Breaking Emotions Blogathon Week #2 - Tears & Surprise

Blogathons are awesome. They're a great way for film bloggers to stumble upon sites that they may not have come across before and they're always fun to tackle. Lucky for me then, that I recently discovered a brand new blogathon titled 'Breaking Emotions' on the Mettel Ray site. Each week, bloggers are asked to pick three movie scenes that best sum up a particular emotion for them. Last week, the two emotions chosen were 'fear' and 'awkward'. This week, we're tackling tears and surprise. To find out more about the blogathon, click here and to see which scenes I've chosen, read on after the jump. Go on. You know you wanna!

First up this week is 'tears', and no, I don't mean the happy kind. Sometimes a film can bore me to tears but today, I'm going to choose three favourite scenes that devastated me to the core. I can be a sucker for emotional movie crying but only if the moment is handled tastefully. Cheesy or overly sentimental moments do not have a place here. Warning: Spoilers ahead.

1) The best of the Studio Ghibli films rank up there with the most powerful movies of all time but everyone always seems to overlook Grave of the Fireflies, the war time movie directed by Isao Takahata, which follows two children called Seita and Setsuko trying to survive after their mother dies in World War II. I don't want to ruin it for you but their final scene together is one of the saddest things I have ever seen. 

2) Speaking of tear inducing moments in cinema, Brokeback Mountain has to be up there with the most sad and depressing finales ever committed to celluloid. After Ennis found out Jack is dead, he travels to his former lovers home and discovers a heartbreaking memento that reveals just how important their relationship was to him before he died. Powerful stuff.

3) My final choice takes place at the end of the adaptation for The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas. Based on a children's book... can't be that harrowing right? Wrong. The ending of this film is so soul destroying that after the credits rolled, no one got up for a good few minutes. The entire audience just sat in the darkness, unable to speak. That's never happened to me since and I can't imagine it ever happening again.

Ok, let's wipe the tears away and move on to our second emotion chosen by Mettel Ray this week - 'Surprise'. Plot twists are the obvious choice here but I think it's important to consider scenes where the characters themselves are surprised as well, so my choices aren't all from the endings of films. 

1) The hobbling scene in Misery certainly came as a surprise to Paul Sheldon and I'm sure it was pretty shocking for cinema-goers too, or at least anyone who hadn't read the Stephen king novel first. I suppose what surprised me most about this moment was how director Rob Reiner actually goes for the money shot and shows Sheldon's ankles snapping in graphic detail. Damn that Annie Wilkes is one crazy bitch! 

2) Another Stephen King adaptation... god that guy knows how to write. This time, I wanted to share with you the shock ending of The Mist, where our hero David ends up killing his companions to save them from the agonising death that awaits them... only for help to arrive just seconds later. Now that's a surprise! Yes the day has been saved but now David has to deal with the fact that he's murdered four people who were just moments away from rescue. 

3) When it comes to psychological horror, Takashi Miike is king. The Japanese director has developed a cult following over the years for his shockingly graphic movies, but what really put his name on the map was Audition. If you've heard of the film, you'll know that it gets pretty messed up towards the end - a mans foot is removed using a wire saw and little else - but the scene that surprised me most involves nothing but a ringing telephone and a bag that moves without warning. Seriously.  

So there we have it. Week 2 of the blogathon offered some more great emotions to work with so bring on next week I say! Don't forget to let me know in the comments box below if you can think of any scenes that are even more depressing or surprising than the ones I've chosen. See you next week!