Lacrimosa Radio 4
What makes you weep... that old war film, Mrs Miniver; the Disney film, Up; Sinead O’Connor singing and crying her way through Nothing Compares to You?
It didn’t do it for Proinsias O’Coinn who’s 26. He always thought there was something wrong because he never found a song, a film, a poem or a painting that made him weep.
His friends did... but he didn’t. And this funny, touching documentary followed him on a journey to get to the heart of it. He had just one aim: “I really hope that I shed at least one tear”.
He did get close once with the film, X-Men 3 when Professor X gets killed... he was gutted, but he didn’t cry.
This was a journey that involved psychologists and gadgets and watching that well-known weepy, The Champ.
But it became like plunging down a cliff side, veering into a strange whirlwind of a documentary - at times, funny and upbeat, at others, deadly serious and too sad for words.
As a teenager at Sunday Mass, Proinsias said he would kneel down to say his Hail Mary - in Irish, French and English - and pray not to feel the way he did.
His secret is that he is attracted to men as well as women – he is bi-sexual and he wished upon every star that he wasn’t.
This was a documentary that blended beautiful music and an elegy for a small child. There was a visit to see a Titian painting, Ecce Homo, that has made grown men cry.
And he even tried watching that old Christmas weepie, It’s A Wonderful Life – to see would that do the trick.
But the trick is there is no trick.
Crying is like breathing and at the end of this rollercoaster of a documentary Proinsias found the power of his own truth – it was much more important than crying – it was about being true to himself.
