Cinemarch Madness: Intro and Nomination Round
Greetings, friends and cinephiles, and welcome to Cinemarch Madness: the TN bracket that crowns the most heartbreaking film of all time.
The idea began years ago, at a bar that doesn’t exist anymore, with a scribbled napkin list Scrapper and Couch Baron and I could never quite recreate, thanks to a discussion about Breaking the Waves and the idea of those movies that you feel lucky to have survived — the beautiful, awful movies you will never ever watch again. The ones that you love but that leave you drenched. “Difficult,” let’s call them.
Over the years it’s gone through various names and interations. “The No Hope Film Festival”; “The NC Double The Dosage”; “Two Movies Enter, The Will To Live Leaves.”
Enough already. It’s time to pick a “winner.” But we need your help.
Right now, I need your nominations — the films you consider the saddest or bleakest of all time, so I can cross-check it against my list and see if I overlooked any obvious entries. Please keep it to five (5) per comment; it’s more digestible that way. (Yes, you can re-comment.)
“I don’t know where to start/what you’re looking for!” Fair enough. I don’t either, that’s why I’m sending it to committee. Hee. Here’s the “I” entries from the list so far, for context:
Ice Storm, The
Illusionist, The
Incendies
Indian Runner, The
In the Company of Men
Irreversible
Challenging subject matter, an ending (or non-ending) that makes you queasy, an utter lack of faith in humanity, unrequited love, ravages of age…when I say it’s a tough watch, I don’t mean stuff like a seventh Transformers sequel that’s just straight-up bad. This may be a pornography/”I know it when I see it” thing, but that’s why we spitball it now, before finalizing the list.
Foreign-language and docu noms both welcome. We may have to do a separate documentary bracket, but I’ll jump off that bridge when I get to it.
Feel free to make your case for a non-obvious nomination in the comments. I didn’t think of Vincent and Theo as that dark, but a friend argued it onto the list; he didn’t think One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was that bleak, but I insisted. I’ve ixnayed and then re-added Casablanca four times.
Once I have a master list, you’ll have a chance to choose the final 64.
Questions? Ask them. Stalking horses? Nominate them. Want a crack at writing up the match-ups? You got it; when the final bracket is set, I’ll definitely need some help. And by all means forward/RT/solicit suggestions from friends and FB. You’ve got ’til the end of the week. Let’s do this.
Tags: Cinemarch Madness Couch Baron movies
The Fox and the Hound. I’ve got little kids now, but they’re not seeing that, because I can’t go through it again.
Heh… the fact that half of those mentioned are in my netflix queue but I can never quite get up to watching them probably says something about me and my repeated viewings of Parks and Recreation…
That said, movies I “enjoyed” but can never watch again:
Hotel Rwanda
Voces Inocentes– had to watch it for a class, and oh, man, it was tough.
The Last Lions– a 2011 documentary, I can’t even talk about it but it contains the single saddest image I’ve ever seen in my entire life not talking about it agh
These have all been mentioned… but I definitely second:
Requiem for a Dream
Leaving Las Vegas
Atonement
The Road (which I was surprised to only see mentioned once so far – that I noticed anyway)
Oh! Also! Radio Flyer! People who think the ending is cheesy, in my opinion, CLEARLY DON’T UNDERSTAND THE ENDING. I don’t want to spoil here, but… gah.
Threads
Nil By Mouth
The War Zone
The Road
Once Were Warriors
I propose “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” – beautifully made, gut-wrenching. Harder to watch than to read about, no doubt.
Almost forgot..
Melancholia. Even the title is depressing.
Grave of the Fireflies.
Some oldies and some seconding/thirding/nth-ing
1. The Passion of Joan of Arc
2. Osama
nth-ing
3. Atonement
4. Brokeback Mountain
aaaaaand
5. Threads
which almost caused me to vomit in fear and sadness.
“What Dreams May Come”
It’s not a *good* movie, but I thought it was gorgeous when I watched it and I don’t know if I’ve ever been such a mess IN a movie theater.
@Sandman I FORGOT ABOUT/REPRESSED THE KITTY EYEPATCH! I just remember the feeding of hamburger. Oh, dude. I’m so going to lose it.
@Emily: what is WRONG with elementary schools?!
These are the sorts of movies I avoid if at all possible but
Gallipoli – required viewing for school
black hawk down – only saw due to having no idea what it was.
1. Biutiful – utterly draining
2. Terms of Endearment -when Debra Winger is saying goodbye to her boys…I cried for three days.
3. Sophie’s Choice
4. In the Bedroom
5. Beautiful Boy
Pom Poko. Japanese movie about these raccoons that are trying to save their forest from being torn down and developed into an office building or something. The ending was just. . .8 years later I’m still mad at my husband for telling me to watch it.
Kids. And, I second Shame.
Nthing a bunch of ones already mentioned (Boys Don’t Cry; Brokeback; oh god The Fox and the Hound) and adding City of God. I literally could not stand up in the theater til well after the closing credits.
Oh! A 1937 film for your list: Make Way for Tomorrow, about an old couple that loses their home and have to live with their adult children. They end up on opposite coasts, and spend their last day in the same city reliving fun times from their youth. I watched this in a film class in college, and of course cried.
Another Year
Mulholland Drive – has that been mentioned? Pretty bleak message about Hollywood and heartbreak.
Crash – perhaps not “heartbreaking” in the traditional sense, but the awards it received sure did inspire a lot of despair in the circles I run in.
Cook County – probably not a movie a lot of people have seen, but it’s really sad and depressing.
The Pianist – another Holocaust movie I didn’t see mentioned (may have been, but there are so many comments I may have missed it).
-Nthing Requiem for a Dream – I literally couldn’t speak for a good hour after watching that movie and though I recognize it as well done work, you could not PAY me to sit through it again.)
-Kids – God, I once dated a guy who LOVED this movie and it’s only now that I realize what a BIG RED FLAG that should’ve been for me.
-There Will be Blood – I don’t know what it is about this movie, but as much as I enjoyed it the first time (or, “enjoyed”, I guess) I cannot bring myself to watch it again. It’s just too intense.
Is it weird if I’m tempted to add “Up” to this list? I mean, once you get past the first 10 or so minutes, it’s just delightful but I’ve attempted to re-watch it a handful of times and have yet to make it through those first 10 minutes, so.
Brazil
Men With Guns
Central Station
Old Yeller
The Day of the Locust with Donald Sutherland (who plays a man named Homer Simpson, go figure!) has one of the bleakest endings I’ve ever seen. Saw it in a film class and burst into tears when the lights came up….
Happiness
Leaving Las Vegas
P.S. Can we do this with books next? I’m already thinking of titles….
Agreed on American History X (watched it with one eye & the other one under a blanket) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Adding 13 Tzameti.
Gallipoli
Silent Running
The Age of Innocence
Unforgiven
I saw Incendies when it was a play in Toronto called Scorched. Dear gods. It felt kinda like being stabbed.
I third (fourth, whatever) Schindler’s List.
Stepmom. I hate that movie, but it’s like a train wreck. If it’s on, I end up watching it and cry through the whole damn thing.
Losing Isaiah. See above.
Life as a House. This is the movie I watch when I need a good cry, but don’t want to cry about my own life.
Gallipoli
Silent Running
The Age of Innocence
Platoon
Apocalypse Now
My Girl is the movie I remember crying about as a kid, but I’m not sure it would have the same effect now. Brokeback Mountain is probably the most recent movie that I cried at.
In terms of movies where the ending just completely smacked me upside the head with unexpectedness, The Night of the Living Dead wins forever.
And for anyone who thinks Children of Men the movie is bleak, try reading the book. For me, the movie at least has moments of hope that show why humanity deserves a chance to survive. The characters in the book are just unrepentantly awful, and by the end I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be rooting for the end of the human race, but I sorta was.
How has nobody mentioned Dancer in the Dark? I almost left the theater. I think a few have been mentioned but anything by Todd Solondz; I actually just closed my eyes and went to sleep in the theater during Happiness cause I couldn’t take it. Finally, I haven’t even seen it but I read the book and I suspect that We need to Talk About Kevin should be on the list.
Several people have mentioned DitD. I know the thread is long and you don’t have to read every post, but a lot of stuff’s been covered.
Bully – the Larry Clark movie, not the more recent documentary. Disturbing.
Brokeback Mountain – I described it to someone once as one of the most heartbreakingly beautiful and sad love stories I’ve ever seen.
The Notebook – I avoided it for years assuming it was schlock. So wrong. I will actually watch it again and again, but it is gut-wrenching (to me) that I may never experience epic love like that.
Thirteen – why I never want to have a daughter.
Buck – the documentary about the guy who many call the real horse whisperer
You asked for older films:
Make Way for Tomorrow (generally recognized as the saddest movie of all time)
Sunrise (magnificent, beautiful sad silent)
City Lights (heartbreaking Chaplin)
Now Voyager (though Bette Davis doesn’t have a brain tumor in it-for that you go to Dark Victory)
And a modern entry that tried to murder me, is the definition of difficult: La Haine (Hate), French movie from mid-90s
And Fox and the Hound can eat a bee, GD that effing movie (in other words, I bawl every time the lady leaves the fox in the woods. I might cry now.)
How did I leave this out!?
THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (1928), it is unbearable in both sadness and intensity. Basically two hours of intense close ups of a woman sobbing. Which is what I did when I watched it in a film class. Oof.
My apologies, I didn’t see that there were newer comments but I’ve read the whole thread now and see some people have mentioned Dancer in Dark already. Also I forgot The Loss of Sexual Innocence. I wandered around in a haze for hours after I saw it, like I’d been drugged or something.
Open Water—didn’t make me cry, but the random, “could happen”-ness is frightening and depressing.
Three about World War II:
Saving Private Ryan
Schindler’s List
The Grey Zone (David Arquette as a Jew forced to work in the crematoria at Auschwitz)
Irreversible
In America (I know – it’s full of hope, but has some really devastating scenes)
I just realized that I might have implied the movie “Osama” to be an older one. Sorry! I substituted it for “City Lights.”
“Osama” was actually filmed in 2003. I haven’t seen it since, b/c: gutting.
Children of Men destroyed me in the theater. We own it but I’ve never rewatched it.
However, Grave of the Fireflies truly does take the prize for most heartbreaking film of all time.
and @ Jen H., I thought “Castaway” similarly depressing, for similar reasons. Except for the whole ending to O.W., which … ow.
All of these movies were considered “kid-appropriate” and all of them messed. me. up. as a pre-teen.
J.T.
Where the Red Fern Grows
Old Yeller
The Yearling (according to my grandmother this movie “has a happy ending” which is a dirty dirty lie)
The Last Unicorn (First time I cried snot bubbles in public: watching this in 3rd grade, when the magician creates the illusion of a group of knights to draw off the bandits, and the one bandit woman is left sobbing, “Take me with you!”)
The Road
The Wrestler
Hoop Dreams
Raging Bull
The Hustler
Definitely agree with these picks:
-Open Water
-District 9
-Blue Valentine
-The Cove
–Constant Gardner, The
–La Haine
–To Live
These have all been mentioned, but:
American History X was the very first one that jumped to my mind (I can still HEAR that curbing scene…and I still remember my friend and I sitting in the car after the movie and we just couldn’t even talk about it, there were just no words)
Dead Poets Society (I saw a Midsummer Night’s Dream several years ago and sobbed through Puck’s monologue at the end because of years of watching DPS)
Fox and the Hound, I agree that just the song makes me cry
Requiem for a Dream
Seconding American History X (speaking of going into a depressive coma after a movie!) and The Iron Giant (bwahhhhhhhh! *sob sob*) and The Fox and the Hound (see The Iron Giant). And also Pan’s Labyrinth — that movie was so good (Doug Jones, OMG!) that I would love to watch it again, but I’m pretty sure I would slit my wrists about five minutes in knowing where it’s going from there.
For my final nominee — shockingly not starting with S — Awakenings. Maybe it doesn’t hold up, because it’s been ages since I’ve seen it, but I’m not going to watch it again to find out because OH MY GOD.
Wow, I missed pages of comments! Children of Men is another “I’d love to watch it but I can’t handle the bleakness.”
Also, Boys Don’t Cry! Yes! And I say this never even having SEEN it; I’ve just been assured by multiple people that I should never subject myself to that film.
The Talented Mr. Ripley is probably another one worth nominating if I hadn’t used up my 5 slots — though I actually got so depressed watching it I made my husband look it up on Wikipedia to see if it had a happy ending and then turned it off when he confessed it didn’t. And I never quit movies halfway through. It was that torturous.
I’ve been sitting here reading the thread and muttering “Oh, GOD, not Trip to Bountiful…oh, SHIT, I forgot about J.T.!” and now I need a drink. Fighting about lima beans and Thin Mints was one thing…
I’m nthing House of Sand and Fog because one scene made a snot bubble come out of my nose, which seemed to be a pinnacle of bawling achievement.
And the French film Ponette, about how a four-year-old processes the death of her mother. I cannot even imagine what they must have said or done to that child actress, to get that performance out of her. Maybe it gets uplifting at the end…? I don’t remember, because my own mom and I hung on each other sobbing in the street in front of the theater and I haven’t seen it since.
Leaving Las Vegas owns this category.
No Country for Old Men cosigned the loan.
Amour is signing a sublet.
Dying Young. (Also: not for emetiphobes)