Most depressing movie

Day of the Locust

Can't *beat*

I actually found Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind terribly depressing.

A Serbian Film or Martyrs.

The Spy Who Came in from The Cold

Last Exit to Brooklyn

And say why. In RfaD, each and every character went through hell with no redemption. All the actors were excellent. Ellen Burstyn have won the Oscar that year.

Best still works quite well, OP.

Meanwhile, I vote for Fassbinder's Year of Thirteen Moons.

Also, The Rapture with Mimi Rogers and David Duchovny. Apparently, fundies REALLY hate this movie which makes it slightly less depressing.

Love love love this film but it is sad

Graveyard of the Fireflies or Welcome to the Dollhouse.

A Star Is Born, starring Babs. Depressingly boring, a stale, bland remake that should never have been made.

I agree with the other choices, but will add 'Angel Heart' (watching your own descent into Hell), 'Jacob's Ladder' (watching your own descent into insanity) and 'Blue Velvet' (realizing your whole world is a corrupt fantasy, with you playing on the glittered fringes).

"Testament", hands down. I've never seen a more depressing film.

I actually loved Babs' A Star is Born. Maybe only because I loved the soundtrack and her clothes.

Dancer in the dark. I still haven't recovered.

Tv movie "Brian's Song"

Theater -" China Syndrome"

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

I think Brian's Song succeeded where Love Story didn't. The whole Dying Young thing. BS 's angle was more about loss of friendship than impossibly beautiful lovers meeting one of their predictable ends

R15 I completely agree. That film is designed to make you wanna just give up on life. And yet, Bjork's performance is so beyond breathtaking and heartbreaking she keeps you entirely invested.

"Longtime Companion."

I can count on the fingers of one hand the movies that made me cry, but the final scene in that one did it.

Never Let me Go where the English children at this school find out that there just existing as spare parts for when their original gets sick and needs one or more of their organs. All of them will die young and lead a incredibly hopeless existence.

"Dawson's 50 Load Weekend"

Fifty loads, and he still wasn't satisfied....

Gidget Goes Hawaiian

RFAD was such a difficult film to watch. The last scene of Jennifer Conlley's character is horrific.

Gregg Araki owns this thread

Melancholia ... got me on a depression role

Schindler's List. I just cant get thru it.

Bedknobs and Broomsticks

Sophie's Choice

R24, Jennifer Connelly's scene was horrific, but you could say it was born of her own free will,. The others were just stuckin places where they had no escape.

"Up In The Air" w/ DL fave G. Clooney.

Ask any man who travels a lot for work. My straight friends call it the "Prozac Movie" because you need antidepressants after.

Mulholland Drive

The ending of Glory was very depressing. Everyone dies and is buried together. The End.

Don't forget "In the Company of Men"

Sterile Cuckoo.

Tell Me You Love Me, Junie Moon (Sorry x 2, Lizsha, but not Preminger-his stuff was hideous)

Johnny Got His Gun. (Kudos to Metallica for their tribute)

Repulsion. Full marks though for being so ahead of it's time.

I have to see Dancer in the Dark now.

You can stream Dancer in the Dark for free at 123movies dot gs

Thanks R37

breaking the waves

R36 the soundtrack is amazing too. I'm a sucker for The Sound of Music anyways but hearing Bjork cry-singing "my favorite things" a capella with only the rhythmic hum of air vents as her backing music is something else... Dancer in the Dark is a haunting experience.

The Hours is pretty depressing.

SHAME with Fassbender

Cosigning Breaking the Waves

Lots of Von Trier here.

Sophie's Choice the movie was pretty depressing, but it did not equal the novel in any way.

I think any Lars von Trier movie is a contender, but I'll choose "Melancholia" because it's so exquisitely, gorgeously depressing and the sadness is because the world is actually destroyed. I hate most of his movies -- even "Breaking the Waves" and "Dancer in the Dark" -- but for some reason I love that one.

Legends of the Fall

'Night Mother with Sissy Spacek and Anne Bancroft.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence, so sad. The song, For Always, makes me cry. Josh Groban sings a lovely rendition of it.

"Hard to Watch" based on the novel Stone Cold Bummer, by Manipulate.

The Deer Hunter

Blackfish, The Cove, An Inconvenient Truth.

The Velveteen Rabbit? Was that a movie? If so, it would have been depressing af. Also any movie in which a beloved pet dies as a central theme. I can't name any because I am constitutionally incapable of watching them.

R49 = Liz Lemon

The Wrestler with Mickey Rourke was a definite downer. His relationship with his daughter in the movie, Evan Rachel Wood started well but went south quick. Mickey, ERW, were excellent, as was Marisa Tomei in a character turn for her.

It's The Road for me. I'm glad I saw it--great story with fantastic performances--but I have no desire to see it again. Horrific, grim and depressing, it stuck with me for days.

SPOILER...

Even with the son finding a family to take him in, all I could think was, what's the point? Sooner or later they're going to starve to death, if the cannibals don't get them first. It was as hopeful an ending as it could be, but it felt like a hollow victory. I guess I'm more like the boy's mother than his father.

R50, I'm a dog lover and lost my dog , a Lab mix, a year ago,. I can't turn the channel fast enough now when I see Marley and Me, though I saw it in the theater when it first came out. and enjoyed it. Never again

In Melancholia there are moments of beauty throughout and-- in the end-- the sisters find solace in each other's company, so it's not as bleak as Dancer in the Dark. Requiem for a Dream hits the same lows as Dancer but Aronofsky's super stylized directing and that pounding (albeit, terrific) score makes the movie more horrific than depressing.

But Dancer in the Dark is a truly harrowing experience. It's raw, nihilistic, and lacks any hope whatsoever. It's one of those brilliant-but-once-is-enough type of movies. Another viewing is an exercise in emotional masochism.

Amongst Friends - a 90's indie about friendship, loyalty and betrayal in the mean streets of New York.

The Mist - was rather gloom and doom. The ending was a gut punch.

And the Band Played On - this movie chronicles the start of the global panic and pandemic of AIDS.

The Mist was depressing in a dystopian way. Steven King'a story is worth the read. Same for The Road. Bleak.

Grave of the Fireflies, Dancer in the Dark, Requiem for a Dream all depressed the fuck out of me. Melancholia I actually kind of like--mostly because it comes across as a metaphor about depression and I like that Von Trier made a film about how depression can be weirdly functional. I won't see Antichrist--anything with self-mutilation gives me the willies. Both Grave and Requiem were movies where things started out bad and then just kept getting worse.

Raise the Red Lantern and Leaving Las Vegas are also on my downer list.

House of Sand and Fog, total wrist-slasher

I will just write what I wrote on an identical thread, oh, maybe a year ago:

Lilya4Ever

A sad movie with a PTSD ending:

They Shoot Horses, Don't They

Brokeback Mountain was very sad for me.

Monsters Ball was very, very depressing.

Hamburger Hill - "It don't mean nothing, not a thing." Was the recurring line throughout this sad movie. War is hell. And kills so many in their prime.

Brokeback Mountain - made me tear up. I hate that.

Another vote for Raise the Red Lantern. I remember as a child staring at paintings of mountains and country side at Chinese Restaurants, and getting a feeling of sadness thinking how bleak life would be for a gay child to live in such places.

Watching Raise the Red Lantern broght back the old sad feelings, even though it involves only straight people..

Another vote for Raise the Red Lantern. I remember as a child staring at paintings of mountains and country side at Chinese Restaurants, and getting a feeling of sadness thinking how bleak life would be for a gay child to live in such places.

Watching Raise the Red Lantern broght back the old sad feelings, even though it involves only straight people..

Another vote for Raise the Red Lantern. I remember as a child staring at paintings of mountains and country side at Chinese Restaurants, and getting a feeling of sadness thinking how bleak life would be for a gay child to live in such places.

Watching Raise the Red Lantern broght back the old sad feelings, even though it involves only straight people..

Another vote for Raise the Red Lantern. I remember as a child staring at paintings of mountains and country side at Chinese Restaurants, and getting a feeling of sadness thinking how bleak life would be for a gay child to live in such places.

Watching Raise the Red Lantern broght back the old sad feelings, even though it involves only straight people..

Another vote for Raise the Red Lantern. I remember as a child staring at paintings of mountains and country side at Chinese Restaurants, and getting a feeling of sadness thinking how bleak life would be for a gay child to live in such places.

Watching Raise the Red Lantern broght back the old sad feelings, even though it involves only straight people..

Another vote for Raise the Red Lantern. I remember as a child staring at paintings of mountains and country side at Chinese Restaurants, and getting a feeling of sadness thinking how bleak life would be for a gay child to live in such places.

Watching Raise the Red Lantern broght back the old sad feelings, even though it involves only straight people..

Another vote for Raise the Red Lantern. I remember as a child staring at paintings of mountains and country side at Chinese Restaurants, and getting a feeling of sadness thinking how bleak life would be for a gay child to live in such places.

Watching Raise the Red Lantern broght back the old sad feelings, even though it involves only straight people..

Another vote for Raise the Red Lantern. I remember as a child staring at paintings of mountains and country side at Chinese Restaurants, and getting a feeling of sadness thinking how bleak life would be for a gay child to live in such places.

Watching Raise the Red Lantern broght back the old sad feelings, even though it involves only straight people..

Another vote for Raise the Red Lantern. I remember as a child staring at paintings of mountains and country side at Chinese Restaurants, and getting a feeling of sadness thinking how bleak life would be for a gay child to live in such places.

Watching Raise the Red Lantern broght back the old sad feelings, even though it involves only straight people..

Another vote for Raise the Red Lantern. I remember as a child staring at paintings of mountains and country side at Chinese Restaurants, and getting a feeling of sadness thinking how bleak life would be for a gay child to live in such places.

Watching Raise the Red Lantern broght back the old sad feelings, even though it involves only straight people..

Another vote for Raise the Red Lantern. I remember as a child staring at paintings of mountains and country side at Chinese Restaurants, and getting a feeling of sadness thinking how bleak life would be for a gay child to live in such places.

Watching Raise the Red Lantern broght back the old sad feelings, even though it involves only straight people..

Another vote for Raise the Red Lantern. I remember as a child staring at paintings of mountains and country side at Chinese Restaurants, and getting a feeling of sadness thinking how bleak life would be for a gay child to live in such places.

Watching Raise the Red Lantern broght back the old sad feelings, even though it involves only straight people..

Another vote for Raise the Red Lantern. I remember as a child staring at paintings of mountains and country side at Chinese Restaurants, and getting a feeling of sadness thinking how bleak life would be for a gay child to live in such places.

Watching Raise the Red Lantern broght back the old sad feelings, even though it involves only straight people..

Another vote for Raise the Red Lantern. I remember as a child staring at paintings of mountains and country side at Chinese Restaurants, and getting a feeling of sadness thinking how bleak life would be for a gay child to live in such places.

Watching Raise the Red Lantern broght back the old sad feelings, even though it involves only straight people..

Another vote for Raise the Red Lantern. I remember as a child staring at paintings of mountains and country side at Chinese Restaurants, and getting a feeling of sadness thinking how bleak life would be for a gay child to live in such places.

Watching Raise the Red Lantern broght back the old sad feelings, even though it involves only straight people..

STOP

Less Than Zero

"We Need to Talk About Kevin" and "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" come to mind first.

"House of Sand and Fog" was heartbreaking, but not depressing.

"We Need To Talk About Kevin" was frustrating, but not depressing.

True story-my ex had taken a trip to Chicago so I was stuck watching movies all day on a rainy Saturday-first I watched that film where Molly Ringwald kills herself and then I threw in RFaD, which I had never seen before. It was a good thing my partner wasn't home, because after those two I was absolutely inconsolable. I cried all the way to the Chinese restaurant where I picked up my favorite orange scallops. When I think that Julie Roberts tits won the Oscar for over Ellen Burstyn's shattering performance, my blood boils. Dancer in the Dark annoyed the hell out of me because it after awhile it just seemed like she was asking for it.

At Close Range with Sean Penn and Christopher Walken. Sad.

Terms of Endearment wrecked me.

R41 Hate to disagree with you. The Hours is a movie about depression, but if you stay with it to the end and really understand what it's saying, it's just the opposite. I hated it first time I saw it, now it's one of my all-time favorites. It can take awhile for it to sink in. Watch it again and play close attention to Meryl's last scene. Her last line ^^SPOILER ALERT@@

"I choose life"... and then she embraces it. Nicole's descent into the water now takes on a whole new meaning from when it was first played in the beginning.

Another vote for House of Sand and Fog

The Baby Dance starring Stockard Channing and Laura Dern

R54 Ever hear of the movie Hachi? It makes Marley and Me look like a Mel Brooks movie.

According to Google,the top five depressing minors are: Revolutionary Road Melancholia American Beauty The Hours The Virgin Suicides

R90, I have not heard of it , and if worse than Marley and Me, thanks but no thanks

*Movies* not minors!

Grease, I hated when Rizzo got Frenchie to punch her in the gut and abort the baby.

"Death Ride to Osaka" aka "Girls of the White Orchid" starring Jennifer Jason Leigh as the slut.

On the Beach--post-nuclear and everybody's waiting to die.

A Place in the Sun

Make Way for Tomorrow--old couple shunted around.

"Starring Jennifer Jason Leigh as The Slut." and "Introducing Jennifer Jason Leigh as The Slut."

Wendy and Lucy takes the cake for me. So very simple; so utterly devastating.

In Dancer and Wrestler the protagonists are moving towards something relevant to them and in some sense both of them make decisions that cause them to achieve something by the end of the film that has meaning to them. For Selma, it's her child that has meaning for her. For Randy, it's something that is in some ways similar to what Nina achieves in Black Swan.

For me Grave of the Fireflies is more depressing than those because the main characters don't achieve anything at all. Pure despair

My worst moment working in a bookstore was when a child came to the cashier to buy the dvd with his Christmas vouchers. He was with his mother and I said to her "Do you know what this film is? This is not a good film for his age." She made is clear that she had no clue what the film is, and that she was not interested in my advice. Stupid fucking bitch

Ordinary People - I watched this weeper as a young teen on early cable. I wasn't quite ready for the "heaviness" of the movie, and the very adult subject matter. The death of the son stayed in my head for a while.

The Omen (original), sooooo grim.

Sounder and Old Yeller

The death of an adorable pooch can really bring on the water works.

Bambi and Charlotte's Web had me on children's Prozac. Zoloft proved to be more effective for 6 year-old me, with a Wellbutrin chaser.

Indignation.

Can't stop thinking about it.

The Piano Teacher. It had all the D's, depraved, desperate, and depressing.

The Road w/ Viggo Mortensen was a total downer for me.

American Beauty wasn't all that depressing was it? I remember really enjoying it. At the time I thought it was very well done. I don't remember being particularly upset by it.

I agree with many of the movies already mentioned here.

I watched Dancer in the Dark in the theater with friends, and honestly at some point we were just hoping for the movie to end because it became a parody to us. I find all his movies empty.

Stand by Me made me sad as a kid when I watched it, because even back then I knew what the voice over was saying was true. Life is full of loss and sadness and you are lucky if you can find a friend for a few years.

Op's choice is spot on and Brokeback Mountain.

I second the mention of Haneke's The Piano Teacher, with Isabelle Huppert. The character's masochism and self-loathing (cutting herself, wanting to be raped etc.) make it a very harrowing and uncomfortable watch.

Last Exit to Brooklyn is also very depressing, especially the scene where Jennifer Jason Leigh goes on a drinking binge and invites all the men in the bar to gang-rape her. In general, films with sexual violence or degradation can be really difficult to sit through.

There's also this Romanian abortion movie, 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days (or something similar?). My God, I wanted to jump off a bridge leaving the theater after that one.

R17, do you know why Martha is Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

I just read shmoop.com and am disappointed they don't mention this theory I have about Who's Afraid of VW?

We know George and Martha have their parenting issues. Ironically named for the parents of our country, who had no male children. But what of Nick and Honey? We're told that she had a hysterical pregnancy, which lead to their marriage. My theory is that it wasn't hysterical at all (how plausible is that, really?) Honey was actually pregnant. She got scared and had an abortion. It's the mirror image to George and Martha's child.

Of course, abortion could never be explicitly mentioned in a play in that era. Besides, keeping it unclear is part of the fun.

George and Martha have an imaginary child who they pretend is real, and George pretends to kill. Nick and Honey have a real child that they pretend is imaginary, and whom she kills. Literature likes rhyming storylines. Honestly, I think I'm brilliant for this theory alone.

Some theories:

1) The title is a pun on the song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?" from Walt Disney's Three Little Pigs (1933), substituting the name of the celebrated English author Virginia Woolf. Martha and George repeatedly sing this version of the song throughout the play.

2)Also, Woolf, like Albee, was a product of the upper class. Her work often criticized and peeled back the layers of pretension that masked her social peers. The fact that Woolf was all about truth and layer peeling, leads some to think that Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is just another way of asking, "Who's afraid to live without illusion?" Albee confirmed this in a Paris Review interview in which he said, "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf mean who's afraid of the big bad wolf…who's afraid of living without false illusions"

3) She was read "Little Miss Riding Hood" at much too young an age

Crimes and Misdemeanors is highly depressing, until the last scene when you get a small glimmer of hope.

River's Edge about a teen who kills a girl and all his apathetic friends who could care less. A good performance by Keanu Reeves and he looks gorgeous.

Looking for Mr Goodbar. That strobe light flashing on Diane's lifeless face still haunts me.

Two good mentions, R113.

River's Edge is powerful stuff.

Thank-you, R112.

I read that Virginia Woolf wrote a story about a family of rabbits who were held together by illusion. Once their illusions were revealed to be just that, their rabbit family fell apart. I have not confirmed that she did write about the rabbits; however, any family held together by illusion may well fall apart without it. Martha might be afraid of Virginia W. if she were a rabbit or rabbit-adjacent.

Just saw Lion and it was very good but sad. Cried at end.

^^Forgot to say why Lion is sad-third world problems! Families separated. Little kids in turmoil.

unlike first world countries where intact families are sacrosanct

I HATE the expression "first world problems". I like R119 and R120, but the expression is over-used. Like "white people's problems" or "Rich people's problems", it's still a problem to be solved. A person is still vexed! It's not like the second swimming pool is underfilled, or the private jet isn't available that day.

[italic]Umberto D[/italic] is just brutal. That movie needs a warning label: 'MAY CAUSE SUICIDAL IDEATION'

Awakenings

120 posts on depressing cinema, and no mention of the devastating Russian masterpiece "Come and See"?

On The Beach...both versions.

[quote]SHAME with Fassbender

I've watched that film quite a few time. Depressing yes, but Fassbender is so sexy in that movie.

[quote]My worst moment working in a bookstore was when a child came to the cashier to buy the dvd with his Christmas vouchers. He was with his mother and I said to her "Do you know what this film is? This is not a good film for his age." She made is clear that she had no clue what the film is, and that she was not interested in my advice. Stupid fucking bitch

Rather arrogant and presumptuous of you, and calling her what you did was completely unnecessary. She may have thought the same of you.

Brokeback Mountain.

Moonlight...though, I don't think it deserved best picture. The academy didn't want to piss off the black community.

[quote]My worst moment working in a bookstore was when a child came to the cashier to buy the dvd with his Christmas vouchers. He was with his mother and I said to her "Do you know what this film is? This is not a good film for his age." She made is clear that she had no clue what the film is, and that she was not interested in my advice. Stupid fucking bitch

Omg, sounds like a bad mother.

"Plenty" starring Meryl Streep. Couldn't make head nor tale of it. Depressing, boring, and a waste of time to watch.

"Moonlight...though, I don't think it deserved best picture. The academy didn't want to piss off the black community."

if the Academy had only been interested in "not pissing off the black community" they would have given it to "hidden figures" a popular mainstream "feel good" choice.

Moonlight deserved the award, and the ending, though inconclusive, was not depressing

Here's a real outlier but well acted and incredibly sad -- Radio Flyer. Elijah Wood (of all people) is all of 8 years old in this and acts rings around the adults. But - very sad subject matter, child abuse and suggestion of suicide.

Wit. Absolutely devastating.

R127, your point, other than the one on your head? You just had to get that little dig in about its Best Picture Oscar win and how it was gifted so as to not piss off the black community? White people lie you are VD in human form.

Thanks for all these movie titles... adding em to my list to see

Mystic River - Sean Penn and Tim Robbins delivered some very fine performances.

The Ice Storm - Melancholia and dysfunction in suburbia. Reminded me of American Beauty.

Muriel's Wedding

A Home At The End of the World

Another vote for The House of Sand and Fog - made me want a put a dry cleaning bag over my head and end it all

Leaving Las Vegas

Million Dollar Baby. What other purpose did the film have but to depress? I went to see it with my mother and the whole theater was collectively miserable. Oh My Cushmala.

The Road with Viggo Mortensen

Any film with Adam Sandler

Threads, Day After Tomorrow and Testament

DL Threads

Black Swan wasn't depressing, just manipulative and stupid. Seeing it taken so seriously depressed me, though. Mystic River is maybe Sean Penn's worst performance. Hated that movie, too. Breaking The Waves and Leaving Las Vegas remain the two bleakest movies I've ever seen -- truly disheartening.

Mask (Rocky Dennis): "These things are good: ice cream and cake, a ride on a Harley, seeing monkeys in the trees, the rain on my tongue, and the sun shining on my face. These things are a drag: dust in my hair, holes in my shoes, no money in my pocket, and the sun shining on my face."

"The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearn" starring Maggie ("it's only me") Smith.

The Graduate. I think one of the greatest movies of all time. And considered a comedy when it came out. The ending appears to be happy, but it's actually quite bleak.

R247 Featuring one of the greatest Actress performances that wasn't nominated. its definitely among Maggie Smith's top three performances. Bob Hoskins was also amazing.

Charly (based on the short story Flowers for Algernon); The Elephant Man

Arlington Road is pretty depressing too

Love Story

She dies and the acting was bad

her dying was a happy ending for that saccharine claptrap

Have you read the book, R1? Not a depressing read by any means - bleak, grotesque & at points sickening, but not depressing. It's too lurid.

Terry Gilliam's "Brazil"... I could watch it only once.

Passion of the Christ

R50 THE DEER HUNTER depressed me only with its length. It literally never ends.

Japanese directors like inescapable despair. There's often a trapped & defeated lead character in Japanese dramas, especially in movies like AKIRA, BIG BANG LOVE (or anything by Miike), or that one Jolie worked on about the sadistic General during WWII (whose name escapes me.

THE THIN RED LINE won't lift your spirits, any, but it will draw you in and make you wonder.

Oh my God, r120, could you be obtuse? You really just don't get the sentiment behind that meme, do you? Check your privilege, dear.

"About Schmidt". The final scene made me want to get a rope and hang myself.

Gaspar Noe's "I Stand Alone"--mesmerizing story in which being a horse-meat butcher was the high point of the protagonist's existence

R148 needs to reacquaint herself with the meaning of the word "depressing."

Realizing that life is life and plastic is plastic and fun doesn't last forever is neither depressing nor bleak in "The Graduate." The last scene is precisely when the graduation (to adult life, with all its challenges) begins.

Or does adulthood scare some people?

House of Sand And Fog made me cry.

Raise the Red Lantern, it has been so long since I have seen it, I remember it.

"Joe the King," Frank Whaley's tale based on his abusive childhood... a gem that deserves more attention

TV western THE JACK BULL. The idealistic protagonist is hanged at the end, and almost every character calls it justice including the hero himself.

THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD runs a similar emotional Arc, but with artistic aspirations.

"Midnight Express" (1978) Equally depressing was the actual life of the star, Brad Davis.

[quote] R159: Oh my God, [R120], could you be obtuse? You really just don't get the sentiment behind that meme, (aka "Luxury Problems"), do you? Check your privilege, dear.

The sentiment behind the meme seems to be to discount someone else's problems because the speaker (or writer) has judged them to not be significant. I've heard it used many times and it's always a passive-aggressive judgement and attack on somebody else. I hate that.

I do "get it" when it's intended to mean something like "although this 'something' bothers me, it isn't polio, or a child's death, or something else so disastrous. I am fortunate that no one's dying, I have a good job, etc." It's best left to a person to express about themselves, should they choose to do so. It's an awful thing to say to someone else who is bothered by a problem.

I think Muriel is short of "Marys" for the month of April as this thread seems to be made expressly to generate them.

Mary! (Generic Mary for everybody.)

Grave of Fireflies

"In the Company of Men", 1997. I just remember leaving the theatre after the end and being bothered by it,

Dancer In The Dark, Testament, and Dancer In The Fucking DARK!

Another vote for Breaking the Waves. Think we have a winner with von Trier.

Let me add Central Station to my list!

Brokeback Mountain. The conclusion was devastating to me, as I understood the characters very, very well.

First, with Heath Ledger visiting JG's parents' home, and finding the grey, unforgiving coldness that drove JG to run off, becoming somewhat reckless with his affection and sexual pursuit.

Following that: the scene, Ledger's daughter visiting his trailer to announce her wedding, then leaving her father alone, at which point he silently ponders the loss and emptiness of his own life, never having had the option of allowing himself to fall completely in love or to marry the one person he came the closest to. The shirt and the unbearable solitude.

Ang Lee ripped me heart apart there.

Manhattan. The thought of people living like that is absolutely morbid. Nothing but the most strident demands for flattery of a particular lifestyle. The crtiical raves made it all the worse.

Spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't seen On the Beach.

There is a creeping sense of doom throughout the film, and it's fulfilled with flourish in the end.

Ava Gardner left alone on the Australian beach to await her solitary death by radiation poisoning, while Gregory Peck sails back to America to die at home. This, after Fred Astaire commits suicide in a beloved race car and Tony Perkins poisons his wife, baby, and then himself to avoid the agony of a prolonged death.

I agree with a lot of the other nuclear war options listed upthread, but this one knocked me out.

OTB was indeed depressing, but it was a damn good movie. I liked it when Ava arrived in Australia and commented, "I'm making a movie about the end of the world, and this sure is the place for it."

"Torch Song Trilogy" and "Imitation of Life"

Bullhead, with Matthias Schoenaerts. Deeply disturbing and bleak.

This is a preamble from a trailer for "Testament." It's chilling:

Imagine a day like any other.

The children are fighting, the refrigerator is humming.

Highways are jammed, playgrounds are filled.

Everything is perfectly normal... for the very last time.

My sympathy for the Brokeback duo is slightly lessened by the hunting scene. That these two,who are themselves the "prey" of society, derive pleasure in killing seems paradoxical. Would they have been Trumpeters?

Black Beauty.

Crushing, absolutely crushing.

And yet another vote for House of Fog and Sand.

Anyone got any Quualudes?

Ingmar Bergman's CRIES AND WHISPERS

Kubrick's PATHS OF GLORY

Breaking The Waves.

The Sweet Hereafter.

The Children's Hour.

Requiem For A Dream.

Barfly.

This Property Is Condemned.

Etc.

I take it most of you have never seen Still Alice? I'm surprised it hasn't been mentioned. I give two more votes for Brokeback Mountain and Melancholia.

Safe. (Todd Haynes)

Babette's Feast.

Should've added, all great films I've seen several times.

Safe

Awakenings

Requiem

House of Sand and Fog

The Zabruder film

Precious.

[quote]My worst moment working in a bookstore was when a child came to the cashier to buy the dvd with his Christmas vouchers. He was with his mother and I said to her "Do you know what this film is? This is not a good film for his age." She made is clear that she had no clue what the film is, and that she was not interested in my advice. Stupid fucking bitch

Who the fuck did you think you were--the fucking Ethics Police?

I hope she went to your manager and got you fired... PEON.

A River Runs Through It.

Happiness.

I never would have seen this film if I had not read recommendations here on DL. And while it is indeed, an incredible film, it has haunted me ever since.

"Affliction" starring Nick Nolte, James Coeburn, Sissy Spacek and Willem DaFoe. It was based on a novel by Russell Banks. One of the most depressing books I ever read, but very good.

THE SUNSET LIMITED, TV movie of the play by Cormac McCarthy. Here's a taste of Tommy Lee Jones in his pithy darkness.

Shawdowlands

Waterloo Bridge

The Tribe - 2014. It's entirely in Ukrainian sign language, no subtitles, but there are scenes so uncomfortable and horrifying that you don't need to rely any language to experience it.

[italic]Cries and Whispers[/italic] is not only depressing as hell-- it's also a terrifying horror movie! The first time I saw it I was speechless at how totally fucked up it is. Bergman was a towering genius but something of a sadist.

I thought Cries and Whispers was spiritual. I didn't think it was terrifying at all.

The Trip to Bountiful depressed the hell out of me. I thought Page was BRILLIANT in it.

For depressing Bergman:

The Silence

R139 Another vote for Leaving Las Vegas. Elizabeth Shue played a prostitute who was regularly beaten and gang raped. She takes up with Nicolas Cages' character who has lost everything due to alcoholism, and winds up dying. Horrible downer of a movie.

The scene with the dead sister freaked me out. And Ingrid Thulin with the glass shards...

I consider Geraldine Page the greatest actress in the English language! In case you forgot.

read recently that no director has done a real deathbed scene since bergman in c&w

r209, DL begs to differ.

My Life as a Dog

Threads the post nuclear apocalypse miseryfest

AI had me crying like a baby.

Second vote for The Ice Storm. The characters had no redeeming qualities, a kid died, and it just left me feeling cold all over and hopeless for mankind.

"This Property Is Condemned" got bad reviews but I always liked that movie. It was based on a one act play by Tennessee Williams. A young boy playing hooky from school in order to fly his kite comes upon a bedraggled (she's dressed in her dead older sister's old clothes) doing a balancing act on the deserted railroad tracks. Her sister (a prostitute who had "a wonderful popularity" with the railroad men) is dead, her parents have abandoned her and she exists in what remains of their boarding house, a decrepit structure that has a sign on it that says "this property is condemned." She eats out of garbage cans and scratches out an existence by following in her sister's footsteps: "I inherited all her beaus." She seems to have no awareness of her pitiable situation and cheerfully tells the boy that she'll probably die of "lung affection" like her sister and then somebody else "will inherit all my beaus!" I thought the movie did a good job of fleshing out the story and it had quite a cast: Robert Redford, Natalie Wood, Kate Reid, Mary Badham, Charles Bronson, Robert Blake, Dabney Coleman. It was directed by Sydney Pollack, produced by John Houseman and Ray Stark, and one of the script writers was Francis Ford Coppola. Like I said, the movie didn't get good reviews but I always thought it was very underrated.

r209, it's a quote from the New Yorker's review last week of the new Emily Dickinson biopic:

"(It’s amazing how the deathbed scene, a staple of fiction and painting in Dickinson’s era, has all but vanished from cinema, the last great gasp being Bergman’s “Cries and Whispers,” in 1972."

I went back and looked at the old DL thread, A lot of the examples are from TV crap, not real cinema, or from movies that predated bergman's, or are not examples of deathBED scenes, but rather of people being shot or blowup or offed in ways other than dying from illness in their own beds. Still think it's a valid observation

Angel Face

1954 noir that is bleak and brilliant

Blind Chance.

Because we're all doomed.

Midnight Cowboy, just about every dreary moment up to and including when they reach their bleak destination

Funny Games, the disturbing and deadening original German version, all too convincing about sadistic criminal mentality

The Christmas That Almost Wasn't, enough to drive children to suicide

REQUIEM FOR A DREAM LOOKING FOR MR. GOODBAR THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON'T THEY DOGVILLE MYSTERIOUS SKIN MIDNIGHT COWBOY Most of the brilliant BLACK MIRROR episodes which play like short films. With the WHITE BEAR episode being the most disturbing and devastating of them all. And of anything I've ever seen really. And all these films I think are brilliant-btw. But wow. They knock you down.

R217 have you seen the other seasons of Black Mirror not just the first?

R217 yessss. Holy shit. That White Bear episode is so disturbing and haunting. I felt physically ill afterwards.

There is something radically wrong with gay datalounge when "Most Depressing Movie" turns out to be the most popular thread on the current list.

R218 yes--i've watched BLACK MIRROR episodes from all 3 seasons. i have watched them in random order. i am glad i started with season 3 episode 1 NOSEDIVE. i think if i'd started with the first one THE NATIONAL ANTHEM or WHITE BEAR i might not have kept going with the series just because those 2 episodes particularly are so intense and so dark. i still have a couple yet to watch. i take my time with them. again, so intense and so dark. though every single episode i've watched, which is most of them now, have all knocked me out. i've thought about each one for days. they always go somewhere completely opposite of where i thought we were heading or from what the set-up seems. and they all make me feel BIG feelings. good/bad/scary/amazed/dread/hope--the SAN JUNIPERO episode being the hopeful one. it is amazing to me that charlie brooker who created, writes most of the scripts, and runs the series wrote both SAN JUNIPERO and WHITE BEAR. they could not be more opposite in every possible way. and both are equally stunning. one is one of the most horrifying things i've ever watched. the other is one of the most moving and beautiful things i've ever watched. amazing. he is so brilliant. and wow BLACK MIRROR is too.

What Dreams May Come made me throw up and want to slit my wrists. Not just depressing but also oppressive. That Annabella actress was SO annoying. Given what happened several years later, did Robin Williams write this?

I STILL don't know why Cuba Gooding, Jr was even in this atrocity.

Agree with you, [R212] that "This Property Is Condemned" is both underrated as a film *and* very depressing. I think it was very well done though and--for me--contains Natalie Wood's best performance.

Apparently Natalie had to get *actually* drunk during the scene where her character finally drunkenly confronts her mother for exploiting her as a prositute for financial gain since she was a young girl; the scene was apparently too emotional for Wood and hit too close to home.

Natalie also attempted suicide during the filming of the movie.

Glad a few others here mentioned Gregg Araki's excellent Mysterious Skin. That film is very honest, affecting and beautifully acted and crafted all round, but it's also one of the most disturbing and heartbreaking portraits of the effects of child abuse (not just the moment where everything changes, but the lifelong psychic damage) I've ever seen.

Oooh yeah, [R224], so true. I don't even like to think about that movie. I had a difficult time sleeping after watching "Mysterious Skin" for the first time (and then I've never watched it again). It was very well made.

*Excellent* performance from JGL; soooo depressing and hopeless as a film though.

R182 bear in mind that both Jack & Ennis were working-class country boys of the 1960s/70s, a farmboy & ranch-stiff respectively. Hunting & shooting would have been a natural part of their lives & upbringing. Not everyone has a sanitised existence where killing to eat or to protect oneself doesn't figure.

The inclusion of the pair shooting game in the movie was also a deliberate cinematic choice by Lee, not to foreshadow Jack's death but to underscore the difference between what is natural & unnatural. In Lee's eyes and indeed in Proulx's, it is natural to hunt & eat meat; to drink from streams; to love & find pleasure with whoever you are compelled to, while it is unnatural to murder out of hatred or societal shame.

Not really R220. We each have an opinion, rarely agreeing.

What Dreams May Come was based on story by science fiction and horror writer Richard Matheson, whose work also inspired I Am Legend, The Incredible Shrinking Man, and Stir Of Echoes.

I'd forgotten how heartbreaking Mysterious Skin is, though I found the ending held a little bit of hope. I didn't find either Babette's Feast or A River Runs Through It especially bleak, though each has a bittersweet ending.

I loved American Heart as a kid but watching that movie as an adult was just too depressing.

Nocturnal Animals. The soundtrack and Jake G.'s sad puppy dog eyes had me shook for days after seeing it. I loved that movie, but don't know if I can watch it again.

Kill List. Completely disturbing, and stays with you for a very long time.

R182 excellent summation. and completely right on. it was brilliant of both proulx and lee to underscore these ideas in this way. more and more, even with professional reviewers, it seems people aren't able to make the leap up to the story/culture/characters/world/time etc. and insist on bringing the piece down to their own take on things. and what behavior they deem correct, believable, appropriate or true. i see and read this constantly. to me one of the joys and challenges of art is that it allows and makes me look at other ways of life. other choices. other ideas. and examine things that often are in complete opposition to what i would do or what i believe in my life right now. and learn something. maybe change an idea or alter it a bit. maybe not. but with an understanding that this is part of the equation. audiences do this less and less now. they base the entire experience on themselves. and reduce it as a result. too bad.

eek, sorry R182 i meant R226. my way bad. sorry again.

Interiors

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me

Au Hasard Balthasar

I watched Melancholia today based on recommendations in this thread. It left me, well, meloncholic, not particularly depressed, I got impatient at the opening sequence of images, which were beautiful, but of course did not make sense until the movie ended. Von Trier really set a mood that lingers. Kirsten Dunst was perfect, maybe because she has a history of depression herself and could relate well with her character. That wedding scene was something else.

Still Alice was depressing, gloomy, and honestly a horrible film. It was a Lifetime movie. I barely made it through.

Omg.

Wender's WINGS OF DESIRE (1987). It feels about 40 years older than it is, and it is very difficult to watch more than once. Hard to tell if it's more tiring or distressing. Certainly it's disjointed, quiet and desolate, as well as hard to recall....but hard to forget. A strange downer of a film.

Still Alice was treacly bullshit. Agree with the poster who said it was nothing more than a Lifetime movie. But a cheque is a cheque and Julianne Moore has bills to pay, as do we all.

French Catholic-school movie LES AMITIES PARTICULIERES (eng: THIS SPECIAL FRIENDSHIP) is gloomy & horrifying from a gay perspective.

[quote] Francis Lacombrade stars as the young Comte Georges de Sarre, student at a post-war French boarding school run by priests. Didier Haudepin is the younger Alexandre, another student with whom Georges develops a romantic friendship, hence the title of the movie. The two boys develop their feelings and grow closer in spite of the heavy discipline & scorn of the Fathers. There is no carnal element about the relationship, just a few chaste kisses and innocent notes & poems (with Georges describing Alexandre as his "bijoux" in one), and there is a touching scene in the movie with the two boys hidden in a haystack lying beside each other to share a stolen cigarette. All the same, the boys are punished as if they are sexual transgressors and somehow defective. Not to give away the ending, but tragedy befalls the two boys.

Re. Brokebck

"Hunting and shooting would be a natural part of their lives." Certainly it's true that they would have grown up hunting, and that it would be an accepted part of their lives. I'm not sure that the word "natural"applies, however. They probably did not rely at that point on hunting for sustanence, in the way that Amerinds would have. So it becomes recreational killing, something outdated. And wouldn't the homophobia that surrounded them when they grew up also arise from some outdated "Biblical" ideas about what a real man should be and do? I acknowledge my own anti-hunting stance and vegetarianism may come into play here, but still think the men's jubilation upon shooting the buck (as I recall) detracts from the idyllic tone of the sequence. It's possible that Lee meant this as an ironic touch --the "hunted" as hunters--but I doubt it.

I am ambivalent about the sadness of Brokeback - while there's obviously very tough issues involved, many people go their whole lives without loving and being loved, like Jack and Ennis, even if they are thwarted. I got annoyed with a lot of reviews about Manchester by the Sea being depressing. I found it incredibly moving and memorable, but there was comedy and a sense that very slightly better things might be ahead for Lee. The Mist is not an all time classic but I was gutted by the ending.

well if your past is negligently incinerating your kids and watching your bro die, i guess there may be "slightly better things" in the future

Days of Heaven while stunning was VERY depressing. A Clockwork Orange is another prime example. I honestly had to watch that one in half hour increments!

....

I've always avoided "A Clockwork Orange", [R244] (though I *know*/understand that it's an "all time classic") because everything I've read about it sounds like it will be a traumatizing experience.

And haven't a lot of modern critics noted that despite the high quality of filmmaking present, that it essentially glamorizes rape and violence?

TERMINATOR III: RISE OF THE MACHINES. Technophobes, don't watch it. The final 10 minutes is meant to be a message of hope that speaks to human resiliency, but is still enough to drive you to despair.

And Nick Stahl, man. He just never gets uplifting roles, does he?

I meant in terms of his emotional life and potential partial recovery R143, not external events.

Speaking of Nick Stahl, In the Bedroom is another VERY depressing film. The whole experience gave me the hives. I did not like ONE character in this film for one second.

IN THE BEDROOM was indeed a disturbing and saddening film; the short story it's based on is the same. You really felt for the parents.

Frank (Stahl) was fairly sympathetic as far as he appeared, though, wasn't he? He was just a sweet hardworking kid who fell in love badly, is all.

Gus Van Sant's GERRY (2002), aka that one where Casey Affleck & Matt Damon wander around the desert for literal hours, in real time, until one of them dies.

There's no plot, barely any dialogue (legend has it the original script draft fit on a napkin), and the score doesn't come in much either (by Arvo Part, for those that means anything to).

Nothing with Matt and Casey in it can be totally depressing R251.

"Frank (Stahl) was fairly sympathetic as far as he appeared, though, wasn't he? He was just a sweet hardworking kid who fell in love badly, is all.'

I didn't find him very sympathetic. He was fucking a married woman; that's never a good idea.

It's been a long time since I saw "in The Bedroom." I'd heard it was supposedly to be good, but I found it underwhelming. I just didn't see why it was considered such a big deal.

Playing For Time, an Auschwitz drama (made for TV) starring Vanessa Redgrave, Jane Alexander, and DL fave Melanie Mayron. Bleak and depressing from beginning to end.

for existential dread, the italians can't be beat, bertolucci with "the sheltering sky" and antonioni with " the passenger"

The Sheltering Sky just made me impatient -- I didn't find it bleak, so much as meandering, pointless and dreary.

The Misfits is kind of depressing.

Has anyone mentioned 'Remains of the Day' yet?

R247 the most depressing Stahl movie is TWIST. It's just so miserable, with everything starting out bad and then getting as worse as most imagination permits. There is not a single uplifting scene in the whole film, just relentless sorrow.

Midnight Cowboy

Triumph of The Spirit. Ugh

Million dollar baby. As GREAT as it was, it was so depressing.

Clint's film before Baby was also quite depressing. Even before the act, Mystic River was dark and joyless. The flashback scenes in particular made my skin crawl. The ending was probably THE MOST depressing EVER. Dave NEVER stood a chance in life. EVER.

Alice (2005) directed by Marco Martins

Amazing film one of my all time favourites. Highly recommend!

Breaking the Waves

Requiem for a Dream

MEAN CREEK (2004) is desolate. Any movie about vindictive kids who all hate each other is a tough watch, but oy.

Pretty much all of Larry Clark's stuff--Kids, Bully, Wassup Rockers...he has a knack for depressing.

The Brazilian film Pixote

Leaving Las Vegas. Nic Cage was perfect in playing a guy who had completely given up and chose to die in such a slow horrible way by drinking himself to death. You wonder why he didn't just shoot himself. Elisabeth Shue, heartbreaking in her devotion to him and acceptance in his wishes to kill himself.

The Elephant Man

Breaking the Waves

Melancholia

Philadelphia

The Deer Hunter

Brokeback Mountain

I'm not even sure Leaving Las Vegas should have been made into a movie. The book feels more like a two-hundred-page suicide note than a novel.

Hard to believe no-one has nominated the tearjerker of the year LOGAN yet. Did none of y'all see it?

House of Sand & Fog. Jesus christ that was depressing.I will never watch it again.

Then there was the movie with Meryl Streep and Liam Neeson and Edward Furlong. "Before and After." Could never watch that again either.

Haneke is kinda sadistic.

Any Adam Sandler movie. Pick one.

"Amour" was strong stuff. Emanuelle Riva should have won the Oscar°, rather than meh Jennifer Lawrence.

Synecdoche, New York

I think this is the closest I have ever seen to what an actual dream (or nightmare) looks like on film and man is it the most depressing film I have ever experienced.

Mary and Max

Dancer in the dark, the deer hunter, the wrestler, the green mile, the snowman ( animated short, 80's Christmas classic)

Woman in the Sand Dune:

Speaking of Emmanuelle Riva:

A Soldier's Story - the doomed lovers theme is always a downer. Brokeback Mountain OWNS this theme, like Romeo and Juliet.

The Sixth Sense - the gloomy, atmospheric setting lets you know, this isn't an uplifting tale that ends happily ever after for all the characters.

Frailty

The Dead Zone

Howards End was depressing as hell. I didn't even like Vanessa Redgraves character and she was dying! The ending infuriated me to no end.

Avatar is another one. I hope Cameron upped his dosage. Not one sympathetic character. I take that back. There were two but it didn't end well for either one of them. I felt unclean after watching this. Not going to bother with the sequels.

There was some Japanese animated movie years ago, takes place during WWII where a young boy and his sister try to survive, they both starve to death. It was horrific.

Precious, based on the book by Saphire.

Rogue One. Yep I said it. You know what's going to happen in the end. That doesn't make it any less depressing.

I still can't get over they made an entire movie from a throwaway line in Star Wars. That line was depressing as hell as well.

They Shoot Horses, Don't They? Now THAT'S one of the most depressing films EVER.

The pivotal scene with Jane Fonda and Red Buttons was excruciating!

Don't get me wrong. Technically it's a very good film. But it made me feel sick to my stomach just thinking about it.

Million Dollar Baby

[quote]There was some Japanese animated movie years ago, takes place during WWII where a young boy and his sister try to survive, they both starve to death. It was horrific.

R283 "Grave of the Fireflies". Seems like a few DLers have seen it as it's been cited a couple of times.

"The Third Man" is pretty depressing, in that SPOILER nobody gets what he or she wants. And the postwar setting is so bleak. But it's such a brilliant film that it's also kind of exhilarating.

Engwentro

It's depressing to me cause it's now happening here in Manila everyday.

"Like You Mean It". Only bother with Philipp Karner's autobioflick if you also happen to be a self-serving scumbag.

An uplifting movie can also become depressing to watch if the happy circumstances of the movie fail to come true in reality.

One of the worst is when an actor playing a major character in an uplifting movie dies (can we call it 'The BROKEBACK Problem'?). I'm realising that my favourite feel-good biopic MIRACLE (2004, dir. O'Connor.) is no longer such a heartwarming experience, now that three of the protagonists' actors are dead at a young age and from dire causes (a carwreck, terminal cancer, & apparent suicide). They were all three very vibrant & spirited young men who were acting as vibrant & spirited young men, so it's hard to remember when watching them in action (MIRACLE is a hockey movie) that these three lively boys are now cold in the ground. To add insult to injury the characters those three actors played are luckily still alive, happy & healthy in their 60s/70s with long illustrious careers behind them. It's a gutpunch to think about.

'A bruise on the leg is a hell of a long way from the heart.'....except when it isn't.

Gorillas In The Mist. I lose it every time I see it. She did not get the man or the gorilla.

A bit treacly, but a welcome antidote to the depressing notion (in films and alt-right minds) that being gay will, must and should always be miserable and end badly is "Esteros". See it!

Where can Esteros be streamed?

Shattered with Peter Finch

The Sweet Hereafter with Ian Holm (I swear he's Dominick Dunne's doppelganger)

The Daughter, new I just watched it. Feeling of dread all the way through because I knew something awful was going to happen.

They Shoot Horses Don't They?

Scorsese's Silence. I couldn't sleep for two nights after seeing it. People can be so cruel.

Frances with Jessica Lange

The Children's Hour

The Elephant Man

It's available on Netflix, R295... you can also find it on YouTube, I believe.

This is a great thread. I'm laughing at so many of the responses because I either am familiar with your pain (The Elephant Man, Brokeback, Bully, They Shoot Horses), or I just think to myself, "wow, I need to NEVER see this House Of Sand And Fog movie!"

I've never been depressed by In The Bedroom, Mysterious Skin, or The Piano Teacher, though I love them all.

The Piano Teacher is being released on Criterion later this year. Looking forward to it. I love Isabelle Huppert and the quiet depravity and desperation, to borrow a couple of words from a fellow DLer.

Lilia 4ever

I always thought "The Third Man" was really sad, especially the great ending in the cemetery.

The Road

I didn't see it mentioned, so I'll add 1974's nihilistic "Going Places" (Las Valseuses) with Gerard Depardieu, Patrick Dewaere, Miou-Miou, Jeanne Moreau (her scene is the one that kills me), Brigitte Fossey, and a very young Isabelle Huppert. And 1964's "Seance on a Wet Afternoon" with Kim Stanley and Richard Attenborough.

Chinatown

"Anna and Bella." It's an animated film that won the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film.You can see it on YouTube. Some might disagree, but I found it unbelievably depressing. It made me want to cry.

My pretentious sister claims that "Dancer in the Dark" is her favorite movie. She also likes "Sophie's Choice" and "I Never Sang For My Father". I haven't seen any of them but I am sure they are all serious downers.

I could never get over "Bambi".

Tell us more about your sister, R306! She sounds like a character.

The Yearling. I'm an animal lover too, so I know to avoid movies like Marley and Me and Old Yeller, but my Mom made me watch it years ago, and the ending traumatized me. Thanks, Ma.

Btw, I hate Rooney Mara but Kate Mara is good in Kristin Leavey and the dog doesn't die in the end.

The Revenant. Just one long unremitting misery fest.

The Yearling always makes me think of The Earthling, which is also very depressing and harrowing, at least it was when I was a little kid and watched it on TV with my parents in the mid-80s. Jesus Christ, the camper-over-the-cliff scene. So traumatic to watch that as a boy.

You want depressing? You should read the NOVEL "The Yearling." It's a great book; it won the Pulitzer Prize in 1939. I always thought it was just a kid's story about a boy and his pet deer but it's a lot more than that. It's a story of loneliness, hardship, isolation, violence, death, loss, survival. SPOILERS ahead, so don't read further if you don't want to know just how much of a downer "The Yearling" really is:

At the end of the novel here's how things stand for Jody Baxter, who is, I guess maybe 12 or 13 years old. His only friend his age, the crippled Fodder-WIng, is dead. He and his father's dear friends from down the river, Grandma Hutto and her sailor son Oliver, have moved to Boston along with Oliver's new wife. It seems unlikely they will ever see them again. The Baxter's on-again, off-again relationship with their only neighbors, the rowdy Forresters, appears to be permanently off. Jody's father Penny has injured himself and is unable to work, so Jody has to do all the work on their crops. Jody's pet deer Flag ends up eating most of their corn crop, on which the family depends on to live. This necessitates the killing of Flag; Jody has to do it himself. And Jody knows what it's like to starve when he runs away from home after being forced to kill Flag.

With nowhere else to go he returns home to find his mother off to the Forrester's to trade for more seed corn to try and plant a new crop. Penny is ill and crippled and totally unable to work. Penny gives his "life goes back on you" speech, about how life is always not turning out the way you want it and how you just have to deal with it and move on. Jody accepts this and realizes that his childhood is over. Jody puts his father to bed and then goes to bed himself. The novels ends like this:

He went to his room and closed the door. He took off his tattered shirt and breeches and climbed in under the warm quilts. His bed was soft and yielding. He lay luxuriously stretching his legs. He must be up early in the morning , to milk the cow and bring in wood and work the crops. When he worked them, Flag would no longer be there to play about with him. His father would no longer take the heavy part of the burden. It did not matter, He could manage alone.

He found himself listening for something. It was the sound of the yearling for which he listened, running around the house or stirring on his moss pallet in the corner of his bedroom. He would never hear him again. He wondered if his mother had thrown dirt over Flag's carcass, or if the buzzards had cleaned it. Flag...he did not believe he should ever again love anything, man or woman or his own child, as he had loved the yearling. He would be lonely all his life. But a man took it for his share and went on.

In the beginning of his sleep, he cried out "Flag!"

It was not his own voice that called. It was a boy's voice. Somewhere beyond the sink-hole, past the magnolia, under the live oaks, a boy and a yearling ran side by side, and were gone forever.

r311 has diarrhea.

Will you shut-up, r312? Nobody asked for your opinion.

Seriously went through therapy after watching Bambi. Beautifully shot film, but so emotional when the mother dies.

She DIES?

I've said it before and I'll say it again:

"On The Beach"

Suicide Circle and Audition.

"The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter." A relentlessly depressing movie. Not very good either, except for the performances of Alan Arkin, Sandra Locke and Percy Rodriquez.

Gia

The English Patient. I hate that movie. Some of the movies mentioned above are still good movies. But not this one.

Oh yeah! Fucking 'Gia'. With the skin just falling right off her body when she [SPOILER ALERT!] dies. Yeah right.

Blah. Sometimes it just seems like some filmmakers are trying to be as grim as they can be, just for the sake of being grim. Depression porn, you could call it.

Brimstone....poor Dakota Fanning just can't catch a break in it

ANY movie, disney and otherwise with cruelty to animals is off limits for my sanity and heart. when i go to target to shop I actually put my hand on the side of my face when i have to pass the cat/dog food /toys, ect aisle and say to myself I am not seeing this.....

i still haven't recovered from the death of my last precious boy. never will.

no one mentioned Dumbo, i don't think......thank you for NOT. most of the films mentioned, I 2nd. Also, Philadelphia pretty much sucked the big one.

Revolutionary Road omg

Ordinary People

Gran Torino

GIA was pretty true to life........she really fucked herself up R320

"Precious." That movie is an example of what is called "tragedy porn." I thought it was pretty ludicrous. A morbidly obese illiterate black girl is raped by her father and impregnated by him TWICE. One of the incest babies has Down syndrome. She is also required to "take care" of her mother sexually. The mother is both verbally and physically abusive to her. And to top it all off, she's infected with HIV from the sex with her father. Has anything like that ever really happened? I tend not to think so.

Director: Vittorio DeSica's "Two Women" won the Best Actress Academy Award (as well as 20+ other international awards) for Sophia Loren, but is one of the most depressing films ever made. Another DeSica/Loren project, "Sunflower" (for which Loren won Italy's Donatello Award as Best Actress), is also a wrist slitter.

R311, I'm R308. I had never planned to read the book anyway, but there it was on sale at B&N, so I picked it up, read the exact same paragraphs you quoted, and was traumatized all over again! I still remember that last painful sentence, but I had no idea the rest of the book was brutal too. Thanks for the warning.

When I first saw it I thought that Young Torless was depressing. At the conclusion the victim of sadistic military school bullying is expelled and the bullies get off without being punished. However, when I saw it again years later the victim seemed so annoying and masochistic that I was unmoved by his fate.

Million dollar baby.

Tokyo Story - great film, considered one of the best of all time, but rather depressing ending.

Amour - well done, but so depressing, too

What in the French-fried hell happened to Isabelle Huppert, R299?

Speaking of sad animal cartoons, I was a mess after All Dogs Go to Heaven.

Has anyone mentioned "Old Yeller?" I remember reading the book a long time ago. The poor dog is a selfless saint; to protect his boy owner from further injury (he falls out of a tree while marking wild hogs and gets his calf torn open) he holds the hogs at bay while the boy manages to get away. When theyh go searching for Yeller they find him with his stomach ripped wide open from the hog's tusks. Somehow he manages to survive that, only to risk his life again to keep attacking wolves from mauling the boy's mother and a young girl. The mother tells the boy that the attacking wolves had the "hydrophobia" and after holding them off poor Yeller is now infected too and needs to be destroyed. In the Disney film they lock him in a shed until it's apparent he has the disease, but in the book the boy forces himself to kill him immediately. Of course the ending is supposed to be upbeat (the family gets a new puppy that seems like it might similar to Old Yeller) but I thought the story was one of the most depressing of all time. That noble, loyal dog, maimed and eventually destroyed due to his undying protection of his owners...WAAAAH!

The Sin of Nora Moran

One of the most extraordinary films I've ever seen. I'd also call it one of the most influential because one of the few people to have seen it when it came out was Orson Welles.

Simply as bleak as they come in the haphazardness of tragedy in life and as pointless as birth itself.

Thanks (I think). Never heard of it, and plan to look. Its era reminds me of "Safe in Hell," stunningly grim, by Wild Bill Wellman (1933?). Also notable for presenting black characters with dignity.

They Shoot Horses, Don't They? is finally being released on blu ray in September by Kino Lorber, so you can feel morose all over again in high definition!

Should be a great looking release.

Sorry, here's the page with details about the blu ray release of Horses...

The Invitation, just watched it on Netflix

Definitely, Dancer in the Dark. It was painful to watch. But I liked it. I watched it for the second time a couple months ago, and watched Breaking the waves for the first time after that. It was quite annoying how similar the main characters of the two films were. Still, I liked both.

La Strada

The saddest

Plague Dogs. I think watching it constitutes an act of self harm.

Depressing as "La Strada"s story is, R339, the Broadway musical version had its audiences giggling from start to finish.

I mixed up La Strada with another Fellini's film, La Dolce Vita. Reading this thread and seeing a lot of La Strada's, I kept thinking "the one about the reporter? That ain't sad." I need to check out La Strada asap.

On The Beach...something about that banner hanging in the Melbourne City Square...so so silent because everyone has died from radiation sickness or has committed suicide...and that banner - THERE IS STILL TIME-BROTHER- it really gets me. And when Peter and Mary make the decision to end their lives and the life of their daughter...devastating. Fred Astaire ruined the film for me, though. He was way too old for the part...

Dangerous Liaisons. Any version. This really gives Les Miserables a run for it's money.

Coming Home

All Quiet on the Western Front

The Little Foxes

West Side Story

L.A. Confidential

Gladiator

The ultimate: Valley of the Dolls. While unintentionally hilarious, think about what practically every character goes through. It's enough for you to want to drown yourself. It's the ONLY movie I've ever seen where I want to KILL everyone!

On the Beach: Ava Gardner supposedly said, "I came to the end of the world to make a movie about the end of the world." You can imagine how the Aussies appreciated that.

La Strada has Giuletta Massina and Anthony Quinn. Heartbreaking. You are warned.

What about Cabiria at the end when Massina begs Oscar who she thought loved her to kill her when he takes her life savings completely devastating her? I don't buy the semi-happy ending. It's like the ending of the film of Glass Menagerie where I'm thinking WTF? I realize people like it as in 'what a plucky little survivor she is isn't she?'

That's a comedy compared with La Strada.

Day of Wrath is another madcap comedy.

The Bridge, the documentary that caught people jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge then researched why those people committed suicide.

The Last Bridge, with Maria Schell, is pretty damn sad. War story.

r276, that's so weird to me. A friend of mine had the same reaction you did. I found it to be one of the most inspiring, interesting and fully realized pieces I've ever seen.

I'll add:

Camille Claudel & Camille Claudel, 1915

Blue Valentine

Burnt By The Sun

Down To The Bone

My Life Without Me

Sorry, Haters

The Dreamlife of Angels

The Fire Within

Under The Skin (1997 with Samantha Morton)

Wanda (!!!!) (1970 by Barbara Loden)

We Don't Live Here Anymore

A Quiet Passion. I shouldn't have been surprised that an Emily Dickinson biopic was so dreary; I WAS surprised that it was so critically acclaimed.

The House of Mirth with Gillian Anderson

The Grapes of Wrath. Not that the great Depression was a barrel of laughs.

Separate Tables.

The Fixer.

Looking for Mr. Goodbar.

The Natural.

The Piano.

American Beauty. Sorry I like dark humor but this movie was a bit much.

Boys Don't Cry. Just thinking about that movie gives me nightmares.

Midnight Cowboy

The 400 Blows

The end of Avengers: Age of Ultron left me miserable for an entire weekend, and I don't typically give a fuck about superheroes or mutants dying in any of those superhero-mutant movies.

Of course it's dreadful when any heroic character dies in a gory & wasteful manner on-screen (thinking about Boromir of LOTR turning into an Ork pincushion still gets to me), but when the character in question is a pretty young buck? Who gets zero character development? And whose sacrifice goes unappreciated by every other character? Yeah, miss me with it.

R.I.P. Pietro, it shouldn't have been you.

After seeing the movie edition of The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen on Christmas Eve no less I bawled and slept with all my stuffed animals for three nights straight. I couldn't stop thinking about that poor girl.

In terms of tears produced in adulthood, Brokeback Mountain and Saving Private Ryan win.

Manhattan. Do people REALLY live like that.?

Lean on Pete - no one gets a break in that movie.