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The Case for the Spectacle Cry
If the end of Speed Racer makes you well up … well, you’re not alone.
It’s a callback to the lesson his older brother gives him at the start of the film, that a car is “a living, breathing thing,” and that “you can feel her talking to you, telling you what she wants, what she needs — all you gotta do is listen.” Closing your eyes in the middle of a race may be unhinged advice in the real world, but in the Day-Glo universe of Speed Racer, where driving has a spiritual component, it makes perfect sense. Fellow film critic Bilge Ebiri mentioned crying when the camera cranes up as Claudia Cardinale arrives in Once Upon a Time in the West, while Kathryn VanArendonk brought up the barn-raising scene in Witness: “It’s the way everyone pulls everything together — they all work toward this common goal, and it’s very simple and old and wordless.” Others cited the beacons being lit in The Return of the King and (over DM due to embarrassment) the Avengers assembling in Endgame, or, on the small screen, Kacy Catanzaro running the American Ninja Warrior finals course or the “Born to Run” opening number at the Jimmy Fallon–hosted Emmys in 2010. Our instinct may be to focus on the content of what we’re watching when we talk about its ability to make us feel something, but of course the approach matters just as much, and it really isn’t a surprise that sound and visuals trigger strong reactions as well as plot developments or dialogue.
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