Rated "H" For Hospital

A few months after my mom died, my husband Patrick and I returned to her vacant house to prepare it for sale. At night, we needed a reprieve from the dust and the strain. We rented a lot of movies and drank a lot of wine.

I enjoyed the first three quarters of The House of Sand and Fog. Its story was unique and interestingly told. But then Ben Kingsley waited in the hospital for his son to die; he looked upward into the operating room’s fluorescent lights and begged God to peck out his eyes. I burst into tears and told Patrick that I had to stop watching.

No one warned us that tragedy loomed in The Family Stone, either. Patrick got the worst of it this time. Diane Keaton was too reminiscent of my mother, perhaps. His own mother smokes a lot, and he worries.

There should be a warning on these boxes, he grumbled. Danger: Dead Cancer Mom Ahead, I suggested. We could have C for Cancer, he added, and H for Hospital. ET for Emotional Trauma. This was our impetus for a new rating system.

It seems like a sensible way to rate movies. What genuinely upsets you about what you see? Family dinners? Car accidents? Verbal abuse or playing cards doled out over coffee tables? What hits you where you least want to be hit?

Kirby Dick’s This Film is Not Yet Rated has movie ratings on my mind. The filmmaker portrays the Motion Picture Association of America as a conservative, dictatorial cabal in collusion with corporate studios. He spends a lot of time contrasting the MPAA’s response to violence with their response to sexuality, and, as one might expect, sexuality is considered more potent than violence. The more realistic the depiction of the sex act, the more severe the rating. A tight close-up of two partially naked chests heaving, for example, is not as provocative as a full shot of two completely naked bodies (or maybe even more than two!) earnestly thrusting. Thrusting is a problem, apparently.

Images of “the old in and out” disturb me much less than physical torture or mutilation. But estrangement? Sickness? Personal failure? Those get me every time.

When a Disney movie is released, the MPAA will alert viewers to what could be upsetting for children. Babies being separated from their parents is common trigger; this is difficult for little kids to watch. But perhaps this courtesy should be extended to older audiences. Who likes separation?

Years ago, I left the theatre after Good Will Hunting and resolved to break up with my boyfriend because our love just wasn’t like that. That film should have been rated R for Romance Killer.

I experienced another dead parent trigger not long ago in Marie Antoinette, this one more oblique. In one scene, Marie learns that her catty sister-in-law has gotten pregnant before she has. The young queen appeared to be failing at the only task she had ever been given, and her beloved mother was hundreds of miles away. Kirsten Dunst sneaks into a lady’s dressing closet, leans up against a wall, and sobs. The vertical composition and the tight focus of the shot underline Marie’s quiet aloneness. I held Patrick’s hand as we walked across the parking lot afterwards, the image of the lost, suffering Austrian daughter pinned to my mind.

I want a new ratings board: The Committee to Shield the Abnormally Sensitive (CSAS).

I don’t have the strength to serve on it, however.