DMark , I wish I’d read your post before I saw that movie. I kept wishing everyone in it would die so I could leave. But they didn’t, and I was with several people, so I was stuck.
Moive critic Frank DeCaro once said that veiwing “Requiem for a Dream” would make you want to “rent a HAPPY film…like ‘Taxi Driver.’” He wasn’t kidding. I saw it and realized that of the four main characters, the one who ended up the best-off was the one who lost her mind and ended up in a looney bin (she was so out of it she couldn’t know how truely screwed she was).
Patty
La vita e bella was a wonderful affirming movie. Yes there were sad parts but overall it was fun and touching.
I can’t think of movies that I KNOW are sad and refuse to see, but two movies I don’t want to see again because they were so sad… City of Angels and A Walk To Remember… both of them I needed a box of kleenex to get through though City wasn’t half as bad as Walk… I started crying halfway through the movie when I realized where it was heading and didn’t stop until it was well over with, and I even turned it off when I realized where it was going and tore into the person who wanted to put it on while I was still crying…
I don’t even know what American Beauty is about… I keep hearing about it but no one has ever told me… so I think I shall check out IMDb.
And I don’t recall American History X as being that sad a movie… but then the one time I saw it, it was dawn and I was still really drunk when it ended.
In the never-watch-again category:
Midnight Cowboy
This is the sort of sad movie I really, really resent for being so manipulative. At least movies based somewhat on history have a reason to be sad, but something like this is just trying to jerk your chain.
In the never-will-watch:
The Member of the Wedding
Of Mice and Men
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
A Raisin in the Sun
Some of us may need a reminder about sad, but there are a lot of us who need a reminder about happy still more.
Life is Beautiful is a wonderful movie in my opinion. Unless you have a reason not to watch any movies related to the Holocaust (I’m sure many people do) I would recommend it wholeheartedly. It’s a sad story, but it has a lot of great humor…and the ending is uplifting.
In the Bedroom, I would agree, is a very depressing movie. I don’t even like to think about it…
Another movie that really got me was Deliverance. I couldn’t sleep after that.
Is Requiem for a Dream that bad? My brother has the movie, but I haven’t mustered up the courage to watch it yet.
The most depressing movies are, to me, not the ones where people die. At least their suffering is over. What really makes my heart sink are movies where the main character goes on to lead a sad, lonely, self-destructive, joyless life. It seems so unnecessary.
Many arthousefilms are about themes as depression, alienation, distrust. About people seemingly incapable of happiness.
After watching a movie like that, often for days I find myself thinking of what could be done to relieve their suffering.
As I kid I used to daydream how I would kidnap holocaust victims to 1980 and pamper them. Hot soup, foam baths, and then I would lay them down to sleep under my down duvet next to my favorite teddybear.
To some extent, that’s still my way to cope with depressing movies. Usually, I just want to kidnap the main Weltschmerz-suffererer and have him undergo supportive psychotherapy.
But like **Juanitatech ** said, for me it is best not to go see such movies. Some people find comfort in them. Not me. If I can’t relieve suffering, not even by a donation, or any form of political action, I’d rather not know too much details about it.
No more depressing then 1984. Possibly a bit less, since it’s more a dark comedy then about a nightmare society.
Actually, she was the one I actually had the most sympathy for. The other three characters I didn’t shed a tear for because it seems they brought it on themselves.
That probably seems really evil and callous but it was a dangerous business they got invovled in and they got burned.