down the line...

I too had an audio recording of a loved one who passed, though I actually had the urge to listen to it several years down the road. For my eleventh birthday I got a stereo that featured a speaker that was also a microphone. I spent the winter break from school with my little brother making mock-radio shows and commentary. Several months later he would unexpectedly pass. I held on to those tapes for several years without listening to them (not that I listened to them when they were made--we were just making them without much thought of the result).

Then came a point in my teenage years when I felt really lost and down, and I started listening to them on night. I came to a point in a recording that I didn't recall. It was my brother, making a special recording for me on my birthday while I was taking a nap. I didn't recall ever listening to this, and probably because he did it solely as a secret without divulging what he did. He just recorded a bunch of pleasantries toward me on my birthday, calling me "the best brother there is". Considering I never did say any final words to me it was like a gift to hear them years later. I always wished I could have said some words to him but his recording gave me reassurance that he knew anyway. I never listened to the tapes again. Sadly through unfortunate circumstances I don't have them anymore.

I share this memory not just because of the words about loved ones recorded but because of how it relates to a movie I adore but have only sat through twice: "In America". The last scene of the film features the little girl viewing video footage of her lost brother, seeing how the captured memory isn't something she wants to remember but instead wishes that she keeps the memory of his essence.

Seeing the movie brought back those memories of loss, particularly since it was a film from the point of view of children at the age I was. The finale had me in tears, and I sat there through the credits until the last audience member left before I did since I felt I looked like a basket case. But the ending resonated particularly because the girl had capture memories of her brother before her but chose not to remember them. The reassurance she discovers, or at least I took away from the film, was that she wasn't so much grateful for the video memories she had but grateful in the thought that at one time she had her brother in her life.

But it's a film too shattering for me to sit through after seeing it twice. My memory of the film sits well enough as is. Heck, sometimes remembering certain scenes bring tears to my eyes.

Roger-

As you well know, sometimes the emotional epiphanies come from the movies we watch, and sometimes from talking about them.

I'm the oldest of three boys with two parents who were alcoholics throughout our childhoods and beyond. Seeing the Meg Ryan-Andy Garcia film "When A Man Loves A Woman" had a moment of epiphany for me in a scene where Ryan is drunk and out of control in the shower and the eldest daughter is trying to both help her and deal with this situation no child should have to handle. I realized that that child was me; it was like seeing myself through a time machine. Emotions came flooding back, along with many suppressed memories.

The next day at work I was still so disturbed by the realization I discussed it with a female co-worker. "I was Meg Ryan," she said, and told me she was a recovering alcoholic who had also been moved by the film. We'd never talked about this with each other before, and there was a certain amount of healing for both of us in discussing it.

And I agree with Bob B. about "Nothing in Common." It was like watching my life (except I wasn't cool like Tom Hanks with gorgeous girlfriends). I worked in advertising, had played drums, and Jackie Gleeson was a dead ringer for my dad, even down to a bad foot. He even cussed like him and sold promotional stuff like pens! I can watch that movie and find it weird and enjoyable, but probably won't watch the Meg Ryan film again, despite her remarkable performance.

In closing, thanks for doing the blogs Roger. I enjoy your writing so very much and you must know that your fans have been rooting for you every step of the way.

Very personal and true article.

There aren't many great films that I would be hesitant to rewatch, but Kore-Eda Hirokazu's "Nobody Knows" would be tough. It's a masterpiece, and I'd recommend it to anyone, but I don't know if I'd watch it with them.

The 'interviews' in "The Passion of Anna" are fascinating to me. The power of the movie is so great that Bergman is able to completely shut down the story and then return with the full force intact. He snaps his fingers and we're up to here in pain again. "Persona" is of course another example - he is constantly saying 'this is just a movie' but we don't believe him.

He's also experimenting with a new visual realism in "The Passion" a change for someone who typically manicures his shots so much, not to mention the fact that it's widescreen and in color.

There have been many movies in my life that have made me cry. However, only one destroyed me emotionally. I think that is an important distinction. Glory gets me EVERY time, and I can't wait to watch it again. It resides in my personal Top 10. AI, on the other hand, reduced me to a quivering mess. I was unconsolable by my concerned wife. It stayed with me for daysand noticeably atered my personality at work and with friends.

And I should add that I didn't even consider it that good of a movie. (The Flesh Fair scene is Spielberg at his absolute worst.) But it wasn't the quality of the film that caused my breakdown. It was the filmed notion of one more day. Even now typing, I get a lump in my throat because, Roger, I would do anything to receive what that little robot boy got: one more day.

I have reference you often in response to people calling Brokeback Mountain a "gay" film. I'm not gay, and that movie spoke to me because of the scene in the alley when Jake and Heath split after the summer. Heath punches the wall because life isn't fair. That's how I feel when I think about the opportunity of getting one more day.

By the way, this discussion has also caused me to reflect back to another great film discussion from recent years. Should Harold Crick die? I have argued (somewhat in the devil's advocate roll) that he should. Great art possesses true and real power. Like Dustin Hoffman says, he has to die sometime; it won't get any better than this. True art has great power (as the above has clearly demonstrated). What price are we willing to pay for that art?

Its not too painful to watch, but still makes me tear up and resonates deeply with me everytime I see it. Not a movie, but an episode of the Simpsons called 'Lisa's Substitute'. Dustin Hoffmnan (credited as Sam Etic) guest stars and I much prefer it to any other voice over work that he has done. :) I think that if you watch it, you'll agree.

It is very rare to find a good film that I cannot watch a second time. There are plenty of bad movies that I never want to ever even think about again and there are The Broccoli Movies like [i]Gandhi[/i], [i]The Killing Fields[/i] and [i]Out of Africa[/i] that are great films but always make me feel like I’m watching something that is good for me. But rare is the good film that is so deeply disturbing that I cannot bring myself to revisit it.

One such film was Michael Tolkin's [i]The Rapture[/i] which starred Mimi Rogers as a mid-life party girl who gives her life to God when she overhears rumors that the second coming in imminent. She throws away her party life, gets married has a daughter. But things grow dark when her husband is murdered and believes that she has been given a sign to go into the desert to wait for her ascension to heaven. She waits and waits and waits and waits and then becomes frustrated with God (committing one shocking act of defiance) and by the time the second coming does happen she is frustrated and wants nothing more to do with him or his promises.

This is a challenging film from top to bottom. It begins with the kind of pious soul-shifting tale usually found in those readers that are distributed by your local church. But just as the film is settling into that mode, it takes the literal depictions of the end-times and turns them back on themselves so that we actually see what that bible describes as the end of the world through the eyes of a person who isn’t convinced that God is all that he says he is. The finale which leaves Sharon standing in darkness on the desolate shores of a mid-point between the life and the proposed eternal reward are deeply disturbing because the movie hasn’t forced her to change. This is an uneasy film to watch and an even tougher film to ponder afterwards, so much so that when it’s over you can’t deny the film’s power but you probably aren’t willing to ever see it again.

Wit:
Wow, did you hit home, Like you i went through a Parotid cancer experience 5 years ago. Deep lobe removal with a full on treatment of radiation after removal. i have happily survived. During the experience i found an odd strength from the movie Wit. As you mentioned, it was not her strength (that all tell you they admire) but the sense of the passage of time and base survival with a somewhat blind stumbling forward hope that keeps you going that i found solace in, no matter the outcome. i watched Wit a few times during my treatments. it now sits on my shelf at home, calling me to watch it but i fear to watch it. A tie to reliving a period i don't want to relive but has now become a defining point in my life. i look at that movie cover and just that presence there is enough. i don't think i will ever get rid of it but not sure if i can watch it again. Thanks for discussing this, it is a deeply shared experience.

I don't know if this counts, but here we go:
Adaptation is probably the one film that most closely resembles my life. The constant self-defeating thoughts, the meandering "inner narrative" that drives me everyday...even small bits like Charlie battling with himself about getting out of the car to kiss Amelia...that stuff is 100%, pure, unfiltered me.
Having said that, Adaptation pretty much wrecks me in the final 10 minutes or so, even though I know its supposed to be "contrived" and not "real." I think the brilliance of Adaptation is that Charlie Kaufman sets out to do *everything* and actually succeeds. The film is pretty much "about" everything. Life, death, love, art, sex, violence, family...it's not really a comedy (it's not..."farcical" enough), not really a drama (it's not treacly enough) it's not really fiction, not really nonfiction, and it's all resolved in the end so beautifully. Adaptation truly drains me every time I watch it and as a result I can only watch once every few months (this is after, of course, my insane mandatory weekly viewing I did right after the DVD came out originally...I've probably seen that film more than any other.)

Dear Roger,

I'm a 26 year old college grad, and I've been reading your work for almost 12 years, and watching you on "Siskel & Ebert" even longer. I've never written to you before, but I feel very compelled to do so now.

When I was 16, I was diagnosed with an illness called Wegener's Granulomatosis, an autoimmune disease which lead me to kidney failure, dialysis, and some very unpleasant medications. Eventually I had a transplant about two months before I turned 18, but 20 or so months were the worst of my life. I didn't really have any friends or do any activities because of my illness, and it was during this time that film became even more special to me than before.

I guess I'm writing this because I wanted you to know, during a time when you yourself are trying to gain your strength back, how much your writing and work meant to me during that period of my life. I had always been a movie lover, but it was through reading your reviews and seeing your excitement and passion in those words that brought me to really appreciate the beauty and power cinema can offer. As you taught me about what to appreciate and treasure from a good film, the more great films helped me grow as a person. I'm looking forward to learning more as time goes by. Take care and get better soon, Roger.

While there are many movies that have struck a chord with me and leave me sad -- I luckily haven't had any resonate or echo my life, yet. Yet, the movie that resonates most with me is the original Indiana Jones. Life was kicking me hard back then, a lot of things were going on in my family that were not being talked about. My job was a dead-end. I felt so damn lonely.

Then came Indiana Jones. I saw it in a "sneak preview" with an audience that had never seen it before and I've never been theater where the audience was deeply involved in a film. I saw more than one person (including me) take their feet up off the floor in the tarantula scene, approving loudly when Indy shot the sword wielding guy instead of being him with his whip or a sword and giving the film a standing ovation at the end. I left the film feeling positive for the first time in a long time.

Over the next year I must have seen the move 25 times. That was back in the day of $1.00/$1.50 discount theaters and I could afford to go as much as I needed to and I needed it. When I started to feeling bad and lonely, I'd go see Indiana Jones, again.

It's been ages and I still watch Indiana Jones every year or so, I get teary and remember that tough time. However, after the movie gets started I forget that and get involved in the wonderful adventure.

Film is such a great medium that it can share your bad times, your good times and sometimes just take you into another world. Mr. Ebert, I must admit I'd never really seen your written reviews I know you mostly from your TV work. However, you are an amazing writing -- with a real gift for the written word. I'm in awe of your talent and humanity.

While there are many movies, articles, letters, recordings and photographs that can instantly spark a tearful reaction from me due to some deeply personal or moving subject matter, I can honestly say that there is only one film that I have ever seen in my forty-six years that I will never watch again... even though it has changed my life forever. The film is a documentary called "Earthlings" narrated by Joaquin Phoenix, which concerns the subject of animal abuse, in all its forms, throughout history up to the present day. I wish I could remember who made the film but his name escapes me at the moment, although I'm sure that quite a few people are responsible for making it. It's not available in stores or for rent, but it can be purchased on the website or viewed for free, if googled, over the internet.

I've never been so devestated by a film in all my life, and I've taken steps to change my behavior as a result. It's coming up on one year since I first saw it and I still feel it's too gut wrenching to watch again. And why would I want to? It's not entertainment for sure, but rather a comprehensive, indisputable case that illustrates the massive slaughter, torture and enslavement of other living species at the hands of humans.

I know I won't ever watch the film again, but the images, and the knowlegde they convey, are permanently etched in my mind. A desirable goal.

Fascinating article. I never experienced such a thing until I saw Spanglish. I was going through divorce when it came out, and more than one friend told me it reminded them of me. I saw it at the theater and it was extremely therapeutic. When it came out on DVD, I bought it. And it sits on my shelf unwatched.

My moment is in "Peggy Sue Got Married" when middle-aged Peggy Sue, having gone back in time to her teen years, answers the phone at her parents' house and it's a call from her grandmother, who has been dead for many years in Peggy's middle-aged reality. The devastation on Peggy Sue/Kathleen Turner's face when she realizes that the voice is her beloved grandmother, alive again... Well, my father had been gone many years when I first saw this film, and it was almost overwhelming for me to see this scene because I don't even have his voice on tape. What I would give for that phone call, and I so completely related to Peggy's shock and struggle to control her emotions. I can watch the film but I cry every time, like I'm crying now remembering it.

There is another one for me, a film I can't watch again. "Sweet and Lowdown" by Woody Allen, starring Sean Penn and Samantha Morton. My former boyfriend, with whom I spent 7 years, actually looks very much like Sean Penn, and they even had some mannerisms and behaviors in common. When I saw this film, especially the ending ("I made a mistake! I made a mistake!"), it broke me apart because it was too parallel to my own relationship. I LIKED the film and recommended it to many people, but I can't watch it again.

I have never been hurt more by a movie than when I watched Bastard Out Of Carolina. It took all the strength I have not to hurl something at the screen by the end of the movie. My wife and I have always had a soft spot for abused children. We have volunteered, done foster care and adopted. It was so hard to watch the abuse of this girl go on and on. The most difficult part was watching the mom choose the boyfriend over the daughter.

There are a lot of great films that I would class as "emotionally draining." When they're over, I don't feel worse, but to get to that point I have to be feeling strong enough just to start watching. REQUIEM FOR A DREAM is a good example, just off-hand.

I would have to say that E.T. is about the most emotionally draining movie I know. Maybe it's the music, the sounds, I don't know. The last time I watched it, I must have been dehydrated by the end. I was so weak and drained of everything, I could only get a drink of water and go to sleep.

I was about 11 when I first saw E.T. I saw it several times in the theater then. It was an obsession for me. It opened my eyes to the power of films and it gave me an emotional experience I had never had before. I didn't care much about getting all of the E.T. product tie-ins and toys. I didn't have posters on the walls. But the film stayed in my mind. And I guess that faded with time.

Then about a few years ago, Spielberg released a new retooled version on DVD. I bought it and left it on my shelf for a while. Then I was home from work sick one day, and I popped it in. It was the first time I had seen it since I was a teen, and I was completely a mess. I was expecting to find it somewhat outdated and klunky. What I rediscovered is that E.T. is one of the most lovingly told stories on film. And I know that the "sad" part is at the end when E.T. gets sick, but for me, the tears flowed the second I saw the little figure walking among the gigantic redwoods.

I love this film so much, but I dare not watch it any time soon. For me, it strikes a deep nerve that I can't pinpoint. Yes, I loved the film Wit with Emma Thompson, and I was moved to tears at the end, but that film was mentally stimulating in so many ways. E.T. doesn't necessarily make me think. It doesn't necessarily engage my matured sensibilities. E.T. pulls me back into being a child again, both the child experiencing the amazing events on the screen, and the child I was watching it back in the early 80s. The next time I need to soak up a towel with my tears, I know where to go.

Hi Roger
Terms of Endearment. My mom had been sick with breast cancer for two years and died when I was 17. I did NOT know the plot of the movie and by the time Shirley McLaine was yelling at the nurse to give Debra Winger something for the pain, I was bawling. I also wished old Shirley could have been with me in my mom's room.
I also have a recording of my late father on CD (transferred from tape) and I still can't listen to it.
As an English major at U of I, I often admired the "Illini Authors" shelf. Imagine! Professor Curly was pals with Roger Ebert! Roger Ebert, who probably sat in the same classrooms as me. Been to London a couple times, but haven't made that Perfect London Walk yet. Thanks for the inspiration.

For me, the only movie that has had this much effect in recent memory is The Family Stone (spoiler alert?!). This for the fact that Diane Keaton has always appeared (in any role I've seen her play at least) with the charisma, personality and humour of my mother... who herself has been through, and is still experiencing, a string of serious and uncommon medical conditions, although cancer thankfully hasn't been one of them (sometimes seems like it would have been easier to diagnose and treat!). She, like Keaton's character Sybil Stone, is very much a "glue" that holds our crazy family together in many ways, at least for myself, and with all this in mind I approached the fate of Sybil with a level of interested yet safe detachment. Until the final scene that is, of Christmas one year later... and her conspicuous absence -- save for her photo mounted on the wall in memoriam -- was enough to utterly destroy me with its potential parallels.

My mother is still alive, with "life-threatening" replacing the "terminal" adjective applied to her physical state, and still manages to view life positively and with an excitement for the future... but this one was definitely my most recent "too close to home" movie experience.

I remember once a young woman sat and told me about the film "Irreversible" and I listened to her like I was listening to a verdict. We had broken up and it seemed a deeply morbid topic and I felt I had driven her into that morbid place. That was the last time I saw her; the last time I will ever see her. She mentioned your review; I must have pointed to her towards you at some point. She used to use movies, songs, things I liked or had seen in order to teach me things about her. That is the most useful thing I can say about my demographic.

It has taken me five years to find the courage to watch the film and now that I have I think I can see what she saw in it and what she wanted me to see. It is shocking, more than any other film, worse than I imagined. It has the quality of a nightmare and perhaps this makes it more bearable in retrospect. A nightmare doesn't hurt in a lasting way.

It occurred to me that you can't make a rape sequence that is "safe", since the act relies on the brutalisation and humiliation of a woman, the more you try and exact sympathy for her, the more it plays into the hands of perverse interest. This is probably true of all violence.

I think you have to look to the other scenes to assess the moral quality of the film and I think it is true to the experience of women (as far as I can ascertain it) and their fears and hopes. I thought the last scenes were sweet and resemble a real relationship. There is one long scene on the metro where her ex playfully tries to draw out sexual comparisons with her current partner and it is funny. I am not sure I would wish the film on anyone but it has its reasons and its purpose.

"Seven" is mentioned here a lot and I recall that I had trouble convincing myself to watch it again. I think it would be a lie to say the shocks in it are not gratuitous; they are gratuitous but at least the film has something to say about them. Morgan Freeman's speech about why abortion is a mistake, even if it is the right decision in a world like this, is a masterpiece, as good as the speech about rehabilitation in Shawshank, where he decides finally to abandon pretence for truth. Brad Pitt also has a fine moment where he says: "I don't think you are leaving because you believe these things. I think you want to believe them because you're leaving. You want me to agree with you and say its all fucked up. Well I wont say that. I don't agree with you."

In comparison a film like "Wolf Creek", for example, is shocking but it has no purpose beyond its shocks. It has nothing to say and I feel worse having seen it. I could watch actress Cassandra Magrath for 90 minutes but don't feel any desire to see her mutilated. Unlike say "The Exorcist" or "Psycho" I doubt a lot of modern films feel it incumbent upon themselves to be good films in order to earn their shocks. I walk into a video store now and I think: do marketing people think everyone has the tastes of a serial killer? Is everyone around me a serial killer?

It just seems as if the point is to avoid putting any thought into it whatsoever. The story is always the same, the characters fulfill the same function, and the scenes write themselves. This kind of mechanistic, almost sociopathic disrespect for audiences makes me wary of the society in which I live. I wonder, who the hell do you think I am?

Even "Million Dollar Baby" makes me uncomfortable when Freeman muses about the "magic" of boxing. The film argues both for and against senseless violence and I wasn't convinced by the suggested resolution, the idea that living this dangerously is worth the consequences. The comment "I was in magazines" is horrifying as a solution to the puzzle of life. It bothers me so much it feels like a slander against this character. My sympathy is with the Eastwood character and yet I can see that there is no way around the problem of what to do about it: she has the right to make her own decisions, live her own life, even if she hurts herself, even if she hurts you.

Passion of Anna is great. It really is one of his more avant-garde works, and it has one of the more unique "twist endings" I can think of in a movie. I loved how he included a continuation of the end of Shame as a dream, sequence. I caught a screening of it a few years ago and had to deal with yahoos giggling at several points. That happens with Bergman these days, an unfortunate consequence, I suppose, of the age of irony and short attention spans. Well, Bergman isn't going anywhere... On a related note, Autumn Sonata is EXTREMELY painful to watch, and what happens towards the end is so harsh and brutal as to rise almost to the levels of outright horror (complete with borderline absurdity). You might find it interesting that, though I'm a fan of well-made horror films and have seen some pretty gruesome stuff, the only film that comes to mind as being something which was actually too painful for me to watch on first viewing was Spielberg's film of the Color Purple.

I'd first like to say that you are the reason I got into film, Mr. Ebert. Thank you. While I would agree with you that laughter isn't really the best medicine, I am convinced of the curative power of film.

To explain: A couple years ago, I was in love for the first time in my life. This went on for about two years. Unfortunately, it was love of the unrequited variety with an older woman who, while very affectionate toward me, would never consider being with me. As my heart continued to break and break again, I could see no end in sight to the misery.

But then I saw "Lucas" (thanks to your archive of reviews.) It's a beautiful and truthful film that almost perfectly mirrored my situation. By the time it was over, I could start to see that life is long, and I am still young. To experience teenage heartbreak is a beautiful privilege. It lets you know you're alive. It sounds odd, but "Lucas" changed my life.

But I ramble. Get well, Mr. Ebert. What would we do without you?

--Adam McKinney
19
Tacoma, WA.

Mysterious Skin

It's interesting to note the degree to which a movie's effect on a person reflects that person's direct experiences. I can only imagine the effect of a cancer survivor watching "Wit", but to assist in that imagination I have my own experiences with that same phenomenon.

I tend to think in terms of scenes, or characters, rather than movies as a whole. I can't, for example, watch the breakup scene in Kevin Smith's "Chasing Amy" without some very personal memories making their way to the surface. I can't watch "Juno" without thinking how much the Paulie Bleeker character reminds me of myself at that age, and his line of "I try really hard, actually", in response to being told he's cool without trying, seems almost personally directed toward my high school self, as a reminder that the people who were really in my life were not there because of the things I did when I was trying to fit in.

I could go on and on, I'm finding. Peter Gibbons, the main character of "Office Space" (a movie that, despite its status as a comedy, strikes a very deep and serious chord with a lot of engineers), talking about how his cubicle existence makes him feel like every day is the worst day of his life. The scene in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" where Joel, in the midst of making love to Clementine, begs to be allowed to keep just that one memory. The gradual progression in "Ghost World" of Enid and Rebecca's dwindling friendship, and the strangely cathartic moment at the end where Seymour summons the courage to end a bad relationship.

The movies can do many things, but one of them appears to be to tickle that spot in our brains in which songs can get stuck; to remind us of the fleeting moments that have made us into what we are, whatever that is. When that moment is one of pain or struggle (as our moments of definition so often are) it can be unbearable to experience, but the fact that that memory exists in a place that is outside of your head, that it's recorded on a medium that can be viewed by anyone, at least tells us that it's not just us.

I have had a similar experience with Talledega Nights. "If your not first you are last"....very powerful

I have actually seen only the last scene of Wit. A fellow student in grad school brought this scene to class to present an example of the various means of communication employed in the final scene other than mere verbal communication. It was very effective and i'm eager to see the whole thing, although seeing an ending would typically ruin a movie for me.

I can't remember any movie beeing too difficult for me to watch, although my wife, who is a mental health therapist typically is unable to watch movies that deal too realistically with poverty, suicide, drug abuse, depression etc. In the end I think not being able to see a movie due to its power shows that at least the movie impacts one in a significant way, which is what movies should do.

I often forget how powerful a movie can be, but your article reminded me of when I was in high school and somehow ended up at a drive in where the second feature was "the heart is a lonely hunter". The story really moved me and I never forgot it. Years later, after my daughter was born deaf, I tried to watch it again, and could not. Even with my significant involvement with the deaf community, it was hard to think about what life was like for deaf people in the past. It was not until I saw "Children of a Lesser God" that I was able to experience a movie about deafness that gave me great hope for my daughter to grow up a strong, independent, woman, which she has.

I came to a revelation while I was reading this entry. I realized that I've always watched films to explore someone else's experience, to understand the world around me a little better. It essentially is humanistic, but I never made the connection of reaching out and trying to figure out these experiences to make me a more understanding human.

I guess that I starting seeing movies this way as a response to being part of the "connected" generation. I've always grown up with videogames, the Internet, and always being one quick message away from the people I love. When my experience is based on so many digital and electronic things, I desired to escape into the movies for reality. I needed a grounding, to convince myself the life around me wasn't really true, and that the normal human existence was filled with true angst.

The movies that made me realize that idea fully was The Three Colors Trilogy. I remember watching it one of my first weekends as a freshman in college after going through a sudden break-up. I had starting reading your Great Movie essays, Roger, and I decided I would jump in with those films. Ever since then, I've gone through your Great Movie list, always watching and trying to relate to so when the time does come that I have to face death, or heartbreak, or sorrow, or love, at least I can say I am prepared, if only a tiny bit.

Thank you for the beautiful post, which reminded me of how powerful and how touching and how close to home a movie can sometimes be.

It's funny, but for me there's only one movie I really can't see again because it touched my heart and effected me so deeply - Steven Spielberg's AI. It's the sort of movie I can't judge in terms of good or bad, because it touched me so deeply and I was so emotionally invloved and identified with the small child-robot and his quest for motherly love so deeply. I was in tears by the time the movie ended, and was unable to see it again. Nor will I. Just the thought of going through that emotional experience again... too harrowing for me.

Silly, because it's a science fiction-fantasy movie, and shouldn't touch me so deeply and keenly. But it has. Like no other movie. And so I won't be able to see it again.

Roger, I do know what you mean about a film that hits too close to home. And I have watched "Wit"--I've never had cancer, but I'm an English professor who has often felt that my reading matches my life. Like Joseph who is 22, I too am a Christian, and when Eileen Atkins' character read "The Runaway Bunny" to Emma Thompson's character, I found myself thinking "what a lovely little parable for God's pursuing love" just as Eileen Atkins said, "A little parable for the soul." I read the story to all of my students at the beginning of the year at my Christian university. But back to a film that hit way too close to home--I had an operable aneurysm back in 2006-2007. My surgery went just fine. I'm well. But heading into the surgery, I knew there could be complications (about a 10-15% chance) that could include paralysis. I tried to take my mind off it at times by watching movies (anything but thinking and thinking and praying only in desperation and fear) and found that trying to watch "Million Dollar Baby"--a favorite of mine--caused me to collapse, weeping and howling in despair. I had to take it off "the list" until I returned home from my surgery. There have been other that have been too painful to watch because they touched something too deep and unresolved within me, but I still have moments with "Million Dollar Baby" that bring back that time. And some films that I watched during that time are so associated with that period that it remains hard to watch them--"Joyeaux Noel" is one. Roger, thank you for your blog. You write on topics that are so valuable--and I enjoy and profit by the other readers who write in. And thank you for being not only a great critic, but a great human--you're an example of grace under pressure.

Grave of the Fireflies was a deeply moving film for me, but I would love to watch it again, with someone. I am lucky in that I am 20 and have lost no one in my immediate family and have not been through anything life threatening, like you have. However, that is not to say that I have not been through anything that changes the way I look at the world, or changes the way I view certain subjects, like certian films.
As a homosexual I believe I see the world in a very different way from other people, just as the Christian does, just as the farmer does, and just as the politician does. I do not think I am any different, indeed, I think we are all too similiar. My view of the world changed the day I knew in my heart that I was gay. Since then much has changed for me. I have never seen a "gay" film that has filmed coming out in a realistic or at all plausible manner. Still, I don't think any film could look at that point intensely enough to turn me away from it.
But who knows, maybe some film will, and I will simply turn it off and be done with it. Or perhaps a film I loved for all of my life will suddenly take on new perspectives within my mind due to something in my future.
Here is to hoping that all of us never have to go through something so terrible that we cannot even stand to watcha film that observes what we already know and feel. Many of the best films are about human sadness and triumph, most likely because we can identify with them the most... a sad thought now that I think about it.

The most painful film I ever saw was "What Dreams May Come". Having suffered from depression nearly all of my adult life but only receiving treatment for the past ten years, this film just shattered me. I have been extremely fortunately to have found my own soulmate and receive the love of a wonderful person. Knowing him has made me want to hang on to life and get treatment.

In the film, Robin Williams' character, Chris, is killed in an automobile accident but seeks to find his wife and soulmate in the hereafter. Unfortunately, she had committed suicide and Chris must dive into the depths of hell to rescue her.

I sobbed uncontrollably after being reminded of the years I had lost as well as the uncanny realism of how Annabella Sciorra reached into my soul and captured what I used to feel. I was also filled with regret when seeing the stark contrast of the worlds and how we can be blinded by depression to the real beauty and peace that can exist.

I now realize that my life is no longer hopeless and and I am lucky to have found someome who loves me despite my "broken parts".

I do know that I could not watch this film again.

as usual, roger, a fine stirring of the pot.

sharing the effects of the "proxy consciousness" of the big screen can never be overestimated, as i discovered with a wallop some years back, during an evening viewing of "Spanking the Monkey" shared with my wife.

it was sometime after the story's incestuous episode – and where the son erupts into a rage, grabbing his mother by the throat – that it genuinely rocked my world. as the two of them struggled on the bathroom floor, i dizzily found myself rising out of my seat and stumbling towards the theater exit sign. by the time i had reached it, i could no longer remember where i was going, or even exactly where i was at. i eventually found my way into the lobby, where i waited for my wife (and my senses) to catch up, trembling.

i had dealt (in therapy) to a much lesser degree with my family history of violence and abuse, but it was impossible to ignore the implications of such a profound and "authentic" reaction.

while this is not the experience of "art and storytelling" which normally drives my affection for movies, i must reflect that, like the best of fairy tales, it served to lead me back into a chilling, hidden chapter of my own story.

-gh

I am a big fan of Ewan McGregor and will go see anything he does.

Several years ago, I went to see "Miss Potter," not expecting that it would absolutely gut me. I really like Beatrix Potter but didn't know much about her as a person. When she finds her true love in her 30s, I was thrilled. (I'm 31 and single.) But then he dies very suddenly, and off-camera. I usually get somewhat upset if one of Ewan's characters dies, but this absolutely tore me up inside. I think I cried off and on for the rest of the movie, which was a really lovely film. I've got it on DVD, but I haven't been able to watch it again since, even if I'm much more at peace with being in my 30s and single.

As a 16 year old, I haven't had a lot of experiences that would connect me to a movie so deeply. If I have cried at movies, they are usually tears of joy ("Once", "Lord of the Rings").
"Pan's Labyrinth" brought me pretty close to tears, but I would love to see it again. I could watch it right now. I just saw "Sixth Sense" and was really emotional during that scene with Cole and his mom in the car. But again, I could watch it again.
But there are some movies that I find hard to watch again. "Million Dollar Baby" for one. Even though I saw it twice in the theater and got it on DVD, it's been a long time since I've watched it. I'll probably have a hard time watching "The Deer Hunter" again. I think you described it as an "emotionally shattering movie" and I think that about sums it up. And, even though my family seems to have an impulse of buying DVDs and not watching them again, I still haven't gotten "United 93". I was absolutely stunned when I saw it. I've often seen it at Borders or Best Buy and thought about getting it, but I haven't bought it.
I rarely cry at movies, but I often have emotional responses to them. But there are few that I have trouble watching again. But that's only for now. Who knows what I might think later?

Mr Ebert: This subject brings to mind one of the most insightful (there are many)observations that you wrote. "The more specific, the more universal." That is to say, the level of specificity that a movie delves into in creating a character, the more universal it seems to the audience-the more everyone can identify with it. It seems odd at first, but its quite true. Think of your favorite movies,or favorite books or songs and the ones that move you the most are the ones that are very SPECIFIC about a character, a time or a place. Bruce Springsteen has said the same thing about his songwriting-about how the best songs involve very specific details about life on the Jersey shore, etc. The Thompson character in Wit is one completely fleshed out with specific passions and desires that make her real to the audience. This specificity of character is what makes that movie, and many other like it, so moving and heartfelt. Great topic for your blog, Rog. Love all the comments from fellow movie lovers. All the best to you and your lovely wife.

You know what sticks with me about Wit? How perfectly conceived the film was for the small screen. It's astonishing to watch how well Mike Nichols embraces the so-called limitations of TV, right down to its 4:3 aspect ratio, using close-ups as he does to achieve a feeling of extreme intimacy and identification with Emma Thompson's character (close-ups have such a different effect when towering over audiences in the multiplex, or even on the plasma screens that dominate so many households now).

Wit truly is one of the Great Movies, but I disagree with your interpretation that anything would be gained by showing it on the big screen. Seeing the film for the first time back in 2001 was a breakthrough for me in understanding the merits of the separate platforms (that same year, I tried to watch Lawrence of Arabia in widescreen on a 9" television set — the perfect counterpoint).

Hello, Roger

Thank you for a touching essay about how we relate to film.

Adam David-Fuller McKinney beat me to the punch, but I have to definitely agree that "Mysterious Skin" is one of the most disturbing films in years. I will not reveal the plot, as the incredible artistry of that film is in how the plot/(horrible truth) unfolds. I saw it first on DVD, and I have to wonder when (if ever) I would watch it again.

Another incredible film is "Bully" from director Larry Clark, who seems to have a way with portraying unflinching reality on film. What happens in this film and how it all comes together (all too easily) left me reeling. Featured therein is a great performance by the troubled young actor, Brad Renfro, whose recent death in January 2008 was overshadowed by the death of Heath Ledger a week or so later. Both were tremendously talented. I probably won't be watching my copy of "Brokeback Mountain" anytime soon.

The death of an actor (of whom we grow fond) is always a difficulty to overcome when we do eventually see a film again. This opens up several interesting questions about the psychology of how we watch movies and the process of identification that happens through the medium of film itself--somehow, so much more direct than other art forms. This being said, my copy of "My Own Private Idaho" sits on the shelf, unopened.

In music, it is hard for me to listen to anything from the band Nirvana, after the suicide of Kurt Cobain.

Curiously enough, however, I was able to watch Gus van Sant's "Last Days", which is a kind of exploration into the mind of someone who (while "fictitious") is obviously based on Kurt Cobain, in his last days. Maybe, I will make it back to those CD's yet.

Another film I doubt I would ever choose to see again is "Happiness". I saw that film in a theater, and it left me in a daze of not-so-quiet desperation mixed with nausea for a day or so after seeing it.

This makes me wonder. Why do we choose to view a film which can push us to our limits? Why would we search out, buy a ticket, or purchase a DVD if know we are going into dangerous territory?

I think we do this because we have a natural human desire to connect with other human beings and their stories. It fulfils a need, to connect to reality, and not to limit ourselves to innocuous movie fare (of which there is always so much be found).

Craig

I wish I knew how to use HTML.
Here is a quote from Frazer Huard upthread:

"Here is to hoping that all of us never have to go through something so terrible that we cannot even stand to watcha film that observes what we already know and feel."

(um, on reread, I find I misread Frazer's comment. But I am going to post this because I think it has merit in the discussion. I thought he had said that such films should not be made and I saw red a bit there. Sorry!)

Here is what I wrote to what I thought he posted:
No. I say no, and no, firmly because as painful and gut wrenching as these films are, they celebrate our human-ness (and perhaps our humaneness). I have seen too much death and suffering in my life and I feel it. But I cannot agree that we should turn away from life. Life is for living (trite, but true like most cliches), every horrible wonderful grasping moment of it. I don't willingly submit to pain and loss--who sane does? But I feel quite strongly that not only does one need others to abide with the sufferer, we need people to witness. Movies such as those referred to here serve as such, as mementos (in a sometimes morbid way), as warnings, even. We can choose to look away until we are strong enough to endure or embrace, but the act itself--of putting this pain to paper or film must be done. It cannot not be done.

"Wit" was quite personal at the time for me, too. My girlfriend had just lost her mother a few months prior after a third round of cancer had come back to get her. We were both very attracted to difficult movies and thought we could handle it, and we barely hung on. What really gripped us from the get-go was when the doctor said the cancer was "insidious" and then Emma Thompson's reaction to that.

I'm an actor, so I'm kind of masochistic when it comes to painful movies. Actors are kind of meant to swim and wade in emotions and states of being, and I fit that bill. I get so sick and tired of movies that act like puppy dogs that want to be liked so badly all the time. I start to push back and then I reach for a movie like "Requiem For A Dream" that just hurtles forward into addiction and pain.

All through my acting classes, it was impressed upon us that the most difficult emotional states of being to play are shame, guilt, and dread. And it's true; there is always a very small casting pool of actors who can play that stuff, like William H. Macy in "Fargo", "House of Games", or "Panic"; Steve Buscemi in almost everything, and of course, Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

Probably the most painful movie I've experienced is "Sick", that documentary about Bob Flannagan "Super-Masochist". He's got a terminal illness and fights against it by inflicting immense pain upon himself.

I have no idea where the fascination comes from, but I look forward to those experiences that make us feel like taking a shower after. I'm thinking of Tim Roth's "the War Zone", that foreboding family drama with Tilda Swinton.

In terms of personal experiences, I always marvel when an actor seems to embody someone we know. My grandmother was very close to me, and every time I watch "A Woman's Tale" from Paul Cox, the resemblance she has with that old woman is uncanny; self-reliant, alive, and acid-tongued right until the end.

Ebert: "A Woman's Tale" is in my Great Movies Collection. Cox is a master.

I think that some of the best movies hurt because they reach into a deeper level of who we are. Just like a sad song, there are those movies that can reach you poetically. Oh, a movie can manipulate you into tears but the best movies are those that change your perspective.

"Schindler's List" reached out and touched me through a subject I knew relatively nothing about. My view of the holocaust had been that it tool place in a time I knew little about in a country I’ve never been to and these were events happening to people who practice a religion I was unfamiliar with. I know that sounds cold but until 1993 that had been my perspective.

Yet, seemingly out of nowhere my education on this subject came from a man who was almost like an uncle to me. I grew up watching the films of Walt Disney and Steven Spielberg – they were my introduction to film. And I was stunned that a man with this much heart had the ability to put his hands around this subject and bring it close enough for me to see clearly.

This movie hurts, there’s not doubt about that. For years I couldn’t watch the film again because there were just too many moment that were so painful. For me personally, the most heartbreaking is the murder of Diana Reiter, the Civil Engineer graduate whom Goeth orders to be shot in the head because she is an educated Jew. There are moments in the movies that break my heart and that was one because when I saw the movie in the theater Geoth casually said “Shoot her”, a woman behind me shrieked as I had never heard in a movie.

Watching the film again recently I made myself focus on that scene and I noticed something that I hadn’t noticed before. After the order to shoot her, the Germans pull her right up to the camera and Spielberg seems to say “Look in this woman’s eyes, witness her face, never forget it. She is one of millions but she is an individual.” This is a brilliant individual who had worked to establish herself in life, a woman educated in a time when most women were unable to do so and her life and her opportunities are taken away from her. It is one of the most powerful moments I have ever witnessed, not one that I can easily watch again but certainly one that changed my whole perspective on the holocaust.

Hi Roger,

One such film for me would have to be SCHINDLER'S LIST. I was 17 when I saw it. I am not a Jew or even European for that matter and am not even remotely related to anyone who is. The entire film till the last 15 minutes is mostly just so shocking on the concious level that you never realize the emotional crescendo that is building within subconsciously.
When Schindler evaluates his possessions at the end in terms of how many Jews each item is worth, you relate on a very deep level having been witness to the entire film preceding that scene. But when the real-life human legacy of Schindler comes on, you just lose it.
I came to Canada in 1996 as a high school student with my parents who were immigrants. My first summer in Canada was when I saw a show called "Siskel & Ebert". I was always very passionate about movies - not just as mere entertainment but something much more meaningful. That show introduced me for the first time to two people who loved the movies, made a career and a lifelong friendship with each other out of that passion. And most importantly, unlike every other movie critic that I had read, heard or seen till then, they were NOT CYNICAL at all! They were just as enamoured by the movies as an average moviegoer like myself was.
When Gene Siskel passed away, I was devastated. When you were going through all of your health challenges, I was truly very worried.
You have done a great service to a lot of movie lovers like myself. Your Pulitzer may have created a great first impression on me. But if my future kids ever asked me about you, because they read one of your books from my collection or one of your reviews from the internet or whatever information channels will be available in 10-15 years from now, I will tell them about the legendary tag team of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, how Roger outlived Gene even though Gene was more handsome, funnier and thinner:), and how they devoted their entire lives to spreading the gospel of the power of the movies.
I hope you are very healthy now Roger and stay that way for years and decades to come.

Thank you.

Kamal Gupta,
Brampton, Ontario

Back in the mid-eighties, I happen to catch a Charles Bronson movie called "The Evil That Men Do" on one of the premium cable channels. Having seen some of Mr. Bronson's vigilante flicks of that era ("Death Wish", "Ten To Midnight", etc), I thought this film might provide some late-night dumb entertainment. It was rated R, so I knew it wasn't for the kids. I had also seen my share of violent films - some regarded as classics, others not at all - so cinematic violence did not affect me beyond what you'd expect. However, this particular film affected me in a way no film had done before or has done since. The opening scene is the most horrific thing I've ever seen put on celluloid. The basic plot is that of a professional torturer in South America who teaches other countries' leaders how to effectively torture victims. By way of an example, The Doctor (as he is known in the film) dangles a naked man from from metal posts and proceeds to electrocute him. This scene is incessant in its brutal detail and savagery. It goes on for what seems like an eternity before it mercifully ends with the terrible image of the victim's death. The actor portraying the victim commits fully, screams and all, and I'm wondering how he managed to get through it. Although the rest of the film is typical Bronson fare (you can guess what fate awaits The Doctor in the end), and is barely watchable, that opening scene has haunted me for over 20 years. I still have nightmares about it, and I won't even talk about it to my friends. Of course, I've seen other films that contained torture and unspeakable violence (Mel Gibson's electric shock scene in the first "Lethal Weapon", "Irreversible"), but "The Evil That Men Do" takes it to a whole other level. It was directed by the late J. Lee Thompson who did much better work earlier in his career. However, had I not known this was a fictional film, I might swear the opening scene was from a real live snuff film. Incidentally, when this movie was released in the UK on VHS, the opening scene was cut out due to its excessive violence. I am totally against censorship, so I would never encourage the editing of any film. But I can't ever watch this Bronson film again because it hurts just to think about it.

My favourite part of the final sequence in A.I. is where the narrator says "David pulled down the shades, without even needing to be asked." This is exactly right, this is how it would be. This is the most noble statement I have ever heard: it is an act of acceptance.

When I see that sequence I always think of a relationship between two lovers, rather than a Mother and a child. Really it doesn't matter; we project our own feelings on to the screen. I understand precisely how everyone here who has mentioned it feels. The film understands the disappointments we find in life and those rare and fleeting moments when we get what it is we want, to love and be loved in that soulful way.

Useful to learn that Spielberg made this after his own Mother's passing. It reminds me of "Interview with a vampire" and the sequence where Claudia turns to ash. It is more powerful knowing that Anne Rice's own daughter died of Leukemia. It taught me that even popular art can come from deep wounds. I see the same themes in Stephen King in moments of "Hearts in Atlantis" or "The Dead Zone". He seems to feel very deeply the sense of a lost past - childhood, love, memory.

I know how it feels to want to see someone just one more time. When I examine my feelings now, however, there isn't anything that I would want to add to how I lived, I would only take things away. A wedding? She will have a wedding. A child? She will have a child. Travel? I travel better alone. I wish only that I had given the most tender of my feelings and nothing else. I wish I could take away those harsher moments, the ones that obscure the fact that most of the time I got it right.

My Grandmother died recently and by the time I came to see her she was already deep in a morphine sleep. I wrote at the time that I was "conscious only of the very tenderness of dying". You feel as you would to a newborn child. I saw my Grandfather kiss her on the temple and realised I was witnessing the end of a marriage. I admire him for the way he handled it, with great dignity, full of manners, still thinking of others even in this most painful time. This is how I aspire to be. I think that is what dignity is - to be able to weep, mourn and feel hurt and yet maintain a level of acceptance at the nature of life and death.

My Grandmother complained that dying takes too long and I accept her judgement. The use of pain-killers to tacitly hasten death is a slower and more cowardly method of Euthanasia. Our very health and medicine makes the act of dying longer, crueller, and it seems logical to me that having artificially prolonged our lives for all these years we ought be able to artificially hasten our end. I would sooner be hanged.

The physical pain must make the emotions of the act of dying far more difficult. I was incorrect earlier when I said her Mother reads to her at the end of "Wit", it is her professor, in the place of a Mother, in keeping with the solitariness of her character. Still that scene is overwhelming and even more so when she leaves the room and closes the door and that sense that this is the last person she will ever see.

Of John Donne I am fairly unfamiliar. Not long ago I remember a I put my head in the lap of a young woman and she stroked my hair, quoting Donne. I am glad such a moment is still possible in this world. It might even be worth pursuing.

Oh and "Leaving Las Vegas" captured something I am familiar with. The male is hopeless and slowly dies, the female tries to survive and is full of buried hope and disappointment, wondering why it is he does not like her enough to find the will to do what he has to to keep on living.

It reminds me of "The sheltering sky", book and film. The film is sympathetic with Port but sides with Kit (the book is neutral) and I understand now the cruelty in what he does. Just as Ben disappears into alcohol, he disappears into obscurity, his own consciousness and finally death. The sad part is that she loves him enough to go with him. The scene where he makes love to her in the middle of the desert reminds me of one of my own life; I didn't see it at first but I see it now. He says: "To me loving means loving you. There simply couldn't be anyone else." But the hard part isn't love, the hard part is living, and loving enough to live. I don't know how you find that will.

As Plath wrote: "And round her house she set/Such a barricade of barb and check
Against mutinous weather/As no mere insurgent man could hope to break/With curse, fist, threat/Or love, either."

Greetings, Roger!

Thank you for sparking one of the most invigorating discussions related to film I've chanced upon in a while. The body of posts has in itself been quite emotional. I wanted to add another film to the list which I'm not sure I have the wherewithal to watch again anytime soon: Lynne Littman's Testament.

As a youth (I believe I was 8 years old), I had a traumatic encounter with Nicholas Meyer's The Day After when it aired on television. Despite a placid and fruitful childhood in small-town New Brunswick, Canada, I was inordinately scared of nuclear warfare because of it (scenes like the vaporising people and even the final scene of the man standing on the rubble of his home being offered a modest morsel of food by a stranger standing there, suggesting the encroachment of starvation). Still, as I grew up, I kept seeking out more nuclear holocaust fiction like Threads and The War Game as a way to understand the big picture and feel more at peace with the world, and ultimately settle the hell down. Somehow, over the years as I gained perspective, this process was cathartic, and I wasn't scared anymore.

Then I saw Testament, which awakened in my now older and more mature mind a real sense of grief and sadness behind and far beyond nuclear warfare. Everything about Testament's onslaught of hopelessness made me question as deeply as anything else I've questioned in my life how I would find the courage to forge ahead like the mother played by Jane Alexander. I still haven't settled on a firm answer. It hurts to think of it, and I'm afraid now - all over again - but this time not about nuclear war, radiation, fire, vaporising, or starvation. I'm afraid of what kinds of decisions I'll make in life under any circumstances which appear as plainly hopeless as possible; loss, financial ruin, disease, physical impairment, and so on.

Testament, though painful to watch, clearly merits a second viewing at some point, however. I can't put it away or ignore it; I need to have the answers, only at a time when I'm ready for them.

In the very fine Film HEAVY there is a scene in which, after the death of the Mother...played by Shelly Winters, the son sits alone, on the floor of their kitchen, stuffing Entenman's chocolate donuts in his mouth. The older I get, the more films I see, the more I realize how rarely such insightful moments appear in films.

It is too painful, after all the years since I first saw that scene, to publicly admit why it had such an impact on me. That sort of pain and the silence it engenders is therapeutic.

Dear Mr. Ebert,
You need to know that audio tape will deteriorate in much the same way as nitrate film. It will eventually turn into unusable glop. Even if you can never bring yourself to listen to your tape, you might want to have it transferred to a CD.

I have to second the comments much above by Lawrence Kurzman. The Buffy episode "The Body" is the most devastating hour of television ever broadcast, because it so realistically captures the pain, loss and immanence of the moments after the death of a loved one. And in Buffy, the character reactions- characters whom the viewer knows after 5 full seasons of viewing- all respond in character to what has happened. Joss Whedon allows the viewer no respite from the emotion on screen; there is no diagetic sound, no music, nothing to tell anyone how to feel. There is, for the first moments of the hour, no looking away from the more than 2-inute-long tracking shot that opens the show. It is relentless, and when finally Buffy's mentor Giles shows up and Buffy tells him not to move "the body" and in horror realizes what she just said, the tears start to come. And only gets worse as Buffy has to go to school to tell her younger sister Dawn, a scene to which we are not privy to the words, since we only see Buffy tell her sister through a glass wall- and watch as Dawn collapses- which to me reduces me to blubber each time I see it. To Tara kissing Willow to stop her panic, and finally to Anya's heartwrenching monologue- all the more poignant since she is a more than 1000-year-old vengeance demon responsible for the deaths of many. And to Tara's words about the loss of her own mother, after Buffy asked her if it were sudden: "No. And Yes. It's always sudden." No film I have ever seen has moved me like this one episode of a TV show often dismissed by those who have never seen it. The emotional power of this episode is simply awesome.

Thank you for expressing something that I have been feeling for the last three years. I have not had cancer, but my brother was killed in Iraq and anytime I see a movie that shows a soldier getting killed I have to walk out or will just break out in tears. I thought that I just needed time to get over his death, but what you wrote about trying to watch "Wit" really hit home. Thank you.

Hi Roger, As to "Wit." I know just what you mean. I am still trying to write about my daughter, Moria Ann's death, and in five years I've gotten six pages down. Close to home IS too painful. Velva Lee Heraty

PS The scene in "Hoop Dreams" that tore my heart out was the mom's graduation from nursing school. So few witnesses but to me the world needed to stand and applaud.

I don't think I could ever watch Million Dollar Baby again as much as I loved it. For me it's not only movies but scenes as well. Two scenes I have to turn away from are a) Forrest Gump gets word his mother is sick and jumps off the boat to swim to her and b) (I don't know why) the final lap in Breaking Away when Dave crosses the finish line and throws his arms up... Good Lord.

Mr. Ebert:

I agree with you completely. Movies in fact do move us and make or compell us to appreciate life. I had the pleasure of meeting you one day while walking East on Randolph St. several years ago. You graciously shook my hand. Cancer has touched me as well and more times than I want to recall.

Two movies years ago touched me: Terms of Enderment and My Life. I cryed at the end of both. Today My Life still brings me to terms and when I need to be reminded of how fortunate I am to be alive, I watch it.

Recently, the movie that moves me is The Bucket List. Nicholson and Freeman's protraysls clearly reminded of the pain but also catapulted me to make a few more life changes before this LIFE ends. I watched it a least 6 times before returning it. Cancer has this strange energy and causes a little selfishness from time to time. But Cancer forces us to look within while looking out.

Clear your mind and find peace with those you love as it will end and you will not get a chance to say all the things you want. Such as I Love You!!!!!!!

Thank you.

I took me years until I was able to watch "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" again. It felt too private, too relevant. It was like reliving my last failed relationship and wondering if I'm a better person for having gone through with it or not, or maybe it can still work?
Lots of my friends who have depression rave about "Girl, Interrupted." Well, I thought that movie was kind of garbage. The most accurate depiction of depression to me is "Ordinary People."

One of my favorite goosebump moments is in the movie, Somewhere In Time - where Chris Reeves walks into the hotel museum and spots the picture of Aleise McKenna. It knocks my socks off everytime I see it. So touchining and melancholy.

Interesting that the "avant-garde" devices in Bergman provided enough distance to make a film bearable, whereas there is something about competent realism that can strike us unawares, cut through our defenses as a self-conscious "viewer" or "critic."

Because even the earliest avant-garde montage techniques in the likes of Vertov and Eisenstein were incorporated precisely to interrupt audience manipulation by plot and acting alone. In the moment of modernism, fighting -against- realism was precisely the goal.

Many of the films that commenters mention above lean heavily on the side of narratival, realist cinema. What is the place of montage and more sophisticated cinematic technique in this nexus of emotional response that you are discussing?

Surely a film like Le Chien Andalou is a classic example of the potentially visceral effects of avant-garde montage and imagery. As I discussed in my previous comment, however, even a film as dramatically edited as Walkabout can still resonate on the level of "moving" us.

But I still wonder if we are reducing the power of film to the more conventional side of narrative cinema. Bergman characters experience horrible things, and it happens to "them." In "Away From Her," this trouble is no less distant-- the distance is not just "the Other" but that of representation-- these are actors. Is realism simply the most effective technique for generating that point at which our ability to remember that we are watching actors in front of a camera ebbs away?

I have also seen Irreversible and Mysterious Skin and I have been both moved and disturbed by both films because of the dark and realistic depictions of horrible crimes. Some other movies that come to mind that are difficult to watch are the tragic films by Alejandro Innaritu: Amores Perros,21 Grams, and Babel which are so full of gritty realism and stark sadness and depravity that they are both moving and beautiful and yet unbearable to watch.

I have also watched Wit in a university class called Death: Myth and Reality. It was a moving film and another that comes to mind in the same genre is Barbarian Invasions which I found quite moving because it not only focused on the terminal illness but also how it affected the entire family.

For me, the movie is Victor/Victoria.
I watched it on television with my mom and dad about a year after he had gall bladder surgery. When he came out of recovery he suddenly re-emerged from a dark cloud of depression that nearly destroyed him. My mom, my brothers and me all said to one another; "he's back!" The wonderful man he was had been smothered by a terrible depression that lasted over 20 years! We all resigned ourselves into accepting we would never see him again. And yet he snapped out of it after his surgery. I'll always be grateful for that.
About a year later I was visiting and watched Victor/Victoria with them. My dad loved Robert Preston in The Music Man and had seen him in the original Broadway production. So, he was very excited to see him in this movie. He loved it.
When the scene came about where Leslie Ann Warren stands in the doorway and whines to James Garner, "I'm horny!" my dad burst into laughter like I had never heard. My mom and I looked at him and then each other...back at him...we laughed too...but not like that! He fell off the couch holding his stomach with tears welling up in his eyes. It was pure joy to see him like this. He died of cancer about 2 years later. I loved him so much. That single moment from a light hearted film is one of my best memories...I'll never forget it.

My favorite movie of all time is Amadeus. I remember when I was 7 years old we had a video recording of it and the recording cut off halfway through the movie. I would watch the incomplete movie all the time. I was drawn to it and very much attached to it. Part of it might have been because my Dad played piano and was a lover of classical music. Part of it might have been…I don’t know. I loved the movie. I related to Tom Hulce’s Mozart. I loved his personality. I loved his infectious, charming giggle. I loved his sense of humor. And, of course, I loved the music. Eventually my dad took me to the store and bought Amadeus on video. I was then able to watch the film in its entirety. Looking back, it’s easy to meditate on all the things I loved, and continue to love, about the film. What brought this movie to mind was your article on redemption in the movies. It took me years to figure this out, but perhaps one of the most powerful things about Amadeus is the way it deals with redemption. To see how beautifully the movie deals with this, contrast the beginning scene with the end. In the opening scene we hear a tortured voice cry out “Mozart! Forgive me Mozart!” We find out this is Salieri, and he can no longer bear the guilt that he might have been responsible for Mozart’s death. The rest of the movie is told through Salieri’s memories in the form of a confession to a priest. As you pointed out in your Great Movie review, “Amadeus is not about the genius of Mozart but about the envy of his rival Salieri.” I assure you, it is about more than that. It is about redemption. Ultimately the movie makes Salieri into more of a poetic hero than an enemy or bad guy as most people think of him. The last shot in the film is proof of this. When Salieri is finished telling his story to the priest he finishes by pronouncing himself the champion of mediocrities. As he is being pushed in his wheelchair down the corridor of the institution, he cries out for all the poor souls to hear, “Mediocrities everywhere, I absorb you!” Unlike the beginning scene, where he is in anguish, Salieri says this with an inner peace that he is perhaps experiencing for the very first time in his life. At this moment he closes his eyes, puts his hands to his heart, tilts his head back and hears the immortal sound of Mozart’s innocent laugh echo through his soul. He no longer has any jealousy or hate. He has found peace with himself and Mozart. He has found redemption. This scene brings me to tears every time. I always thought that the reason I was so moved at this scene was because I felt the loss of Mozart. That is certainly part of it. What I've come to appreciate, though, is that the story is told by Salieri, and in the end it is him that we empathize with and relate to more than anything else. After all, whatever feelings we developed for Mozart, his wife, his son, his father and his divine works of musical genius, these were all communicated to us by Antonio Salieri.

"The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" directed by Julian Schnabel, based on the memoir by Jean-Dominique Bauby. I had heard from many how great, beautiful, moving this movie was. True - although it took some resolve to get through the first 25 minutes for me. Four and a half years ago I watched my husband endure cancer (as an previous writer rightly called the act, he fought AND endured) and then die (not "unexpected" but yes, you still don't expect it, can barely believe it) and the early part of the film, where you are trapped with Mr. Bauby's character, in his broken body, with his viewpoint and confusion and pain were beyond heart wrenching. Almost as difficult as the hospital scenes was the returning image of him in the diving bell, underwater, trapped, yet still breathing. As I was sitting there crying with painful memories coming up, I thought, you need to watch this. It's the least you can do. You are still here and able to experience life. And this movie is one my husband Patrick would have really admired. So just deal. And then...gracefully the movie shifted ever so slightly. When Mr. Bauby is able to get outside in the fresh air, and decides to live as he can with the situation, well, it brought relief. And wonder at his strength. I'm glad I saw the film, I have recommended it to others, but still, that one viewing will have to be enough for me.

Best wishes to you Mr. Ebert on your continued recovery and thank you for sharing your journey.

Anything featuring child abuse or even the whiff of child abuse. I read about "Radio Flyer" and "This Boy's Life" and couldn't even bring myself to pause when flipping around the dial at two am. Will never watch "James and the Giant Peach."

There is a James Joyce story in "Dubliners" in which a man constantly sneaks out of his place of work for a cold one at the pub. (His employer knows he is about to leave: his cap is the one missing from the long row of caps hung on the wall pegs. He's hidden it out of sight for a quick escape.) End of the day, in his cups, he arm wrestles another tippler, loses badly, comes home and beats his son within an inch of his life. And I couldn't tell you the name of the story, because I can't bear to open the book, and have to settle for reading "Araby" or "The Dead" when I see them in anthologies.

And, for what it's worth, I don't have children of my own, so maybe I'm overly sensitive.

For me, the hardest movies to watch are always the ones that depict actual events. The most disturbing and heartbreaking scenes that seem to be ingrained in audiences' minds often feature what I would call the "silent dead"-- victims of genocide--hidden from the world. Schindler's List, The Killing Fields, and Hotel Rwanda are all prime examples. Another more recent example is a very short scene in Atonement when Robbie comes across a clearing filled with a large group of nuns who--you get the idea--appear as if they are sleeping. Scenes of the silent dead can be found in many movies, yet they are not a cliche. That is because each scene is treated with such grim observation or even silence that the audience is moved beyond words. Such movies make me feel like this:

I am walking a narrow trail through the woods. As it curves, a clearing comes into view. I had spent so much time in the cool shade of the trees that the sun glares down and blinds me momentarily. When my eyes adjust I notice I have stepped into a world completely removed from what I know. Something I cannot comprehend. The serenity of the clearing is so intense so dead quiet, almost deafening. In fact, I feel as if all sound has gone out of the world and I am seeing something people were not meant to see.

Are audiences meant to see such things? Do directors feel it will move us by showing the aftermath of the ultimate violence on the big screen; move us to watch it again? Or, do they feel that the movies themselves are not meant to be viewed twice? These scenes of silent dead seem to affirm the latter. Wit, The Sweet Hereafter, Apocalypse Now, and other movies so hard for us to watch twice are so vivid and sorrowful that the images we gather from them are enough to sustain us forever without needing a second viewing.

I loved your review of "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" -- especially the ending thought about the grand miracle of consciousness. But I'll never watch the movie. My dad had a stroke when he was 42 and has hobbled diminished through life for nearly 20 years and counting. Sometimes he talks about how glad he is to be alive. Sometimes I believe him, sometimes I don't. Then in October my sister-in-law had a stroke and died. She was 38, with two children under 12. Years ago, when my wife read the book (she thought it was terrific), I looked at a few pages, actually started to sweat, and put it down in fear.

I'm thankful for your review of the movie; it made me think, especially after my sister's death, that what my dad says is true: he is lucky to have survived.

I've always depended on movies and especially books for visualizing and understanding life and beauty. I think of you not as a reviewer or critic but writer. My wife said it perfectly one day after reading one of your reviews: "These are better than reviews; he writes short essays on the themes of the movies". The word "essay" is held in high esteem in our house. As are your insights, of technique and theme and beauty and life. Thank you.

I came home at noon today finally free (at least for now). After 5 long years, first with colon cancer, then Chronic Lymphatic Leukemia and finally non-hodgkins lymphoma...with a intestinal block and pneumonia thrown in...I completed treatment. I'm supposedly cured.

When I got home I read your column about Wit. I'm with you. People say how wonderfully you're handling it. They say that to me too. Baloney. You just do what you're told and hope that you chose doctors who knew what they were doing. And if not wanting to see a movie like Wit is an act of cowardice, tough. We're entitled. When asked how I do it, I say I have two choices. I can sit in a corner and suck my thumb or I can go about my business and keep moving. And it sounds like that's what you're doing too. Good luck and keep moving or they'll catch you.

talk of bergman alongside movies that are impossible to watch makes me think of a interesting moment that takes place in "the seventh seal" (surely his masterpiece); the scene where the "witch" is burned at the stake. in it the squire, who has been so cynical and sardonic throughout, is suddenly unable to bear it, and turns away crying.

it's a moment that always makes me turn away with him, because by that time the squire is established as the unflappable one; it makes the scene all the more harrowing that he should be so horrified. in many ways i think the squire acts as a kind of reflection of the audience in the film, and its one of the most telling momnets of that; not as audacious as getting the actors to talk about their characters as in "the passion of anna", but a similar, subtler idea.

My wife was in treatment for breast cancer when we saw "Millions". It was a terrible mistake --- for her it was terribly wrong --- too much of the movie resonated with her in the wrong way. I adore "Millions", but I do not think she'll ever get past that feeling of watching what her family's life would be like without her.

City Lights. I watch that last scene and I clench my jaw and I hope because Chuck is what I want to be. I want to be that brave. Brave in the face of the daddy issues and the girlfriend and the soon to be wife and the on-the-horizon children and my brother who's not doing so well and my other brother who's really not doing so well and my dead drunk uncle and my dead drug-addicted uncle and the kids that I look at in the classroom and teach and those long days when it's long and nothing else, just long and weary, and I'm there hoping that I can be like Chuck, like Chuck Chaplin, in that last scene in City Lights, when he's found out, he's found out to be noble and brave, and when the lights go out, the tears are there, and my head is buried in my hands, and my girlfriend is rubbing my shoulder, nuzzling in close, happy to see something there, finally. There's something there, so thanks Roger, and thank you Charlie, Mr. Chaplin.

Ever experienced the pain of realizing you're the butt of a plot device in a film?

Despite the positive recommendations of many friends, I have been unable to bring myself to watch either "The Good Girl" or "Waitress." I simply cannot bear the pain of watching a movie wherein adulterers are presented in a sympathetic light.

It's not, as you might suspect, having to relive the emotions, but in such films the cuckold must be presented as a boor, a person whose characteristics can only bring misery to the long-suffering protagonist. To watch such a film is to realize that someone you loved saw you that way. Yes, the characteristics are often exaggerated in a film, but there it is: someone you cared for saw you as that guy.

Even as I am unable to watch these films, there's a nagging voice in my head that says I must. Whether as some sort of therapy, or simply as an act of courage, I've gotta man up one of these days. I am thankful for filmmakers who take on subjects like this, reaching past the lucrative pablum that fills the multiplex, and trying to touch us where we really feel it.

My wife and I watched this movie recently after getting it from netflix. For some reason I thought it would be a lightweight movie, about death, redemption, and this hardened professor. It was about those things but hit so close to home. It was the most gut wrenching movie I have ever seen. I hope I have her nurse when I am sick and dying, but not her doctors. No other movie has made me think so much about my own death.

"The World's Fastest Indian". It had everything that my Dad would have loved in a movie. Old motorbikes, tinkering in the backyard, invention, old motorbikes, racing, adventure, old motorbikes, a tinge of romance, gentle humour, pee-ing on a lemon tree ... did I mention old motorbikes?

When I saw the movie it was not from my own perspective but from my father's ... I was imagining in my mind how he would have chuckled, seeing his delight in Burt's (Anthony Hopkins) adventures, and understanding that he would have felt that, with just a little luck in life, it could have been his story too.

I wish I had the courage to show this movie to my mother. I know who she would see in Burt - but would it hurt her too much?

Brian- I second everything you said about "Indian"; I saw it with my father this past Christmas, and the best part of the movie was watching him watch it. It's a wonderful movie that too few people have seen.
As for myself, I always have a hard time watching Oliver Stone's "Nixon". The movie Nixon has so little to do with the facts of the real Nixon's life, but is so close to the truth of the man that it hurts to watch him constantly battered down, even at his most heinous. Anthony Hopkins, again looking and sounding very little like Nixon, still rings truest for me in his portrayal of an average man who, for all his achievement, is brought down by his paranoia and need to keep reaching higher and higher. It's a completely grandiose and operatic film that threatens to (and occasionally does) derail at any moment, but Hopkins and Joan Allen keep it grounded and honest. By the end, when Nixon is broken and bitter, but still soldiering on, I find the film close to unbearable to watch. By presenting Nixon as a common man who can't cut it among the "pantheon" of Presidents whom he so tries to emulate, Stone creates the stuff of great tragedy in the film. It's one of my favorites, but I can rarely sit through the whole thing in one sitting.
And yeah, I cry when we see Nixon's funeral at the end of the movie. He was a terrible president, but damned if the movie doesn't make you care about him for all of its 213 minutes.

To this day, I can't watch Requiem for a Dream.

I had a drug problem in my younger days, and that movie just gets right to the heart of addiction. The crazy downward spiral that destroys the lives of everyone around you and makes you do things you never would have imagined you were capable of.

I haven't touched drugs in almost 10 years, and Requiem is a beautifully made film, but I still have no interest in ever seeing it again. I just don't need to go there.

There are many films -- or, more accurately, scenes -- that affect me deeply. Most are not intentionally sad scenes or films -- "Grave of the Fireflies" is an exception to this -- but are those film which deal with the beauty of humanity -- Boo Radley's introduction in "To Kill a Mockingbird," for example, always makes me misty-eyed. The conlusion to "Pan's Labyrinth." The father-daughter reunion in "A Little Princess," and most of "The Secret Garden." I guess I am overly sentimental, but these are the things that resonate with me.
An example that stands out for me is a poorly-received movie, and a certainly imperfect one. I must admit that I am a sucker for "Radio Flyer." The relationship between the brothers is well-played and touches me to the point where the movie is at times too emotional to watch. The final good-be between the two has brought me to tears. I fully understand the problems with the film and am not ready to say the critics missed the boat on it. They certainly did not. But, still, the film brings to mind my relationship with my own brothers (who are still alive) and I can't deny its power over me.

Tim – I understand what you mean when you say “the best part of the movie was watching him watch it”. Besides discovering a great film, there is nothing greater for a cinemaphile than sharing a great movie with someone and watching them have the same elation that you had. When I met my wife, I had been taking movies seriously for about two decades and showing her some of my favorite films like “It’s a Wonderful Life”, “Schindler’s List”, “Duck Soup”, “The Godfather”, “Election” and “JFK” and discovering that she has the same eye for detail and substance that I have was one of the great experiences of my life.

I also know what you mean about Nixon, it gets inside the mind and the insecurities of Nixon to a degree that we feel for the man. Plenty of jokes have been told about Nixon but this an agonizing journey through his personal demons. I would also recommend to you, Robert Altman’s little-seen “Secret Honor”, a fictionalized one-man show with Phillip Baker Hall as the 37th President during one long night sometime after his resignation (it would make a great edition to the Great Movie section – hint hint). What is great about the movie is that we spend time with Nixon in that office as he exorcises his personal demons, rails against his enemies and gets progressively drunker. It’s not a slam on Nixon but a portrait of the Nixon we knew and it has the same emotional resonance of Oliver Stone’s great film.

This isn't precisely what you're asking about, but I can't bear to watch "The Other Side of the Mountain" and any and all other movies that try to make superheroes, saints, or any other stereotype out of the disabled. They make me feel desperately inadequate for not being that always-selfless, always-perfect conservative Christian beam of happiness that these movies tell me the disabled have a duty to be, lest we annoy people who are of course far more important than us - the non-disabled who so selflessly let themselves think about us for a few minutes every day and might deign to pat us on the heads once a week.

You'd think these movies would enrage me, and they do: but they also cut to the quick in a way I didn't think was possible. Their portrayal of disability is so skewed and so bizarre but still it hurts so much that I can't be like that perfect person on the screen, because I have a sneaking suspicion that everyone wishes I was like that and I can't.

I never used to cry at movies because I thought I was a tough guy. Now that I am 30 I allow myself to get emotional, and it seems that I get choked up at any sentimental finish to a film. I feel like Jerry Seinfeld in the episode that he let his emotions out, and then could not "turn of the faucet." It must be some kind of Pavlov effect, when the end of a film nears my body just knows its time to get emotional. What a baby! Most notably, "Pan's Labyrinth" really gets me everytime. When the young girl is killed near the end and finally reaches her "kingdom" and her mother and father, that is just heartbreaking. "The Sixth Sense" gets me as does "The Kite Runner". When Ali finally tells Hassan's son "a thousand times for you" as he chases down the kite and returns the favor Hassan did for him as children. Oooh that send chills up my spine just thinking of it. The opportunity of redemption, or lost chances of redemption, or the lost opportunity to tell a loved one what you always wanted to say. Nothing hits quite like it.

The story of the little boy in “Unstrung Heroes” who goes to live with his relatives while his mother is dying of cancer, should have affected me more than it did; since that’s what I went through when my mother died of cancer. However, oddly, it is the stories of kids dying themselves that affects me most, because, I suppose that it is really a big part of me that also died when my mother died.

Maybe I’m being a little self centered, but anytime a child loses a parent, childhood for the most part, is over for that child. As far as my mother is concerned, they could never make a movie that will ever bring out the emotions of my loss of her, because it is always somebody else’s mother that dies in those films. However, when they make a movie about a child dying, it is the loss of the potential for life that I feel most reflect my feelings.

I do miss my mother, no mistaking that, but she lived a good life and she and I had all happy memories. But when I grieve, I grieve for the loss of my own childhood after she died. It has taken me about thirty years to get over that, if I am indeed over it.

At the top of my list for the most similar emotion-evoking films (I still love to watch them over and over) is “Reservation Road” (My younger brother had the same reaction to that film). “Grave of the Fireflies” was also an especially moving film, you didn’t have to have lost anybody in your life to have been affected by that anime film. On the lighter side, but just as sad is “Life Aquatic” where Owen Wilson’s character dies after being adopted by Steve Zissou (Bill Murray). Again, it is that potential for a relationship that never developed. You see it in Angela Huston’s eyes in the scene where she grieves, alone, at the bottom of the ship, and also in the film “Das Boot” where the sailors think that they are going to drown, and the one sailor takes out a picture of his family and stares at it alone, in silence, when he knows that he isn’t going to see them ever again.

And I know this isn’t a discussion of television shows, but when Anthony Edward’s character “Dr. Greene” on ER dies of cancer, and they showed the scent of the tent flaps blowing in the wind and the song “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” was playing in the background, it really got to me. The producers of the show didn’t bog down in the mechanics of dying of cancer, but rather showed how it affected his daughter. The fact that one day my mother was there, and then another day she just wasn’t there anymore, but I was still a kid, made me look at life a whole lot differently.

Midnight cowboy and Taxi Driver. No other movie has better captured the feeling of being isolated. Those movies are hard to watch but have very personal memories for me.

Dead Man Walking. I stopped believing in the death penalty after I saw it.

Roger --

I've really enjoyed the topic you've raised, and the responses so far. Thanks for the topic.

For me, as a father of a child who is mildly autistic, "Rain Man" is that movie that I can't bring myself to watch anymore -- though to its credit, it was watching "Rain Man" that first made us think of autism as a possibility. My son's autism is milder than Raymond's was in the film, but there's enough in there that hits too close to home, picks at too many emotional scabs. Like your reaction to "Wit", it was a decent enough movie when autism was an abstract concept, but now that our family lives with the reality of it on a daily basis, there's no real "entertainment" value to watching it fictionalized.

Not long after the death of a dear mentor, I went to see "Primary Colors," thinking that I could use a good lightening-up.

Until I got to Kathy Bates in the pickup truck. My mentor and Libby Holden (the character Kathy Bates played) were absolutely nothing alike, although I think they'd have liked each other. But Libby Holden's choice in the truck was the same choice my mentor had made -- even to the fact that she was in an automobile and used the same weapon -- and it ripped me to shreds. The pain was too fresh, and it blindsided me both in the movie and when it had happened in reality.

I can't watch that movie anymore because, even though it's a wonderful film, now I know what's coming. Ten years later, I still miss my mentor, grieve for her, and carry her in my heart. Bless Kathy Bates' heart but, if she hadn't done such a superlative job with that role, I might have been able to get through it.

As much as I admired "Wit" when I first saw and then upon watching when it came available on DVD, I cannot watch today. It and "Testament" are, perhaps, the very few films in my colection that I avoid watching because they trigger something within that I would rather avoid. "Wit" displays a reality that for some of us -- I am only a very few years behind Roger -- has become too real. It is an only too vivid reminder of our mortality and what awaits us.

"Testament" strikes a nerve because of the child's bear. Our son's constant companion when he was growing up was a bear similar to one in the movie. As some of the other parents have mentioned, some things just resonate with you when your imagination makes the connection.... I had planned on watching "Testament" last year when I returned home from 21 months in the Gulf. I couldn't get past the first few minutes. It was the bear.

I cannot think of any other films that affact me as these two do. Some cause me to ponder my mortality, Bergman being good for that, others have moments which sadden me, but only these two have become impossible to view for deeply personal reasons.

So I sent the thoughts I wrote about Amadeus to my mother, and she pointed out a blaring mistake. Below is what she wrote to me and my response to her..

Mom: Justin, One correction.....ooops.....Salieri did not say I absorb you. He said I absolve you...meaning when he is rolled down the hall in his wheelchair that he considers himself the foremost mediocrity and so he is qualified to absolve all other mediocraties. In other words, he sarcastically forgives them.

Absolve- To pronounce free from guilt or blame; acquit.

Me: interesting. i always thought he said absorb. and i always wondered what he meant by that. looking at the definition of absolve, i think i had the same basic idea. For example, compare the definition of absolve with absorb:

Absorb- 2: assume, bear (the expenses were absorbed by the company) 3: endure, sustain (absorbing hardships) 4: to transform

Notice the similarities. I think it's interesting that you say he's being sarcastic. i never saw it that way, but now that you mention it, it makes sense in an ironic way. it could possibly mean that the laugh of mozart he hears inside is mozart having the last laugh, and salieri accepts it with a sense of irony. while that explanation seems somewhat logical, i personally don't read it that way. even with my new understanding that he says "absolve", i still see the scene's meaning as salieri letting go of life long feelings of resentment, jealousy and hate. when he says "i absolve you!" (or "i absorb you", as i always thought) he's basicly saying, "I am the foremost mediocrity, but I have been transformed." This is why he calls the priest a mediocrity at the end, because it wasn't the priest who gave him forgiveness, but it was Salieri who gave himself forgiveness. In so doing, he trancended his own mediocrity, purely by coming to terms with it. In a sense, he is now either on the same plain of greatness as mozart or mozart is on the same plain of mediocrity. This is why he now hears not just Mozart's music but Mozart himself inside. He is finaly able to love, not just mozart's music, but mozart himself. He absorbed him.

That was my understanding of the end, and perhaps there is truth in your interpretation as well. It would be completely fitting to Salieri's character to employ sarcasm or a sense of irony at this late period in his life. Nevertheless, I think it's fair and safe to assume that this man has something good in his heart, and that he's moved on and grown, even if in the smallest way. I guess the gist of my perspective is that Amadeus could have ended with Salieri being as depressed and suicidal as he was in the beginning. And you would think, after hearing his story, that you would wish him to be. Yet the end is so touching because he finds solace within himself, and we as the viewer are moved by it.

Tell me what you think. I'd like to hear any more of your thoughts.

-Justin

Sometimes there are moments in the movies that you can’t bear to watch because they are so upsetting for different reasons. “Irreversible” has already been mentioned several times but what surprises me is that I can take the scene in which a man is beaten to death with a fire extinguisher but I cannot watch the rape scene. One should be as upsetting as the other.

Another, for me, occurs in John Schlesinger’s “Midnight Cowboy”, a film I have never been overly fond of and it is a moment that no one ever mentions. Right at the beginning of the film, as Joe Buck walks the streets of New York he passes a man in a suit lying face down on the pavement. He looks stunned because everyone else seems to be going about their business, never checking to see if this man is dead, dying, unconscious, anything.

That scene angers me and in subsequent attempts to view the film (I don’t care for the film but I am trying to understand why it is so popular) I cannot watch that scene. It is so heartbreaking and I suppose it would be different if the man where homeless where a man lying on the street being stepped over by passersby would be commonplace but it seems so odd that a man dressed as he is is being ignored.

Such emotions also follow me into Michael Moore’s films, not because of his filmmaking or his approach but because what he uncovers about our government, big corporations, the healthcare system make me so angry and upset that I can’t bear to watch them.

I dunno, maybe I take film too seriously, maybe I just care too much. Film has a way of moving me in different ways emotionally – I guess that’s why they call them “movies”.

The last time I cried was almost ten years ago. It was when I received the news from my father that my mother lost her two year battle with cancer.

A couple of months ago, I bought the entire Spike Lee collection on DVD. While enjoying a lazy Saturday with my girlfriend, we decided to watch one of Spike’s more remarkable films, Crooklyn. At that point, I remembered being moved by the movie when I had first seen it in theaters, but that was over fourteen years ago.

After an hour or so into the movie, I had to abruptly excuse myself. It was during the scene when young Troy, played by the talented Zelda Harris, was told by her father that her mother had fallen ill and was on her deathbed at the local hospital. That, of course, was way too close to home. I secluded myself to the garage where all 6'5" and 375lbs of me proceeded to bawl embarrassingly loud completely unbeknownst to my girlfriend.

The next day, I sold my copy of Crooklyn.

The film I will not watch again is not because it's too painful, but because I don't want the power of that specific experience to be degraded (and it surely would be) by a repeat viewing.

The film is "My Best Friend's Wedding" and the spirit if not the specifics of the plot hit me at just the right point in my life like a perfect storm. I thought I was going to watch a light comedy but found myself so closely identifying with the main character that it truly felt that I had as much at stake in the outcome as she felt she did.

Thankfully, the film didn't cheat at the end and the kind gesture by the "best friend" provided a catharsis for me I was unable to achieve in real life.

I fear that if I saw it again it would now just be another slightly above average romantic comedy.

In 2005 my grandmother had aneurysm and ended up in a comatose state. After a about a month and getting all the facts, my father and his siblings decided to take her off life support as per her instructions. As a result, anytime a film features a character in a coma it affects me much differently than before. I was recently watching an X-files episode in which Scully is in a coma and the family decides to pull the plug, per her wishes. She is fading fast, but unexpectedly(except to the audience)awakens. Suddenly, tears came to my eyes. I was imagining how wonderful it would have been had that happened in my grandma's case. It made the episode much richer, albeit more heartbreaking, than it would have been otherwise.

Mr. Ebert,

I have never written on a blog before but felt very compelled to do so regarding this subject. I absolutely love film and its ability to make us see the world through a different lens or take us to events/places we might never have known. I am an airline pilot and In all my wildest dreams I never thought there would be a aviation related film I could not bear to watch.
This movie for me was something so deeply personal that I could not even watch the preview. I realize the events in that movie are painfully for everyone who has a sense of decency, but to watch the one thing in life you love absolutely be turned into an unthinkable destructive force is to me unbearable. I think like the tape of your fathers' voice I will never be able to see this film

I think the way films effect us has something to do with how we connect to them on a personal level. Sometimes, this changes the quality of the film and goes with a feeling I have about film, that the quality is in the eyes of the beholder. For the filmaker, the film may be a catharsis of sorts (like "Grave of the Fireflies"). Yet, as filmgoers, it takes on the form of escapism, but sometimes is way to put our own thoughts into perspective. While catharsis is usually thought of as creating the art itself, I think the feeling sometimes shifts to the filmgoer.

I know quite a few military veterans who say that "Saving Private Ryan" was an excellent film, yet they will never watch it again. That is because the film has transcended the celluloid it was put on and has become more than just art. It's human feeling and emotion taken shape. But all films are different for different groups of people. When I watched "Amores Perros" for the first time, I had just gotten out of a horrendous car wreck. For that reason alone, I had a hard time watching the car crash scene as it affected me on a more profound level. I don't think it was Inarritu's vision to have the scene effect me like it did, but that was my own personal connection.

I've have watched many films that others could not bare watching again. The most common film that I know many people can not watch again is Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List." However, the film that I cannot watch again from Steven Spielberg is "A.I. Artifical Intelligence." When I was six years old I saw the final re-issue release of Walt Disney's Pinnochio and the film left me changed. Even at six years old I could still remember that it was an October Monday night at the Randhurst cinema. I remember that there were only three other people in the theater. A young couple (which I suspect watched little of the film) and an older man. As I watched the film with my father, every frame of film blew me away. I had the same feeling while watching the Kubrick/Spielberg project "A.I."

I have found that the origin of the story has had a strong effect on my childhood. Thus I have only been able to see "A.I." in its entire length once. Although most critics dismayed the film as visual gold and literary bronze. I think the premise of trying to find the real you inside yourself is an existential paradox few dare to think about. However, I do watch Pinnochio and hope one day to share this classic with my children.

God Bless you Mr Ebert that you have the power of your mind, the power of your incredible love of films, and your soul all intact as you continue to soar and fight through your illness. I have been a lifelong fan and I was so moved by this thread that I needed to write you. In 2000 I saw a movie called Almost Famous that was the story of the director Cameron Crowe that after it was over I applauded through tears. I proceeded to run out and tell people they needed to see this movie. I then realized when I read your review of the movie that passion about movies is a joyous thing

I hope one day really soon you may revisit Wit. God Bless you and your wonderful passion

Laughter is healing but not always, as nothing is what it is - when it is something- forever. Maybe I should leave it there, but bear with me, I just want to point out that it is healing, and helps people get close, when it comes from anything considered by the parties involved as joyful, enlightening, tender, rewarding, hopeful or plain funny. And it isn't necessarily healing when it stems from desperation, deception, disappointment or delusion.
Some situations leave you wondering. As Bogart's character in John Huston's "Beat the devil" when he closes the picture with one of the heartiest laughter I've seen on film.

Sometimes movies have a way of giving you a new outlook on life. It may not be something that you can define or articulate, but it is feeling that is recognized instantly. In 1996, I was feeling alone, lost, directionless, and depressed. I was struggling through college with no money or job, my family was going through crisis after crisis, and I was not sure of what I was going to do with myself. At that time, "The Sixth Sense" had been released, and everyone was talking about it. My mom was in the hospital (which put me in a deeper funk,) and seeing how worried and unhappy I was, she suggested that to cheer myself, I should treat myself to a movie. I hadn't seen a good movie in a long time, and I began believing that all Hollywood movies were corrupted, cliched, and worthless. I sat in the theater watching "The Sixth Sense", and by the end I was stunned at how effective and touching the story was and how deeply it effected me. I don't know if it was the relationships between the boy, his mother or his psychiatrist, or the performances and direction (I still believe Bruce Willis was robbed of an Oscar nomination), but it gave me hope: hope that I'll survive college, that my mom will be alright, and that the movie industry is not completely screwed. I attribute this to the ending which didn't rob anyone or really trick the audience, but rather made the story come full circle, and this pushed the film's deeper meanings of love and redemption to the fore. I don't much about anything, but a film's impact on our lives runs deeper than most people believe or know, and should be recognized as an important aspect of our lives.

"Taxi Driver"

I have maybe seen this film twenty times, easily. However, upon my 5th or so viewing of the piece I just started balling like a baby. Something is fundamentally broken with Travis Bickle. He can't operate in normal society. He can't even take a girl on a normal date. He is completely alone. At the time in my life that I was responding to "Taxi Driver" I felt totally cut off - from society, from my friends, from my family.

Every bit of emotional void that is evident in Bickle hit me, bullseye. I can not only sympathize with Bickle but I have total empathy(such as the phone call to Betsy trying to apologize and maybe get a second date), maybe not with everything that happens in the third act but definitely with his state of loneliness.

I'm not in such a place anymore, but every time since "Taxi Driver" has carried a heft. It's not just a clever picture with oft quoted dialogue and fantastic acting. I see now what many must have seen in 1976 (I'm only 26 now myself) this is true art.

Re: Ross Reeder’s comment on “A.I.”

I can’t watch that film again for a completely different reason. My point-of-view with the character was skewed by the fact that I couldn’t understand where he was coming from. Being that this is a mechanical boy searching for something (The Blue Fairy) that he will never find, I lost interest because I could not connect with him. True, Haley Joel Osment is an actor who you can’t help but like but that film seems to aim for something I could get onboard with. The ending of the film moved me greatly until an hour or so after it was over and I was looking back on it. The movie puts all the emotional pieces in place but it never connected with me.

Movies are powerful, because when they are done with honesty by a skilled crew, they can communicate something that can't be expressed with words. Watching some movies I would consider a spiritual experience, because if the images, characters, story, or sound strike you in a certain way, then that aspect of the movie is preserved in you for pretty much the rest of your life, even if it remains latent. Just like nostalgia for a personally transformative summer of your youth, or the longing you feel when you remember the view from the top of a mountain, some movies stay with you in such a unique and powerful way that they stand alone in your mind not as "just a movie;" but as a beautiful, or haunting, or heartbreaking, or strange, or sometimes life-altering experience. The great thing about movies is that they are not just flashing images on a screen with sound, although no one can argue that they are not that. No, the great thing about movies is that they capture an essence.... A skilled director will know that what he is creating is not just a series of images made for the purpose of communicating a plot. What he is doing is all at once creating, then capturing, then exhibiting an experience with a soul. It is like capturing some wild specimen, except the specimen is abstract, and exists purely in the mind as a shapeless, but distinct feeling that remains in your memory long after the film is over. In this way, film transcends the boundaries and limitations with which it was created (cameras, actors, screenplay, etc.) and takes the viewer to new spiritual and intellectual heights (or lows... or uncharted territories), thus transforming the viewer, and bringing into existence something completely new and unmolested by the general public. This is why after a truly groundbreaking film there are a dozen copycats. And this is why people keep coming back to the movies. Because we are always drawn to the new, the exotic, the unknown. And what a good film crew delivers is just that: satisfaction for the human drive to experience more than what ordinary life allows them.

Hey Roger,

I remember a few years back I got to speak with you in person about Wit. It was at the Savannah Film Festival. I sat next to you (the mic between) as we screened the last portion of Citizen Kane. I have a pic of it on my myspace.
Wit, is one of only three films in my adult hood that broke me down to tears. The others are "The Green Mile" and "Crash". It is true that we can relate so closely to a film that it rips its way, albeit gently, through our emotions. I have lost people to cancer, car crashes etc...
More specifically, I think that there are all enclusive moments in films in which every fiber of the story comes together so flawlessly that our imaginations blend seamlessly with our emotions. In Crash, I wept during two scenes: When Dillons character rescues the woman that he had earlier violated, and the "Really Good Cloak" scene. I get chills thinking about it.
In the Green Mile, seeing Barry Pepper and Tom Hanks weep with the other guards as they carry out the job they had to do, on an innocent "Angel". Coffee sings "I'm in Heaven..."
Wit, as she is read "Peter Rabbit", is THE most emotional scene that I have ever partaken.
These movies are essential in a time when there aren't a many characters to fall in love with. Pans Labyrinth is another great example, along with Passion of the Christ. It seems many posting agree.
As a teen, the ending of Last of the Mohicans made me "mad to tears", but it was extremely touching. That scene, and when Percy steps on mister Jingles in Green Mile, are the only two moments in my life where I came off the couch swinging.
Thank you again for all you do. I agree, the more I experience in life, the more susceptible I am to "giving in to tissues" during a "Great Movie".

One of the more emotionally challenging movies for me was Juno.

Some films strike deeper chords than others, and I believe the films that move us most – as many of you have said – are the ones that reflect our own experiences, and Juno almost hit too close to home for me. I have also seen “Ikiru”, another very moving and rewarding picture, but it did not have the same emotional impact as Juno – possibly due to my being 26, and not having the personal experiences of truly facing my own mortality. I do believe though, as Ebert stated in his review, that as I watch “Ikiru” again in the coming years, it would affect me differently based on the current perspective of my own life. But that darn Juno – it got me.

When I was a about 15 years old, I went through almost exactly the same scenario as Juno, but my girlfriend and I, unfortunately, took the other route. Continually through the movie, I could only think of my own experiences, and was overcome with sadness. What if we had followed Juno’s choice? In the scene that Dan Schreiber described above, when Garner speaks to the baby still in the womb, I was shown a glimpse what could have been – a son, living with people who would have loved and cared for him. Few moments on film have been so powerful for me.

The amazing feat of the film is the perfectly balanced dichotomy of its execution, having both emotional resonance and outright hilarity. I found that the humor helped me weather the storm, and the hopeful ending lifted my spirits; in a way, I think it helped me face my demons, and gave me hope in the end. If both of the young people can stay together after such an ordeal, perhaps I too can be given another chance.

Thank you for the great blog, Mr. Ebert and contributors. This is one of the more insightful and intelligent blogs I’ve come across.

Sometimes scenes or lines of dialogue in even the most outrageous comedies can bring on unexpected moments of sadness and pain. In Toy Story 2, when the doll sings "When Somebody Loved Me," it gets me every time...as a child, I was always terrified of being left behind. The end of Fargo, when Francis McDormand and her husband Norm are talking about how "you always need the little stamps," never fails to bring a tear to my eye. And the lovely sequence in Tommy Boy, after Chris Farley's dad dies, when he's walking down the avenue of falling leaves, is a genuinely affecting part of an otherwise hilarious movie.

I think the best films are the ones that can make you laugh and cry, that invite you to experience the full range of human emotions. After all, that's one thing great movies can dp- they gently remind us who we are and what we are about.

I can tell how much a movie affects me, particularly if I'm watching it at home, by how close I end up to the screen when the credits roll. In each case I always start off on the couch, but with 2 movies, having no knowledge as to how, when or why, I end up inches from the television, so that the lives in the movie I am watching encapsulate my whole world.

The first is American Beauty. I saw that movie on levels I didn't think were possible to express in films. When the boy is showing Jane the movie of the plastic bag, I was an inch from the screen, and we both said it was dancing at the same time. When it was finished, I wondered, how on earth they managed to make a movie that deep and significant in Hollywood? With a big budget, and low minded money men involved, no less? Incredible. As much as I loved that movie, I don't think I could see it again. It was so draining for me, and I really have no idea why.

The second, and hardest one to watch was City of Angels. I went into it blind, knowing nothing about it aside from the fact that Nicholas Cage is an angel. I had never seen the original movie it was based upon. I don't think I could have watched it at all had I been in the room in the beginning child died. I had a similar experience when my daughter had a febrile seizure as a baby, around the same time I saw the movie, and the only reason I was able to watch was because I was doing something else for the first 15 minutes of the film.

But what got me, what killed me, was the sacrifice he made, and how it was all for nothing. I realize it wasn't a *great* movie, but it impacted me so tremendously...when Cage asks tremulously if God took her to punish him, and Andre Brauer, an amazing actor-turned-angel says, so flatly, so matter of fact: "You know better than that."

No, I don't, Andre. No. I don't.

I can never watch that movie again. To sacrifice so hugely, so nobly, for love, for next to nothing...it's unbearable to me.

It's been really wonderful reading these responses. Even though I already contributed with my experience with "In America" the stories about "A.I." reminded me of my mother's experience with the film.

While "In America" was a film that resonated with me greatly with the passing of my brother as a kid "A.I." was a film that resonated with my mother, and how she felt about losing him. My brother's name was David, the same name as the robot (and the deceased child of the doctor who created it) played by Haley Joel Osment. The film deals with many themes of parenting--what it means to love a child; what kind of love does a parent expect from a child; what does a parent feel they've lost exactly when they've lost a child.

My mother saw this movie on a whim. Her and a friend were supposed to see a sneak preview of "Legally Blonde" but because it was sold out they took a chance on "A.I." (all my mother knew about the film was that it was a Spielberg/Kubrick film). When the robot appeared named David my mother's friend turned to her and said they could leave if she wanted. But it wasn't a bother to my mother. I was shocked when she told me she saw it and didn't have a strong reaction while watching it.

But then time had passed and she caught it on television and it hit her like a ton of bricks. She called me up to talk about the film, what David represented in the film and how he was being lead in the film by Joe (which is my name, plus I was the older brother and was sort of the leader to my brother). I was shocked that seeing only part of it really got to her when seeing it the first time the whole way through didn't even bring her to tears.

I suppose seeing such films a second time can be hard because some can bring with it thoughts that they later consider about after the initial viewing experience. Some films can be so open and emotional that the initial experience is a roller coaster ride of tears, laughter, joy or sadness. Some aren't like that, and their implications and one's personal reaction to the film can grow beyond the first experience of watching it. What they can bring to it the next time could be a lot more than what they originally took away from it.

It just goes to show that film viewing is always a one on one experience, between the audience and the film, no matter which numbered viewing of the film it is to the person. Because in between those viewings their life has gone on, which brings to the table new things to consider, new touchstones, new joys, and new hurts.

RE: Jerry Roberts
I think the whole point of A.I. was to try to reactions from people on artifical life. I understand your view since many feel that way as well. I think it works. Can anyone honestly say that HAL from 2001 is not one of the greatest villians in cinema? Also look at the newest Pixar film Wall-E. I know alot of people who could not engage themselves into the story. Yet I found it to be one of the best romantic films of the year. And what's more artifical, Wall-E or Fool's Gold?

I can't think any film too "painful" for me, but some films have been difficult to watch. Spielberg's "Schindler's List" and John Singleton's "Rosewood" contain depictions of inhuman cruelty. And I have to avert my eyes during the rape scene (with Greg Crutwell and the late Katrin Cartlidge) in Mike Leigh's brilliant film "Naked".

Your column really hit home with me. Though I haven't had to deal with cancer(I did lose a sister to breast cancer), I've had my own health problems the last few years with diabetes.
An amputation, as well as four other surgeries, has made it increasingly harder to maintain my dignity in the face of so many things I can no longer do by myself.
While recovering from my amputation, modesty was the first thing that had to go. I live alone and there are so many things I can't do anymore. Such a simple thing as putting the trash on the street for collection, getting my mail or paper every day, all are beyond my doing. My seventy-eight year old Mother comes by every couple of days to help out.
It's hard sometime, but I go on.
Thanks for the column.
Randy Johnson

Ordinary People. "Let's make it the best year ever."

I've admired Robert Kennedy all my life; he was murdered when I was eight years old. I remember seeing images of people standing along railway tracks to pay their respects as his funeral train went by. It had a profound effect on me. There was something about this man and as I got older and read more about him, I felt a terrible sense of loss. What might this country, what might this world be like if this galvanizing figure hadn't been killed? No Watergate, an earlier end to Vietnam, a deeper concern for civil rights and the rights of the disadvantaged....?

For years I would feel a sense of sadness every June 5 and I didn't understand why. Then I realized that was the day RFK was shot; something in my psyche memorized the day and like clockwork filled me with profound loss each year.

So when "Bobby" came out a couple of years ago, I couldn't bring myself to go see it in the theater. I did buy it on DVD and it sits on my shelf, unwatched. I know I'll be able to get to it one day. But for now, it cannot go into my DVD player. 40 years later, the loss is still too deep.

My dad was pretty violent, and I spent most of my childhood in the Land of Oz :) The movie that I probably could not rewatch was Pan's Labyrinth. It was very difficult for me the first time, and I just don't think I can watch it again. It sure was a wonderful film, though. I'm going through everything I can find by Guillermo del Toro now, including Blade II!

This is a really interesting thread, and I really enjoyed reading peoples' comments here.

Can't do it no matter what: child endangerment movies....missing kids, potentially missing kids, exploited kids, kidnapped kids...all of that stuff.
I never have been able to stomach that as "entertainment".

People are funny, though...I was affected by "Wit"--I am a weepy one, so I did shed tears, but I am a nurse and please forgive me if I sound flippant, but that's another day at the office to view a movie like that. My sister always says, "I can't believe you leave open heart surgery to have a tuna sandwich..... and then come back and finish closing a chest!" I see so much everyday, allday --(and do a good job with empathy, I believe), so I viewed that particular movie in an entirely different way than the general population, I think.

I noticed that a lot of people are talking here not just about the most personal films of their life experience but the most "painful"... Almost ten years ago, my mom and I went to see a film in the theater of which I'd heard little other than some Oscar buzz... It turned out to be Kimberly Peirce's "Boys Don't Cry" (1999), a masterful story of forbidden love in the heartland. At the end, and through the end credits, and into the corridor outside the theater, I found myself crying uncontrollably and saying "It's not fair" over and over again. This "Romeo & Juliet"-esque piece of work was a remarkably moving and heartbreaking cinematic experience for me that I will never forget. That being said, I have tried to watch the film a few times on DVD/VHS. I find that when I get to the end scenes, I am torn between the courage to see Peirce's powerful work through to the end and the pain that comes with doing the same. This is a film that made me cry my eyes out (rendering the title quite ironic!).

I feel this way about 'Fearless'. For me, the first viewing, was a deeply touching, personal experience between film and viewer (me).

I don't get to the movies much these days - job losses and cost of tickets make it hard. But, there are two movies that have effected me emotionally in a very strong way.

The first is "The Color Purple" (as I said, I don't go often). I had to watch it for a Social Work class some years back. I missed class, so I rented it and watched it from home. As I watched the domestic violence taking place in this movie, over and over and over again, I felt such an overwhelming sense of pain and sorrow, I suddenly began to sob uncontrollably. Whether it was because of my own experiences or absolute empathy, I don't know, but I suspect it was more the former than the latter. I had never really cried for myself - I had years of anger, but no real grief. Well, I had it that day! Movies can often help bring out from within what you have managed to keep hidden for years in a way that years of therapy can't.

The second movie is "The Departed". I cannot for the life of me see why a movie as violent - not just violent, but overtly and realistically violent - as this movie could ever possibly win an Oscar. The story line was somewhat confusing (it was hard to tell when past and present changed places and when scenes changed as well) and it left questions unanswered (so, what WAS in that letter?) But, mainly it brought out a rage in me that I still feel when even thinking about that movie. And it wasn't and isn't a righteous anger wherein I would be angry at the injustices of society as I might have felt in "The Color Purple", but a rage similar to having been victimized. I came out of that theater feeling as though my mind had been assaulted by abject depravity that was depicted as entertainment. Why in God's name would I want to see someone's brains splatter into the river or onto the back of an elevator car? Why was every death so visibly violent? Why MUST I see the effects of the murder on the body? I was angry and I felt justified in my anger - and still do. I don't need to see someone's death. Knowing they were killed is sufficient for me - seeing the person pull the trigger and then seeing the body on the floor fills in all the blanks for me. Is it really necessary for me to see the back of someone's head blow out and the gray matter splash up against the wall?? Is it??

And then I realized - this is what my daughter, then 7, saw when she was riding her bike a block from our apartment without my permission. A man wanted for murder and arson was confronted by a detective. The wanted man put a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger. My daughter turned just in time to hear the blast and see the back of his head blow off. Believe me when I say that it's hard to believe a 7-yr-old with a creative mind as it is sometimes, let alone one that comes screaming into the house that she has just witnessed a murder (she thought). By the time I realized she wasn't kidding about what she thought she saw, several minutes had passed. I had to make quite a few calls to find out what happened and to tell them that my daughter was a witness. Apparently, others there had seen her and told the police there was a little girl who saw everything, who then took off on her bike. They knew who I was when I finally got connected. So, if that was traumatic for a child who is still living partly in fantasy, imagine the trauma for an adult who, while knowing it's just a movie, did not once expect the blatantly vivid portrayals that were forced upon them.

So, yes - movies DO dredge up emotions long buried, forgotten, or even unknown. You never know what the trigger will be - it just happens. You try to put the pieces together afterwards.

Hi, Roger. What a good comments section! And yes, let me second (or third, or fourth) all those telling you to stay healthy. (On a personal note, thanks for answering my personal emails several years ago. It was much appreciated.)

It's strange for me; I can't think of very many movies that have had such an emotional impact I wouldn't see them again. Still, there are two movies I refuse to see, both well-reviewed. One is "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly." I'm a writer, and it terrifies me to think about having the ability to write taken away. (I know the real-life figure was able to write using his left eye, but the painstaking slowness would, I believe, drive me mad.) The other is "Recount," which I think would fill me with an unhealthy rage at what was done to our democracy.

Funny you should write about this topic. I blogged this very week on my chronic illness site about the fact a close friend a brought a comedy in to my home to "cheer me up." After the first 30 minutes of "The Bucket List, she had to turn it off. What was funny in the theater wasn't so funny when she had brought it into my home. Scenes of chemo, throwing up in hospital toilets, and wondering what the remainder of life was going to be like stopped being fodder for a comedy when you are living the material. My friend was appalled that she had poorly chosen but what she had forgotten was that she hadn't brought illness into my home. It was already here.

My favourite film, high on the list anyway, is TAXI DRIVER, but it is hard to watch the bleak, lonely, cracked person that is Travis Bickle. Two other films that make my throat close - Ken Loach's KEZ, the end breaks my heart - the life the boy may end up with that was practically dictated by the death of the kestrel. Then there is Ian McKellen as Walter - the mentally challenged man who is life is turned upside down with the death of his mother. After viewing my heart feels roasted.