Rocky
I don’t know if I’ve written about this before, but sometime after Sam’s mom took him away, I lost my ability to cope with the emotional climax of any given movie. “Monsters, Inc.” is a perfect example: I simply can’t deal with that scene where the cartoon monster voiced by John Goodman has to say goodbye to the cartoon child. In all honesty, I have to leave the room when the movie reaches that scene, or I break down and cry openly. It’s pathetic.
A few weeks ago, it was Rocky that brought me down. That final fight scene is just incredible, a tribute to the indefatigable will. Creed swings, lands his punch, and Balboa doesn’t so much fall to the mat, as he flops down like a rag doll, stunned like dog kicked in the face. Dripping with blood, looking like his face was replaced with a steak, Rocky staggers to his feet as much because he can’t stop himself as any will to win. BANG! Down he goes again, his own trainers are begging him Stay down, Rock!, and the guy just drags himself up and starts throwing more punches. He simply. Will. Not. Give. In. And it chokes me up. Every. Single. Time.
I’ve been trying to determine whether this actually DID initiate when Sam and I were split up, or whether this hyper-emotional response (as I see it) precedes the breakup. I’m still not sure. I spoke about the problem with my professional friend earlier this month: it’s a topic we’ve discussed briefly before, but have never explored in depth. She seemed to think it was curious as well. “If you were the kind of person that stifled his emotions, I would say it makes perfect sense,” she said. “But it seems that when you’re mad, you let yourself be mad, and when you’re happy you let yourself be happy. So it’s interesting.”
I wrote to my friend Tim about this, and I’m sure he won’t mind my sharing his response:
You seem to be overlooking one other key reason why you reacted so strongly to this movie:
You are an armor-plated, cheesesteak-eating, Philadelphia douche rocket.
I’m joking, of course.
The same shit happens to me. Dude, La Vie En Rose, the film about the life of Edith Piaf: I was crying like a fucking baby for half that fucking gut-wrencher. The latest Wes Anderson flick, Darjeeling Limited: as much as I need to watch that flick again to fully figure out if I even liked it, there were scenes in it that had me going watery. His last one, Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, there was one scene towards the end (where Bill Murray is wondering out loud if the leopard shark still remembers him) where I realized I had bought a one-way ticket to Wah-ville – population: me. Finding Neverland: same fucking thing. Lilo & Stitch: ditto.
Rocky is an awesome film on so many levels. My dad used to use Rocky in his English classes because of the lessons about winning not being everything, and just how well-written a story it is.
I can’t speak for Tim’s crybaby reactions, but I suspect in the case of Rocky my blubbering stems from my strong identification with the underdog archetype. That has my name written all over it. I can’t even begin to count the times I’ve woken up in the middle of the night panicking over my equally worthless past and future, worrying about my debts and wondering if maybe now is the time to end it once and for all, relief from the endless struggle to achieve nothing, only to discount the whole idea. I have a kid who needs a role model (the last thing this beer-swilling dirtbag ever expected or hoped to be), and suicide would not only rob him of that, but would give his mother a sweet notch in her belt: it’s not everyone that can drive another person to jump off a bridge. It’d also give my in-laws a sigh of relief and their moment of triumph: after all the trips to Syracuse, the American is out of our lives forever! There is no way that they get that victory: not now, not ever.
And so more “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” are what I’m looking at, probably for the rest of my life. And like Balboa, I’m going to wind up looking like hamburger with nothing to show for my troubles but another rematch.
Bah.
