Respect Authority

Once in my childhood, my sister and I watched a nature special on hunting, or lions, or hunting lions or something. The point is, all I remember is this one scene, where a lion was sleeping on a tree branch and the hunters shot her and someone was so sadistic as to film the entire “death sequence.” As a child, the scene paralyzed me; I didn’t understand why that would happen, or how to get it out of my head. I’m told I cried for hours.

These days, we go into television shows and movies with a far less innocent outlook. It’s a rare thing to make it through two hours of cable without seeing someone’s arm shot off. Seriously, if I were to base my understanding of human anatomy on television and movies, I would assume the connection between arms and shoulders was exceedingly fragile.

Yet there are still some scenes in some movies that can make you cringe with that same unabashed horror that the lion-shooting did me. These are the scenes that make your eyes tear up and your stomach drop as you’re unwillingly forced to consider the “injustice of it all,” including the injustice that the only way you’ll ever experience that kind of horror is vicariously, and likely while sitting on the couch eating ice cream. Watching these scenes is your penance.

We’ll call this the Schindler’s List Effect, since that movie, in all its nonfiction torture, has the indisputable reputation of making you want to die on the spot.

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Million Dollar Baby: Ironically, considering how utterly gruesome movies have become, the majority of Schindler’s List Effect (SLE) movies are older. Maybe it’s sheer nostalgia, or maybe oldies really are goodies, but it’s hard to have a breakout scene these days that evokes the same gut-wrenching sentiments as, well, Schindler’s List. Nonetheless, Clint Eastwood, perhaps because he’s been making movies since dinosaurs walked the Earth, managed it in Million Dollar Baby. I saw this movie thinking, silly me, that it was just about boxing and perhaps because of my ignorance spent the entire second half of it sobbing uncontrollably. The last few scenes in particular, including the one where Clint Eastwood takes it upon himself to get all up in some euthanasia, really make you want to get all up and euthanized.

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Saving Private Ryan: Hailed as one of the best scenes in cinema ever, the opening twenty minutes in Saving Private Ryan are like the last twenty minutes at the dentist’s office: necessary but painful. Indeed, watching the movie interpretation of storming the beach at Normandy is like an emotional root canal. Remember the scene where the guy gets shot in the helmet and takes the helmet off to be awestruck by his luck and then gets shot in the head? Remember how that’s what passes for humor in that movie - horrific irony? There’s a reason everyone loves this movie, but no one’s seen it more than a handful of times. It makes it impossible to look at old men without wondering what sort of intense mental scars they have from past battles, and considering I like to look at old men and think “What funny suspenders!,” Saving Private Ryan is really just a killer of dreams.

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American History X: It’s always interesting when you see a movie you simultaneously love and never want to see again in your life. Although I count American History X among my favorite movies, and actually own it on DVD, I haven’t witnessed the infamous curbing scene but once, ever. The lone time I saw it I was in 8th grade, sleeping over at the house of some friend who I now consider mildly disturbed for having thought the movie slumber party fare. Afterwards I felt like my body had been drained of the ability to feel anything but sadness and from then on I have felt an inexplicable urge to “visit the bathroom” whenever the scene nears. It’s very difficult to see Edward Norton looking beautifully jacked (The Incredible Hulk does not count), but with a gigantic swastika tattoo. Hurts the soul.

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The Passion of the Christ: Watching someone die on a cross is never fun, regardless of whether you think that death is fact, fiction, a tenet of your life’s beliefs or complete lunacy. I’ve never really been able to look at James Caviezel the same way since, nor have I actually ever seen that movie again. Yes, I consider hearing someone’s skin rip out after they’re hit with a mace as something to witness just once, if ever. I know Mel Gibson was trying to say something here, like “My savior is martyr-ier than your savior” but it kind of comes off as “My goal as a director is to make you nauseous.”

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Open Water: There is no particular scene in this movie that acutely pains me, because the whole thing is a one-and-a-half hour block of uncomfortable. Sure, stuff like when the wife wakes up to find her husband just gone, or when the camera dips below the surface of the water to reveal dozens of circling sharks — those are pretty panicked moments. But the film’s low-budget camera work and amateur actors give the entire thing a purely accidental “home video” feel that makes it impossible to watch, yet impossible to look away from. When I saw this is in the theater, the group ahead of me came out looking dazed, confused even. Only after I saw the movie did I understand why.