The Tracks of Your Tears: Why Do Tearjerker Films Make Us Cry?

In terms of tears, it’s been a pretty wet summer at the movies, thanks to film weepies like The Fault in Our Stars and this past weekend’s If I Stay. Be prepared for even more emotion once the fall prestige-movie season kicks off. So why do some movies set off the waterworks, while others don’t?

There’s actually a bit of a science to the art of soliciting tears — as outlined in the clip above.  A good death scene helps: Would you believe Ricky Schroder’s lachrymose farewell to his father in 1979’s The Champ has been cited in a host of scientific studies about emotion? And scenes forcing empathy can also do the trick. Showing the passage of time tends to get us misty-eyed, as do moments of reconciliation and anything that shows a significant life phase coming to a close.

So you wonder why you blubbered through 2004’s The Notebook? Well, it has all of those things. Bottom line: if you’re looking for tears and your movie can’t have a crying Ricky Schroder in your movie, a rain-soaked Ryan Gosling will always do in a pinch.