Hello to all Movie Lovers and Cineasts out there!
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — I Need To Know
Naemi_Emi — 9 years ago(January 05, 2017 06:41 AM)
Hello to all Movie Lovers and Cineasts out there!
I am just starting my PHD Project on the topic of empathy and I am really eager to understand - what makes different people understand each other? What hinders them in understanding each other?
I am basically going to track peoples gazing behaviour and look if it predicts how well they could feel into the character. We kind of wonder, if empathy for other people starts with the way we look at them.
To do this, we need, well, visual scenes with an empathic context. In a broader sense, any context, in which person A experiences something and has an emotion about it, can serve as an empathic context.
We are aiming for situations that have a trivial, day-to-day character, in which person A experiences emotions because of some situation. Or, if the situation is not of a day-today character, then at least realistic (no aliens coming through the backdoor or dead people talking through the phone). This situations need to require some degree of perspective taking on the part of the observer (whose gaze behavior we are eventually interested in and are going to look at). Also, we need single scenes, not whole movies. So it should be clear from the scene (2-6 minutes) what the deal is all about.
Some situations we thought of:
Person A receives the message that partner B is dead
Person A is proud of seeing B achieve something
Person A and B are siblings/partners/friends. B accomplishes something and A reacts with joy/happiness/anger/jealousy
Person A almost gets tramped over in the full subway. (We could actually use any everyday situation in the subway/train)
Person A is a drug addict and steals from B. B catches him stealing.
Person A in the waiting room of an hospital. Doctor comes and says that A is terminally ill/ not terminally ill
Person A catches partner B sniffing in her/his personal stuff (e.g. reading diary)
Person A invites people to a dinner/party/ something and nobody or very few shows up
Person A gets out of the train and realizes that she has forgotten her luggage. She turns around to get in but the doors of the train have already closed
Person A sits with partner B in a park. Then C sits besides B. B starts flirting with C or at least checking her out. A gets angry/jealous/sad.
Person A is adopted and finally finds his parents and they meet for the first time. Biological parent(s) happy OR unhappy (both situations are interesting)
After trying several times, young, overweight A succeeds in jumping over a vaulting horse.
Actually here I could use any situation that shows how someone "unlikely" succeeds in sports. But it needs to be a more realistic scene and not something like Rocky Balboa running upstairs to some victorious sounding music
Person A is really nervous because of a presentation and she succeeds OR doesn't succeed at it (we could use both situations for our research)
Feel free to propose different ones. What is important - A experiences something, has an emotion about it. The scenes should give away enough information so the observer has a chance to understand the situation.
Also, it would be really helpful, if you give me a hint at where to look for the scene or what happens in the scene.
I am really really excited about your answers, guys -
labrat70 — 9 years ago(January 25, 2017 02:40 AM)
I am not sure if this will be any help to you. I tend to remember scenes that make me cry my eyes out (I am a tad dark)
I can think of one movie in particular, where I empathize with the character so much that I just bawl like an infant every time; Sandra Bullock's character "Lucy" in "While you were Sleeping"- she is in the church hospital getting ready to get married. She stops the wedding because she is in love with the "other brother" and gives a speech to the family as to why she lied about the situation, explaining how she loved the family so much and loved being a part of their family. (I was vague so I didn't give away a spoiler)
Any movie with a guy cheating makes my blood boil. (The empathy correlation on this one should be pretty black and white)
The entire movie "The Weather Man" I could empathize with the protagonist from start to end. In a nut shell, this guy can't win for losing. Very adult problems that all of us have to deal with as a part of adult life.
Hope this helps. -
sprendlinger — 9 years ago(January 30, 2017 08:05 AM)
Hello Naemi_Emi,
just wanted to mention these three -- The final scene of "The Champ" (the "Schroder version" - I must admit I haven't seen the 1931 original)
- "When Andrew Came Home" aka "Taming Andrew" - several scenes throughout the movie
- several scenes in "Kramer vs. Kramer"
Kind regards
sprendlinger
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sprendlinger — 9 years ago(February 08, 2017 01:41 AM)
Hello Naemi_Emi,
yesterday I watched "(I'm) Looking For Miracles" - wonderful movie with lots of touching scenes and a very cute Zachary Bennett in his 1st role
As to the impending closure of the message boards (I'm really shocked! how could they!?), perhaps there'll be a new beginning at
themoviedb.org (could also be .com - I'm writing in a haste without back checking now)
or
film.chat;
and I think I read somewhere
imdb2.com
or something similar
In any case IMDB will never be the same and, however valuable it still may be as a database, the good reputation of the site (or at least of those people having made it great and now destroying the best part of it) will drop from 10 points to one.
I'm so upset I even don't care anymore to check the text to eliminate errors in grammar/spelling etc. as I used to do before posting grrrr
Life must go on - have a good time
Kind regards
sprendlinger (Greetings from Germany!)
P.S. For movies with b** actors I recommend B** Actors (written without asterisks, of course) - had some "crashes" over the years but is still there. By far the most comprehensive database on that kind of movies. I love it -
shadaif — 9 years ago(January 30, 2017 12:38 PM)
Not quite sure if this one helps: But the ending to Mr. Holland's Opus is very emotional. I don't want to give away the ending. He is a teacher about to retire and is leaving the school for the last time. I don't want to give away too much.
YOUR VOTE MATTERS! Please vote in every election. Thank you. -
shadaif — 9 years ago(January 30, 2017 12:43 PM)
Try Beaches, there is a small scene in which CeCe (Bette Midler) realizes she will have to be strong to help her best friend Hillary (Barbara Hershey) go through a difficult time.
YOUR VOTE MATTERS! Please vote in every election. Thank you. -
OhNooos — 9 years ago(February 08, 2017 04:12 AM)
I'm thinking how animated characters, through their voice, facial expressions, and story have totally pulled at my heart.
First
The Croods
:
*The first scene is when the teen daughter withdraws from the family to have some alone time and the mother suggests the father tell a story, he gathers the family, but the teen won't join the circle. There's a look on his face as he glances over at her, hoping to draw her in. It breaks my heart. This is that separation that happens as kids grow up and become independent and it is very hard on parents.
*In another scene, the teen announces she will be taking off with her newfound love. The father's face falls and he whispers, "Not my little girl!".
*At one point, the family is separated as they search for a way through a series of stone structures. They can hear each other, but not see each other. The son, who is about nine or ten, sits down and grabs his toes with his fingers and starts rocking. "Tell me what to do, Dad, I don't know what to do." The worry and anxiety makes me hurt for him.- The father is alone and may never see his family again. He finds a rock and begins a painting. He begins by painting the members of his family, including his mother-in-law and the new outsider who have joined. As he draws each one, the audience sees them come to life and you can feel how comforting these drawings must feel for the father. Then he draws a great big circle around them and you feel a sense of unity. The circle turns out to be his arms and he's at the bottom of the drawing, holding the family. That one breaks my heart, too. His dedication and love for his family, as well as his sense of his place in the family, is beautiful, intense, and entirely common to us. Music played a huge role in the emotion of this scene, telling the story as much as the visuals did.
- There's a scene where the father has to send his family on and it's likely he won't ever see them again. His son says to him, "You aren't coming with us, are you?" The father says something like, "If you make it, I make it", meaning survival of the family, of one's offspring, is the goal of any parent. No parent can watch that with a dry eye. We all feel that on a primal level.
How to Train Your Dragon:
*The main character, Hiccup, is spending time with the dragon by a lake deep in the woods. He's learning about him by observing him. This is the closest anyone in his village had gotten close to a dragon outside of combat. He draws a picture of the dragon in the sand with a stick. Then the dragon picks up a small tree and starts running around Hiccup, creating a design of swirls in the sand.
Hiccup looks at the amazing design and starts to walk around it. As he steps on a line of drawing, the dragon bares it's teeth, looking like a dog growling. Hiccup takes a step back, the dragon relaxes, and Hiccup tries again. His foot hovers over the line and the dragon bares his teeth, Hiccup retreats and the dragon relaxes. He tries this a couple of times until it's clear that the dragon does not want him to step on the drawing. So, Hiccup steps carefully, turning this way and that as he follows the curves and loops as if it were a map or a puzzle.
Then he freezes as the audience becomes aware that his movements have brought him right next to the dragon. He stands there with his back to the dragon's face. Again, music is telling the story as much as the animation. When he was drawing and walking around the dragon's drawing, the music was somewhat playful, soft, curious. When he reaches the dragon, the music pauses and holds a note withI think it's vocals in the back softly singing, "Ahhhhh."
Hiccup turns around slowly, closes his eyes and puts out his hand to the dragon and the dragon looks at it, then, with a puff of breath,nudges his nose into the cup of Hiccup open hand. Every time I see that scene, I am immediately aware of feeling this sense of connection and wonder at the connection and how intense that feeling is. It's so basic.
How to Train Your Dragon II - Hiccup is now an adult and meets his mother for the first time. Beyond all of those emotions, there's a scene as they are getting to know one another where they are standing close and she is looking at him. She cups his face in her hand. As a parent, there's this sense of pride and, again, the need to let go of a child. I always cry through that scene and feel intensely for the mother.
*The father sees the mother for the first time in this movie. She looks ashamed and he looks tender. He approaches her slowly, carefully, and speaks to her as if she's a wounded bird. The emotions brought out in this scene are complex. There's love, fear, desire, regreta big ball of wax and I'm not sure why it's successful, but it has a lot to do with how emotion is conveyed through the facial expressions and body language of the characters.
Mulan
*Mulan has failed the test with the match maker and sits alone in the family garden, crying and
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OhNooos — 9 years ago(February 08, 2017 04:18 AM)
In Harold and Maude:
They are dancing and Maude tells Harold she just took pills to end her life. She's relaxed about the whole thing. The camera focuses on Harold and you watch him go from relaxed, to shocked, to horrified as he says, "You did WHAT?". Each word was spoken louder than the last. Then you see scenes intermixed to a Cat Stevens' song. Him driving really fast around curves - scenes from the hospital - at one point, you see a doctor say something to Harold and he covers his eyes, stomps, and runs out of the hospital. This one speaks so clearly of loss.