This Friday sees the release of My Sister's Keeper, a laugh-a-second film about leukemia that's sure to be as synonymous with laughter as an evening with Jim Davidson.
To celebrate the grand achievement that is making a film so depressing you'll wish you'd gone for the Popcorn/Drink/Handgun combo at the concession stand, we count down the most miserable movies ever made...
Sophie's Choice (1982)
The Film: It’s 1947, and young writer Stingo (Peter MacNicol) arrives in Brooklyn and shares an apartment and a love triangle with Polish immigrant Sophie (Meryl Streep) and her American lover Nathan (Kevin Kline).
Why So Serious? Well that’s not the whole story… see Sophie was imprisoned at Auschwitz during WW2. Throughout the film, she remembers more of her time there.
The choice she had to make? It isn’t between Stingo and Nathan, no, when she arrived at Auschwitz, a Nazi officer made her choose which of her two children lived or died.
“Don’t make me choose!” Sophie begs, making anyone who’s ever stalled in line at Subway feel properly melodramatic… but the Nazi officer insists.
She told them to save the boy, condemning her daughter to death. She never saw her son again.
The film ends with both Sophie and the mentally unstable Nathan committing suicide by way of cyanide, dying in each others arms.
Finding the bodies, Stingo reads Emily Dickinson’s poem “Ample Makes This Bed” – cos that’s sure to cheer folk up – then leaves and buggers off back to the South.
Will It Make You Cry? When we finally get to see the scene where Sophie chose between her kids… you’ll be blubbing like a toddler on an aeroplane.
Will It Uplift You? Er… no.
Cynicism Score: 10 - As if the key scene wasn't emotional enough, the soaring strings are cynical attempts to jerk as many tears from your ducts as possible.
Next: Love Story
Comments
TheTingler
Jun 24th 2009, 10:31
I think Jude wins the prize for sheer "life-is-s***-and-people-are-worse"-ness. Requiem For A Dream at least has the get-out clause of "drugs are bad" to fall back on. Most of the rest are just normal soap operas. Some excellent metaphors in there by the way TF!
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ChroniC2805
Jun 24th 2009, 10:50
What about bridge to terabithia or marley and me both of those films had me crying like a baby
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ashley.russell
Jun 24th 2009, 11:24
Changeling should definitely be in there, its nothing but police corruption, dead children, missing children, scary fraudulent children, a mental hospital and a serial killer
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durden
Jun 24th 2009, 11:26
well,i wouldn't call them miserable but the only films that made me cry were dead poets society and october sky...don't think any of the above have done that...
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fluffulike
Jun 24th 2009, 11:41
I never really got over bambi's mum dying! Only movie I ever really cried in.
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Lindz28
Jun 24th 2009, 13:50
In the valley of Elah is the most depressing film I've seen. Tommy Lee jones and Susan Sarandon's son dies. Then their other son goes missing. He's found not just dead, but brutally stabbed, burnt and chopped up into little bits. Its like the ending for Million Dollar baby but for the WHOLE film :(
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BennettsVest
Jun 24th 2009, 15:03
The Deer Hunter isn't exactly a shining beacon of cheer. I think my mate summed it up best when he said "That was superb, but I never want to see it again." Then he shot himself.
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thefilmguru
Jun 24th 2009, 16:15
I am sorry but youve missed a biggy with The Elephant Man - i mean that film is so depressing he gets abused nearly the whole film. Scenes with that security guard never fail to be depressing with how he is. It ends on a sort of high in that hes content, but really - it is still DEATH. The Elephant Man has to be in there.
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pazozo
Jun 24th 2009, 17:04
is Jude entirely based on Jude the Obscure? It's on my reading list for English for 'Love through the ages' but if it's anything like the film I think I'll give it a skip
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tachikoma83
Jun 24th 2009, 17:55
Where is "Grave of the Fireflies"? that film almost killed me.
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magicwings
Jun 24th 2009, 18:10
Two words: The, and Wrestler.
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Sonic
Jun 24th 2009, 22:51
THANKS FOR THE SPOILER WARNING FOR SOPHIES CHOICE YOU STUPID CUNTS!
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indran
Jun 25th 2009, 0:40
I'm putting in my vote for The Cook, The Thief, His Wife And Her Lover and Martyrs as two of the most horrifyingly downbeat films ever made. Really stay with you after watching them. And of course Requiem For A Dream. You just can't feel good watching that.
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imaginarium
Jun 25th 2009, 14:25
Brokeback Mountain. Love that can never be properly fulfilled, they can never be together, they have their biggest argument, spilling all the frustration and regret, right before one of them dies, alone, for the very reason they couldn't be together.
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Catchphrase
Jun 26th 2009, 13:47
You missed Boys Don't Cry.
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obi500
Jun 26th 2009, 14:40
I know a lot of people may not have seen it but studio Ghibli's Grave of the Fireflies is the only film thats made me cry.
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xotitanicox
Jun 27th 2009, 18:21
What Moulin Rouge? I cry every time I watch it.
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WileyWasabi
Jun 27th 2009, 21:18
How could you leave off My Life??? The movie starring Michael Keaton and Nicole Kidman, couple trying to get pregnant, and when she does they find out he has terminal cancer, so he makes a bunch of videos for their unborn son, because it is expected he'll not live to see him born. Total sobfest.
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VictoriaRusso
Jul 17th 2009, 22:40
I guess the author made differences between movies that made people cry and depressing movies. So totally agree on Requiem for a dream, great art piece after which it's quite hard not to suicide. Another thing is Bamby, just because it's kinda made for kids, but awfully depressing! And of course Brasil. There's nothing worse than a happy ending that never really happened.
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apbgreen
Aug 4th 2009, 16:21
'Million Dollar Baby'. A film so relentlessly depressing that swallowing your own tongue seems somehow comforting.
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Apathygrrl
Aug 6th 2009, 12:00
Totally agree with Requiem. One of the most bleak movies I have ever seen. I'd just like to mention The Green Mile & The Mist. Both are so painfully depressing that I can't ever watch them again.
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MrSmith70
Nov 17th 2009, 22:17
yeah i agree, requiem for a dream is such an excellent film but the unconfortabiliity of watch it is extreme...... harrowing at the mind with sara's hallucination, felt like getting sick. churning of the stomach with harry's decomposing arm 'pre-op', felt like getting sick. aronofsky's best.......
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CatBear
Aug 15th 2011, 17:24
I'm pretty sure that when you wrote depressing, you meant s**t? Other than Requiem it's more like a list of the worst, soap-opera like films of all time. How about some good, but depressing films; My Life Without Me, The Laramie Project, Mean Creek...
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