In Todd Field's wrenching drama Sissy Spacek and Tom Wilkinson play a small-town New England couple who deal with the murder of their college-age son in an unexpected way.

"Schindler's List," Steven Spielberg's wrenching drama about the Holocaust, dominated the 66th annual Academy Awards last night, winning seven Oscars, including those for best picture and best director.

Each episode is tied to a commandment and is a wrenching modern drama in which ordinary men, women and children agonize, question, exult and ponder over the cards that life has dealt them.

By contrast, Mr. Zoellick plunged this week into two of the world's most wrenching human dramas: Iraq and Sudan.

As a little girl trying to understand the death of her mother, the miraculously unself-conscious star of Jacques Doillon's wrenching drama creates a tremendously moving vision of grief and healing.

And contrary to the adage that audiences just want light entertainment in the hot months, "Saving Private Ryan," a wrenching World War II drama, also scored big.

The director Peter Sellars turns them into a wrenching two-character drama for Ms. Upshaw and the intensely dynamic violinist Geoff Nuttall.

By magnifying the symphony's more introspective aspects, Mr. Masur made it sound less like patriotic poster art and more like the wrenching human drama that Shostakovich intended.

THERE is nothing so disheartening in the wrenching drama of professional sports than to watch a great athlete hang on a little too long and be humbled.

They hear about the sideshow in Washington while they watch a wrenching daily drama play out in the desert right before their eyes.