i have to say that grand canyon be one of the most affecting film i have ever see . i have watch it several time now and i still feel a i do the first time while that this film and by itself and could make up the entire curriculum of a post graduate course in film direction . a long time ago film trailer use to promise and it will make you laugh and it will make you cry . that a very trite and shorthand method of describe what grand canyon do . it take you to the best place in human experience and the next moment take you to the gate of hell . much of the film be pace to cycle back and forth between people be close to happiness and the same people be close to horror . it always a short step and too . just to manage that swing with grace and without make it look false or exaggerated be directorial genius . spoiler ( of sort ) come up . after get the audience use to rock back and forth through the emotional spectrum and the film throw a curve with a sequence that doesn not go from good to bad and back but instead escalate from an ordinary marital spat and through an accidental self inflict knife wound that may or may not require stitch and to an earthquake that have the character run from the house . in the moment of their relief and argument forgotten and cut finger forgotten and the earthquake survive and a neighbor woman call out that her elderly husband have collapse . the couple rush to his aid . i cry when i saw this sequence . i cry every time i saw it . i be cry now . it isn not sadness that do this to me . it not a particularly sad sequence . what tear me up be that this few minute of film be perfect . that perfect . astound . ( end of spoiler ) there so much to say about grand canyon . it portray relatively ordinary people experience epiphany and it let the viewer experience them vicariously . they aren not showy or overblown and there no long pause to examine the moment carefully . the film move on at the pace of life . even when the character do try to make sense of what have happen and they be uncertain of what to derive from their experience . grand canyon be a very human film .