Anything directed by Lena Wertmuller, but especially Love And Anarchy.
In all of her films, she painstakingly builds a paradise out of nothing, and it’s funny and fun while it lasts. Then at the end she tears it all into rubble, like Godzilla putting the smackdown on downtown Tokyo.
Maybe it’s a German thing. “Life is futile. Happiness is fleeting. In the end, there is only despair.”
I just finished watching Grave of Fireflies and to be honest, I’m a bit nonplused by the “saddest ever” label it frquently gets. Sure, it was sad, but… there are many movies that are much sadder. It didn’t even make my eyes tear up. <shrugs> I think the first five minutes prepare you far too much for the ending, so it loses the shock value of what happens.
The saddest I’ve seen this year would be Stolen Summer. The saddest I can think of, though, is One True Thing.
I dont know about anyone else but everytime I try and watch
One Hour Photo
I get so depressed I have to turn it off.
Maybe I am scared about turning out alone like that but the scene where he is sitting there and you see the mural for the first time just plain bums me out.
My mother thought that one needed to come with some sort of warning on the box. Something like “CONTAINS SCENES OF AN EXTREMELY DEPRESSING NATURE!” I guess.
Of course, there are plenty of other Chinese films that could give Xiu Xiu some serious competition. Raise the Red Lantern, To Live (several major characters don’t!), The Blue Kite, Yellow Earth…my Chinese film professor closed the semester with Ang Lee’s Eat, Drink, Man, Woman because he said he wanted to end the course on a happier note and there weren’t any movies from the Chinese mainland that weren’t depressing. He said even the comedies contain some sort of “depression relief”.
Yup, that one’s pretty depressing too.
Xiao Xiao happens to be the title of a very famous Chinese short story. This story serves as the basis for the film The Girl from Hunan, which is also fairly depressing. Although compared to some of the movies listed above it’s a regular heartwarmer.
Coming back to the US, I cried the second time I saw Boys Don’t Cry. There are other movies I’ve cried over once, but I think that’s the only one that’s gotten me twice. In fact, it was worse the second time because I knew how horrible the ending was going to be.