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
Definitely Pan’s Labyrinth.
Seconding Central Station (Fernanda Montenegro wuz robbed that year.)
Chinatown
Seconding Mulholland Drive.
I agree with most of the ones listed…and there are a LOT listed. But my five would have to be:
The Prestige
Pan’s Labyrinth
Brokeback Mountain
Legends of the Fall (one of my friends that already seen it convinced me I should see it…I couldn’t stop crying, luckily I was watching at home.)
And finally: La Jetee, it’s the french film 12 monkeys is based on, I saw it in french class in college…and cried in class luckily it is fairly short. Embarrassing as a freshman in an upper classman level class. I went looking for it a couple of years ago just to see if it was as depressing as I remembered, but didn’t end up rewatching it. I decide the memories were bad enough I didn’t need to reinforce them.
They showed The Cove on a plane?! WTF were they thinking!
My nominations:
Stevie
What Dreams May Come (bad AND depressing!)
The Hours (drug my husband to it and he is now scarred for life)
Grave of the Fireflies (Like others I haven’t seen it becuase I fear for my mental stability. I also think this will be the winner in the end)
Vera Drake
Gut-wrenching animation :
When the Wind Blows
Watership Down
The Plague Dogs
I’ve never seen most of these movies. I decided to go to Wikipedia and look up a few of them, and am in tears just reading the plot synopses. I think this comment thread will become my personal What Not to Watch.
Saving Private Ryan
Hotel Rwanda
Pan’s Labyrinth
Schindler’s List
The Pledge. My God, did that movie bum me out. I’m still mad at Mr. Beadgirl for suggesting it.
Nominate:
Turtles can Fly (Kurdish)
Rojo Amanecer (Mexico)
BBC filmed staging of King Lear. Sir Ian Holm carrying Cordelia… I wept in class and all the cool college kids made fun of me.
Second:
Grave of the Fireflies
Requiem for a Dream
Brazil
Amour
Atonement
The Fox and the Hound–this one is so painful that I actually blocked it from memory until I saw it posted here
There Will Be Blood
My Girl
@GeorgiaS The Iron Giant is a strange outlier for me in that it makes me cry without fail and yet I always want to see it again.
Also, it’s kind of right there in the title, but I don’t see it posted yet: Melancholia
Up.
Yeah, yeah, it’s a kids’ movie, but when I saw Up in theaters, I couldn’t stop crying. Legit, ugly-crying tears. The first 20 minutes of that movie are so simple and devastating, that even all the balloons and talking dogs in the rest of the movie couldn’t cheer me back up. Even just a hint of the music still makes me cry.
Damn you, Pixar!!
I will not watch the following animated films (there’s a common theme):
Bambi (I’ve actually never seen, my mother was escorted from the theater at 5 years old after five minutes when she was taken to see it and banned it from the house, I respect the ban and continue it)
The Land Before Time (My entire family sobbed in the theater at once)
The Fox and the Hound
Dumbo
The movies that I think are the most gut wrenching are:
Requiem for a Dream and
Dancer in the Dark
I’m surprised more wrists weren’t slit after viewings of those two movies.
Is it weird to rec “The Notebook” ? Maybe it’s just me, I used to volunteer in a nursing home, and saw something like that happen many times over for real, to good friends of many years. The last scene nearly kills me just thinking about it.
Also, try watching “Welcome to Sarejvo” with a Croatian friend who has temporarily relocated to the US on refugee status, who simply says, “That… is pretty much what it was like.” Damn. (Worth noting that said Croatian guy looked *precisely* like Goran Visnjic. That didn’t hurt.)
Third Star-haven’t seen another nomination, this gutted me, although I suppose you could say it had a hopeful ending (maybe?) but it took me a couple days to feel ok again.
Agree with:
Naked
Once Were Warriors
Kids
The Man in the Moon (for the 12-year old me), and on that note Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken also.
@JenAK I am totally with you on the What Not To Watch list.
Also, I sort of feel like sad animal movies are a whole separate class of their own. I often cannot subject myself to any heartfelt animal movies (whether animated or live action). Or TV, like that Futurama episode with Frye’s dog. If you’ve seen it, you know.
Heavenly Creatures
::shudder::
Hachi – A Dog’s Tale. My God that movie had everyone in my house crying and clutching pets.
Dumbo – I still can’t watch it or think about without tearing up.
Beaches – 15 years old and I don’t care how jauntily Cece leaves with Victoria at the end just “that song” gets me going now.
Requiem for a Dream – never again. It haunted me.
Suddenly, Last Summer
Okay … thanks to Megan H’s comment toward the beginning of the thread, I decided to look up DAY OF THE LOCUST. The whole ending climax of the film is on YouTube.
And … oh my god. Without even having seen the rest of the film (just the other clips which are online) I am completely disturbed.
Usually I go out of my way to avoid movies such as those we’re listing in this thread (like … there was no way in hell I was ever going to go see Dancer in the Dark). The fact that a ten minute clip has freaked me the hell out … well … I shouldn’t be surprised.
For a completely bizarre addition to this thread though – a movie that left me crying at the end was ORCA. Yes, that’s right. The let’s-rip-off-JAWS movie about the killer killer whale who manages to somehow kill people in a town. Yes.
The sad part was – the whale is motivated to kill because whalers kill its pregnant mate at the beginning of the movie … and just at the very end, when he’s about to eat Richard Harris … he lets him live, and then just slowly swims away under the ice … so you know he’s going to die.
SILENT RUNNING has a similar ending, which chokes me up just thinking about it … the spaceship left drifting at the end, with only three tiny robots tending the last remaining trees and plants from earth… ahhhh.
Away From Her
Bent – beautiful film, but you know. . . Holocaust
Children of Men. Aargh.
The original Dutch version of The Vanishing doesn’t maybe entirely qualify: it’s skin-crawling rather than gut-wrenching, but file under “movies I would not watch again for a considerable amount of money” for sure.
Turtles Can Fly (foreign film about child land-mine collectors in Afghanistan. Yeah.)
Dancer in the Dark
Seconding Boys Don’t Cry and Happiness
Seconding or thirding or whatever (nth-ing?) Pan’s Labyrinth, which I will never watch again because ouch, and Melancholia, which I re-watch compulsively because I love it but which is definitely a difficult watch.
I think we can probably lump all the Lars Von Trier movies into one slot, right?
re: the Road. I was hoping that the appearance of Guy Pearce would portend something happy, but….yeah, no, not so much.
Absolutely Breaking the Waves. Also:
The Road
Leaving Las Vegas
The War Zone
Osama
I’m depressed just making this list.
Is it cheating if I make two lists? Because I’m on a roll.
Night Mother
Raging Bull
Requiem for a Dream
Ju Dou
Yep.
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
For sure.
Oh gosh, and Children of Men too. I felt totally empty inside after watching that one.
@Danielle, there’s a FILM version of ‘Night, Mother?! How did I not know that? I would have to second that one, then, even though I can never, ever watch it. Ack, I’m getting depressed and shaky just thinking about it. (It…hits home quite a bit, as my sister committed suicide in an equally premeditated fashion under some similar conditions.)
This list is just confirming my decision not to see a lot of things that looked like they’d be good but impossible to un-see. Everything I could suggest is in that category where not only are you not glad you’ve watched it the once, but the bleakness and/or need to scrub your insides with steel wool and bleach is at least as much artistic in origin as it is existential: Leaving Las Vegas, V for Vendetta, Punch Drunk Love. Not good movies, those, star power and “nuanced” “social” “commentary” not withstanding.
I’m with everyone who felt like they’d been laid waste to after the first ten minutes of Up, though. Jesus H. I curled up with it one rainy Saturday and I remember this feeling of, like, betrayed astonishment as I sobbed so hard I had to stop the movie and go in the bathroom and throw cold water on my face and try not to barf. Why didn’t anyone WARN me? GOOD GOD.
http://www.avclub.com/articles/not-again-24-great-films-too-painful-to-watch-twic,2048/
The Onion AV Club did an inventory on this.
I would add Babe 2: Pig in the City, a.k.a. the happy kid flick that’s about animals suffering for 90 minutes.
I think we can probably lump all the Lars Von Trier movies into one slot, right?
@attica: Works for me. I have a slot like that in my head, after seeing Breaking The Waves, and the little masking tape label on that slot reads: NOPE. CAN’T.
@jen: I respect you for even trying to give Leaving Las Vegas credit for nuance, even air-quotes nuance; and I’m sorry about Up, really.
Second, thirding and whatevering the recs for:
Requiem For a Dream
Grave of the Fireflies
Leaving Las Vegas
Also
Sommersby (cheesy, cheery, trite, and heartWRENCHING)
Plague Dogs (animated and dePRESSING)
All movies I’m glad I watched, and have no desire to ever see again.
A couple I haven’t seen listed yet:
Apocalypse Now,
I Am Legend.
Oh, God.
‘night, Mother. I was way too young to see parts of that, but it prepared me for shit I would encounter later in my adolescence for sure. Thanks, HBO!
Thirding Wit. Again, life circumstances at the time it aired are probably factors. Thompson and McDonald are so, so good.
God, I took my kid and three of her little 8 year old friends to see Up. They sat in the row in front of me. After about three minutes of sobbing ugly-cry, I had four little faces turned around in their seats staring at me. “Is your Mom OKAY? Are you SURE?”, because of course, they didn’t quite get just why it was so gut-wrenchingly sad.
I’ve just decided that I’m never watching anything on this list that I haven’t seen yet, which is going to make voting in the eventual brackets difficult for me . . .
Did anyone mention Ordinary People yet? I know it starts with tragedy rather than ends with it but watching that movie felt like taking a two-hour bath in sadness.
@jen: Punch Drunk Love didn’t make me sad, it made me angry. I saw it in college and had so many friends who LOVED it, and I still don’t understand why. It’s boring, pointless, unrealistic, and all of the sisters are horrible bitches. Ugh.
I hated Dancer in the Dark, but not for the “right” reasons. I just hated it.
Hereafter. “Let’s not only constantly brood over death, let’s also be constantly frustrated at everything we ever do!”
A couple to consider that I didn’t see come up yet:
The Rose (1979) – I just turn it off partway through, because: nope.
Finding Neverland (2004) – Probably the worst mess I’ve ever been in an actual theater.
Glory (1989) – Can’t watch again.
Hilary and Jackie (1998) – Same.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) – I love it, but the ending is really, really depressing.
Re: “Up.” Don’t sic the talking dogs on me, but I’ve never once cried at the opening 10 minutes. Not even the first time I saw it, probably because every time I see a new Pixar movie I’m all, Yay, Pixar animation! Believe me, I certainly get *why* people are ugly-crying over it, and maybe because I know it’s coming (yes, I own it and have watched it several times) I steel myself. HOWEVER, I *always* turn into a useless sack of saline at end of “Up” when Carl gives Russell the merit badge Ellie made for Carl out of a bottle cap, so I end the movie a wreck. I’m crying now, thank you.
See also the very end of “Toy Story 3.” I’ve watched it three times now, and it wrings me out like a washrag. (And that monkey toy with the clapping cymbals freaks me the freak out. Also, it’s basically a Holocaust movie!!!)
Topic: “The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith.” “United 93.”
Seconding:
Breaking the waves
Boys dont cry
Brokeback mountain
Adding:
Canal (Kanal, Polish world war 2 movie, doubt many have seen it…)
Schindler’s List
Sophie’s Choice
House of Sand and Fog
The Accused
Drugstore Cowboy
Less than Zero
Grave of the Fireflies, definitely.
And thinking of that brought to my mind another anime I haven’t seen anyone list, but I almost hesitate to mention: Barefoot Gen.
When I saw that in college, I was very glad that I hadn’t had anything to eat prior to seeing it. Grave of the Fireflies is like having a piece of duct tape slowly peeled off your soul for 90 minutes. Barefoot Gen is the equivalent of it being ripped right the fuck off.
Just going to nth the Last King of Scotland recommendation and second the Passion of the Christ nomination. I openly sobbed for 10 minutes afterwards, in a group of 8 of us who saw it together. I’m not a practicing Christian, I just thought it was brutal.
Also, Seeking a Friend for the End of the World left me totally empty and thinking about it for DAYS – I thought it was a comedy! So sad.
Oh! Has anyone mentioned Das Boot? ‘Cause, holy crap.
Nominations are now closed. (Sorry, folks! At nearly 400 films I had to pull the ripcord.)
You can add almost any non-wuxia Chinese period drama. As a [Chinese] friend of mine describes them: where everyone either throws in with doomed palace coups, backs the Nationalists, or falls in love with inappropriate people, and then they all die at the end. But my pick for the kicker of Chinese downer movies is Nanjing, Nanjing, a.k.a. City Of Life And Death. Beautifully done, but requires the viewer to to take jumbo doses of Prozac upon leaving the cinema.
Also, any Holocaust film is pretty much a given, and I’d call out Schindler’s List, Sophie’s Choice, Fateless, and In Darkness.
Someone else mentioned Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, which was awesome, but I found Lady Vengeance to be harsher.
Oh, and Bambi. Snif.