I’ve decided, sitting here in the dark trying not to fall asleep, that “Mr. Holland’s Opus” while perhaps not the saddest movie ever made (Hotel Rwanda, that Bjork movie I can’t think of the name of. . . many others) is probably the movie that makes you cry the most.
Seriously.
If you don’t cry at the very least three times while watching Mr. Holland’s Opus you probably have a shriveled Chicken McNugget in the spot where your heart is supposed to be.
The top three tear-jerking moments:
- When they play the American Symphony at the end (duh)
- When Mr. Holland signs the song “Beatuiful Boy” to his deaf son after John Lennon is murdered
- When the marching band drummer guy dies in Vietnam
If you’re emotionally incontinent like I am, you have to add:
- The marching band scene where they play “Louie Louie” (marching bands always make me cry, no matter what, especially when I see them live in a parade)
- When Mr. Holland gives the lecture on Bach or Beethoven or whomever cut the legs off his piano and put it on the floor so he could compose after going deaf (this comes after Mr. Holland finds out his own baby son is deaf)
- When the principal retires and gives Mr. Holland a compass
- When Mr. Holland fights for his job in front William H. Macy (who I find oddly attractive in a deeply disturbing sexual way), and talks about music and raising kids who have no appreciation for the arts and says “Sooner or later these kids will have nothing to read or write about”
- When Mrs. Holland gets all pissed and Mr. Holland for being a cheapskate and a ninny and starts shouting, “I just want to talk to my son
This movie is emotionally exhausting for me, and yet I cannot turn away from it. Thanks to some sort of weird spidey/Mr. Holland sense I always seem to catch this movie whenever it’s on. I probably watch this movie at least 12 times a year and cry through the entire thing every time.
dancer in the dark
Thank you. I kept wanting to call it Selma. God that movie wrecks me.
I saw the film a long time ago. Yes, I did get a bit weepy eyed during the course pof the film, however the “Beautiful Boy” part was lost one me when Dreyfuss sings off key and thrusts his hand out while delivering the line “beautiful, beautiful…. COLE!” I think it was the scene’s obvious rodeo rider tight grasping of the heartstrings, or even perhaps the over-expressive delivery, that made me crinkle my nose like a cat presented with citrus.
People may call this movie shmaltz but I too am a sucker for it every time. And even though I know it’s coming I still mist up at those same parts every time.
Marching bands make me cry too….
i guess ill check it out.i havent cried enough lately
I always bawl at “Love Story” and of course, “An Affair to Remember”.
i’m not one to cry at movies, but i don’t think there was a dry eye anywhere, when Celie runs out of her house to meet her sister Nettie, back from Africa in The Color Purple. i choke back sobs when her long lost children cry and hug Celie and call her Ma-Ma.
I’ve never seen that one. I read the book though.
if you wanna cry watch: A walk to remember.