Movies about Self pity
I wasn’t much of a fan of Sean Penn’s first effort as a writer-director, The Indian Runner. The film, a mood piece about a man’s return from Vietnam and his big brother’s attempts to understand him, had the kind of problems you’d expect from many freshman efforts; it was long.
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I wasn’t much of a fan of Sean Penn’s first effort as a writer-director, The Indian Runner. The film, a mood piece about a man’s return from Vietnam and his big brother’s attempts to understand him, had the kind of problems you’d expect from many freshman efforts; it was long on feeling, short on craft. Mostly due to its patchy pacing and out-dated themes (movies interpreting the Vietnam experience were well past their prime when it came out), The Indian Runner indicated that Penn was better in front of the camera than behind it. When he announced soon after the film’s release in 1991 that he was giving up acting to devote himself full time to directing, I assumed we’d never hear from him again.
I’m glad I was wrong, because his new film, The Crossing Guard, is a surprising and affecting film. While not a work of great subtlety or imagination, its mix of melodrama and genuine emotion—and great performances from Jack Nicholson, David Morse, and Anjelica Huston—grabs our attention like a horrible train wreck, and it’s impossible to turn away from the grim emotional spectacle of its truthfulness.
The Crossing Guard suffers from a few of the same shortcomings as The Indian Runner, most obviously a plot that sounds as stale as a 1970s-era exploitative action movie: Freddy (Nicholson) hasn’t been able to cope with the death of his young daughter six years earlier at the hands of a drunk driver, John Booth (Morse). When Booth is released from prison after serving time for manslaughter, Freddy resolves to kill him.
If Charles Bronson had made this film, any plot to speak of would end there; you could expect lots of blood-letting as Freddy relentlessly tracked down and butchered the lousy killer, giving him what he deserved if the penal system weren’t so damned lax. (Morse would invariably be given a maniacal giggle, just in case you might be tempted to sympathize with him). But The Crossing Guard isn’t about killing Booth; it’s about the emotional torture that makes Freddy want to kill him, and the remorse Booth feels for his crime. In the end, the film is a sober portrait of two men whose similarities outnumber their differences, and who must find a way to get on with their lives.
In Penn’s somewhat simplistic construct, Freddy and Booth are opposite sides to the same coin, men whose lives became intersected by a single random, tragic event. Booth may have spent five years behind a prison wall, but Freddy has spent time inside the prison of his all-consuming hatred. In effect, we are shown two men who, although having taken two wildly different roads—for Freddy, anger, for Booth, guilt—have arrived at the same place—self-pity. Penn’s message (to the extent he has one beyond the borders of the film itself) is that however valid these men’s feelings once were, neither has put his emotions to beneficial use. Booth, who ultimately serves as the story’s real protagonist, may exhibit actual regret about his crime, but he ignores the opportunity to channel his feelings toward a helpful end. He’s even unable to get close to a woman who shows interest in him (Robin Wright) because of the self-loathing that occupies his thoughts. You half believe that subconsciously Booth wants to be killed, as if the martyr status his murder would exact somehow would give credence to his self-pity.
Freddy’s despair—and the weakness it reveals—destroys his marriage to Mary (Huston). She’s managed to cope with her grief by remarrying (her new husband is played by former Band singer-songwriter Robbie Robertson), but Freddy interprets this as a betrayal to the memory of their daughter. He might not have adjusted to it, but Mary has adjusted too well, and the rift between them (bridged only by the creaky remnants of what was once love) spans the room.
Penn doesn’t pull any punches as a director, and he paints a rough, jagged portrait of family strife and the emotional abuses people endure at the hands of lovers. The starkness of Penn’s domestic confrontations, especially apparent in the two long scenes between Nicholson and Huston (one at her house, the other in a late-night diner), evokes an uncomfortable familiarity. But the signature scene of the film features Freddy alone in a bathroom, talking to Mary on the phone and confessing his pain. Nicholson has never looked older or more dried up, and his way of waking us up to Freddy’s agony is jolting. Most of the time Freddy comes off as merely a volatile, explosive wild card, but in that scene his profound sadness bursts through. The moment is raw and soulful, and Nicholson’s performance condenses every emotion that got Freddy to this point with lacerating accuracy. He’s never been better.
Penn’s direction is full of the same questing, the same uncertainty, as his characters. He seems like a man trying to find the right rhythms—the right style to tell a personal story. And so there’s an excess of slow motion and needless matching shots (once he sets up the dichotomy of Freddy and Booth, he continues to hammer it home). Neither is the film’s final thesis—the healing power of sacrificial kindness—totally convincing, but with such passion and honesty in evidence, you have to give The Crossing Guard its due; it wears its heart proudly on its sleeve, and dares you to ignore it.
The Crossing Guard. Miramax. Jack Nicholson, David Morse, Anjelica Huston, Robbie Robertson. Written and directed by Sean Penn. Now showing.
UDRŽTE POZOROVATELE NA SVOBODĚ. Od té doby, co jsme zahájili Pozorovatel Dallas, byl definován jako svobodný, nezávislý hlas Dallasu a rádi bychom tomu tak zůstali. Vaše členství nám umožňuje nadále nabízet čtenářům přístup k našemu pronikavému pokrytí místních zpráv, jídla a kultury bez placení. Můžete nás podpořit tím, že se připojíte jako člen za pouhých 1 $.
5 Netflix Movies To Personally Grow You Out of Self-Pity
Find your victory from these based-on-real life situations.
Change Becomes You
5 min čtení
21. května 2020
When you see that others have less than you, then your emotions shift.
Máte pocit méně sorry for yourself.
You can have a Netflix movie popcorn party. And get away from your pity party.
Your situation could be bad but how you portray your situation makes the difference on how quickly you can bounce back.
When you can get to a neutral place of peace, you can feel compassion for others.
When I hear about crew members stuck on a cruise ship, away at sea for months, that’s enough for me to feel grateful for my situation.
When you’re a victim, and your safety is stripped away from you by others who want to harm you, there’s additional trauma. Sudden attacks as violation from others, can be more traumatic than if something natural happened to you like disease.
When you hear of people who have greater misfortune, you start to have pity for jim. You get a gratitude perspective.
When you feel compassion for other people’s trial and tragedies, you can feel:
Committed to helping and doing
Zde jsou 5 na základě skutečného života movies that could stir up those emotions:
1.Bethany Hamilton Unstoppable (2019)
When young surfer Bethany Hamilton lost one arm because of a shark attack doing the thing she loves, surfing, she doesn’t use her handicap as a reason to stop competing.
In fact she keeps going and growing with a stronger determination.
Co se můžete naučit:
Resilience can be a deep motivator. For success, it can take 100 failures. Nebo 1000. Be encouraged that failure is a sign of hope. Don’t give up too soon. When you stop counting is when competing gets easier.
Every action towards your focus can lead to your next success.
Make your mind your best friend. Most of what you need to succeed is in your mind. Constantly…
Fictional depictions of egotistical self-pity?
January 20, 2024 1:41 PM Subscribe
I’m looking for fiction or film scenes that show self-centered characters brooding resentfully over a sense of imagined offense or injustice— basically the melodramatic, neurotic, self-pitying side of narcissism.
Ideally, I’d love psychologically nuanced versions that take the whiny egotist’s point of view, showing their logic from the inside. David Foster Wallace’s «The Depressed Person» is a great example of this, and so is the character of Eustace in Plavba Dawn Treader. Any ideas for other places it might turn up? Thanks!
posted by Bardolph to Writing & Language (43 answers total) 8 users marked this as a favorite
I can’t think of a particular scene offhand, but BoJack Horseman is full of this.
posted by wheatlets at 1:43 PM on January 20 [9 favorites]
For a humorous take, the movie Bridesmaids.
posted by kapers at 1:54 PM on January 20 [4 favorites]
Would Achilles in the Iliad fit the bill? Not necessarily from his perspective, though I’m sure there is other fiction related that might.
posted by Carillon at 1:56 PM on January 20 [3 favorites]
The semi-fictional portrayal of Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network is filled with this. And seconding Bojack Horseman.
posted by windbox at 1:58 PM on January 20
I don’t know how to narrow it down to one scene, because that’s basically the entire premise of the science fiction film Medusa Touch (1978), available there on Tubi and on Pluto FWIW. Richard Burton stars as a towering narcissist, full of anger over perceived slights and increasingly capable of venting that anger on the world with his psychic power to just imagine terrible things and make them happen.
posted by Wobbuffet at 2:01 PM on January 20 [1 favorite]
There’s an early Martin Amis novel, Success (1978) about sibling rivalry, where one brother is a terrible narcissist. The chapters alternate between the perspectives of the two brothers.
posted by biffa at 2:15 PM on January 20 [2 favorites]
There’s a hilarious stretch in the Dům Gucci film where Jeremy Irons’s character sulks over his perceived betrayal by his son in rejecting his advice on whom to marry.
posted by praemunire at 2:20 PM on January 20
Really, Mulholland Drive is a journey into this very thing.
posted by johngoren at 2:25 PM on January 20 [1 favorite]
You might enjoy Tár
posted by potrzebie at 2:36 PM on January 20 [8 favorites]
Dostoyevsky’s Notes From The Underground.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 2:39 PM on January 20 [4 favorites]
Almost every scene in Martin Scorsese’s King of Comedy from 1982. Same with his Taxi Driver, 1976. Maybe others; never saw Raging Bull.
posted by Rash at 3:03 PM on January 20
Bad Lieutenant is a lesson in dark triad narcissism bound in force and power.
posted by MonsieurPEB at 3:04 PM on January 20
Browning’s poem “My Last Duchess” is a classic.
posted by ojocaliente at 3:32 PM on January 20 [5 favorites]
Občan Kane.
posted by rd45 at 3:38 PM on January 20 [1 favorite]
A lot of the recent Joker is this.
posted by Iteki at 3:49 PM on January 20
Marvin the paranoid android.
posted by The corpse in the library at 3:53 PM on January 20 [2 favorites]
IMO the Sword of Truth series fits. The MC’s holier than thou attitude and ruminations grate on me so much that I’ve only managed to finish the original series (i.e. Wizards First Rule to Confessor) once. It’s a shame ’cause the story and writing is excellent.
posted by gible at 4:52 PM on January 20
The character Withnail from Withnail & já might fit the description?
posted by Liquidwolf at 5:07 PM on January 20 [5 favorites]
If you’re open to humorous TV I think the character excavation of Arnold Rimmer through at least the first five or so series of červený trpaslík is genuinely fascinating.
posted by babelfish at 5:16 PM on January 20
Tony Soprano’s mother (Lavinia?) is exactly this, but the show doesn’t really project through her point of view.
posted by jeoc at 5:25 PM on January 20
I would suggest the TV show Crazy Ex-přítelkyně: Rebecca is (to me) a really nuanced and sympathetic character who has a very human tendency to cast herself as the central character in všechno, which manifests as a pretty profound self-centeredness a very relatable self-loathing at times. Personally I think the show does a really wonderful job of making you root for her and her wellbeing without excusing/hiding from these tendencies.
As a heads-up, it is a musical (over 100 original songs) and occasionally quite sad (though it’s largely a comedy). Maybe check out this song for a sense of the show’s tone? (As another warning, this is a pretty bleak watch in the sense that it is essentially Rebecca’s self-hatred set to music, but as someone with anxiety, I find it very relatable and oddly comedic.)
posted by lavenderhaze at 5:47 PM on January 20 [5 favorites]
I just finished the novel Yellowfaceby R.F. Kuang, and it is basically entirely that.
For a shorter depiction, try the short story «Nobel Prize Speech Draft of Paul Winterhoeven, With Personal Notes,» by Jane Espenson.
posted by gideonfrog at 6:20 PM on January 20 [2 favorites]
Jack Lemmon’s character (and others) in Glengarry Glen Ross — they all think they’re the best salespeople, and it’s not their fault if they aren’t given good leads.
posted by credulous at 6:42 PM on January 20
Nabokov has a couple of these. This is very much the impression I got of the first person narrator Humbert Humbert in Lolita and also of the footnote-writer Kinbote in Bledý oheň. It’s been so long since I read either that I can’t recommend particular chapters or scenes.
posted by JonJacky at 8:22 PM on January 20 [1 favorite]
John Gardner’s Grendel might fit the bill?
posted by feistycakes at 8:49 PM on January 20 [1 favorite]
It’s fictionalizovaný history rather than outright fiction, but Aaron Burr in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton vejde se na účet.
Sobectví: In this fictionalized version of events, Aaron Burr had no principles, only self-serving ambition.
Sebelítost: Near the end of the show, after the duel in which he kills Hamilton, Burr sings:
. When Alexander aimed at the sky
He may have been the first one to die
But I’m the one who paid for it
I survived but I paid for it
Now I’m the villain in your history
I was too young and blind to see.
It’s a bit rich coming from a guy who (in the fictionalized account) has just shot someone who was aiming their gun at the sky! And BTW was 50 years old. It’s astounding how Miranda managed to make such a whiny baby moment so moving, lol.
posted by MiraK at 9:04 PM on January 20 [2 favorites]
Well the «strawberry» incident from the movie Caine Mutiny fits the bill in my opinion.
posted by forthright at 9:09 PM on January 20
An iconic example of what you’re looking for surely is Macbeth’s famous «Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow» soliloquy. (Link goes to Sir Ian McKellan performing it, extremely worth watching!)
tl;dr/dw: an egotistical murderous maniac breaks down and waxes lyrical about how meaningless and arbitrarily short life is, just because his beloved (and murderous) wife has died. «Out, out, brief candle!» he moans, after having personally slit the throat of several people pretty damn recently and literally tried to murder a child! Brief candle indeed. If the speech wasn’t so pretty your eyes would roll right out of your head.
posted by MiraK at 9:11 PM on January 20
Seconding Humbert Humbert in Lolita.
posted by threecheesetrees at 9:44 PM on January 20 [2 favorites]
Also, «Javert’s Suicide» from Les Mizerables
posted by feistycakes at 9:45 PM on January 20
this sounds like what Syndrome was going through in “The Incredibles”
posted by alchemist at 9:56 PM on January 20 [1 favorite]
«fiction . that show self-centered characters brooding resentfully over a sense of imagined offense or injustice— basically the melodramatic, neurotic, self-pitying side of narcissism.»
This could be the dusk jacket blurb for The Catcher in the Rye. The protagonist is one of the most annoying and dislikeable characters in modern literature.
posted by underclocked at 1:04 AM on January 21 [3 favorites]
Wait, Jeremy Irons is in House of Gucci and he’s angry about his horrid betrayal at the hands of Adam Driver? Watching this!
Crime and Punishment is a classic about someone who is depressed and who thinks they are the center of the universe, with deadly results.
posted by kingdead at 1:09 AM on January 21 [1 favorite]
I feel like this is Baumbach territory. Start with «Margot at the Wedding» or «The Squid and the Whale» and see if they don’t push this button for you. «Greenberg» for a more pathological angle.
posted by rhizome at 2:31 AM on January 21 [2 favorites]
One Fat Englishman is like this. Goodreads link because it confirmed my feeling that the self-pitying dipshit main character is not someone Amis sucked out of his finger.
I think that’s same the character who maliciously destroys a child’s toy and who otherwise goes around sucking all the joy out of life pretty much full-time while also getting everything he could possibly want.
posted by BibiRose at 6:10 AM on January 21 [1 favorite]
Fleishman má potíže is sort of one big gut punch of this, at least it was for me.
posted by pjenks at 6:20 AM on January 21
Nthing that Nabokov does this character type well. Paduk in Bend Sinister is exactly this.
posted by trip and a half at 6:31 AM on January 21 [2 favorites]
I just watched Anatomy of a Fall and there’s an interesting version of this dynamic throughout the film
posted by Morpeth at 10:54 AM on January 21
Konfederace hlupáků is a novel-length examination of this character type (and it’s hilarious to boot).
posted by ejs at 4:33 PM on January 21 [5 favorites]
Lesley Manville’s character in the 2010 Mike Leigh film “Another Year” is exactly this. There are other narcissistic characters in that film (that’s what it’s all about, I think) but her performance stands out.
Also there’s a novella called “Sukkwan Island” in the middle of a book by David Van called Legenda o sebevraždě. I can’t think of a better depiction of this type of character. I wrote in my Goodreads review about this novella, “That Vann could make me end up sympathizing with such an odious, self-pitying, self-rationalizing character as Jim Fenn is a mighty feat.” The rest of the book is great too, but that novella really taught me something about the psychological problems of other people.
posted by SomethinsWrong at 5:59 PM on January 21
I was going to point to A Confederacy of Dunces as well, but ejs beat me to it!!
posted by sonofsnark at 8:31 PM on January 21
The Feminist. Tony Tulathimutte.
It is free to read on N Plus One, and the story is a really wonderful game. You just have to read it and wonder, what parts is the main character missing in his vision of the world?
posted by Didnt_do_enough at 8:45 PM on January 21
Mrs Gummidge in David Copperfield.
posted by low_horrible_immoral at 5:08 AM on January 22
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