For me, the communal dimension is the most fascinating part of wail-worthy films. Crying synchronises a room, creating a wordless, collective experience between strangers sitting shoulder to shoulder in the dark. In the final scene of Hamnet, Agnes realises the play unfolding before her is not just theatre, but a conduit for Shakespeare’s grief over their son. As she reaches out towards the boy on stage, the surrounding theatre audience mirrors her gesture. Grief becomes catharsis, rippling outward, from mother to performer to crowd. And in the cinema where we sit, something similar happens; we echo it, too. There is a connection on-screen as much as there is off-screen, a shared acknowledgement that insists we stay present with the pain.
Moments of connectivity like this feel increasingly rare in our digital age. We are accustomed to reacting alone, on a small screen, privately. To be so naked with our emotions in a communal setting alongside strangers, in real time, is an opportunity to reckon with our own feelings through external stories. The bottom line is, if you’re going to feel something, don’t feel it alone.
Horror has long been marketed as a genre best experienced collectively, which perhaps explains why it remains one of the most profitable genres according to the American Film Market. So could emotive cinema take over in much the same way? A form of participation and reclamation of the cinema as a space for vulnerability, discussion and most importantly, connection.
A critic for The Guardian described a Hamnet festival screening as “a lovely experience, to sob in a movie theatre alongside strangers, mourning for Agnes and William’s loss and for our own, amazed and relieved that a faraway, unknowable person has made something to connect us all.” Meanwhile, in an interview with Little White Lies, Joachim Trier spoke about the power of collective silence in reference to a screening of Sentimental Value, describing the satisfaction of “2,000 people completely breathing together, silent with the sisters [in the scene] and feeling for a moment, that the empathy machine of cinema was creating space”.
I understand that feeling. I have walked into cinemas feeling closed off and walked out cracked open. A few years ago, Trier’s The Worst Person in the World caught my friend and me on a bad, frustrating day, but upon leaving the screening, we both unequivocally felt unexpectedly lighter, emotionally spent and – dare I say it – cathartically moved for the better.
That Saturday morning after The History of Sound screening, I stepped out having shed a few quiet tears and felt gentler with myself. We shouldn’t go to the cinema to be mildly moved. We should go to feel something fully – and sometimes, that means going to cry.