speaking of dogs, dont forget Plague Dogs, that should easily make this list
Millenium Actress by Satoshi Kon is another good one. It’s not a total downer through and through, but the ending is just so poignant.
Ditto (assuming you mean the Danish original).
I had forgotten about this. Very depressing especially when they get into the paper sacks. Soundtrack with one song by David Bowie and more than half of the rest by Roger Waters and band.
Watch it back to back with Threads for UK themed thoroughly depressing night.
Aniara is the bleakest sci-fi film I have ever seen.
They were both by the same director, but yes .
More film fest than main stream but “Love Without Walls” was pretty depressing to watch a couple slip into homelessness.
Also “Boiling Point” as a counterpoint to “The Bear”.
I member Kes being beautiful. Maybe it was depressing too, but I dunno, that depends on the person I suppose. (And I give Ken Loach a lot of leeway; i can find at least something to love in any of his movies.)
Just a few I’ll add:
Requiem for a Dream scarred me such that I’ll never watch it again. But, if you’re going to watch it, make sure it’s the director’s cut, not the theatrical release. The horror is extended by another 20 minutes or so.
Gaspar Noé’s Irreversible and Climax are very upsetting and hard to watch.
ETA: Rabbit Proof Fence is also equally difficult to watch.
Totally, same - what an unusual, great and underappreciated film - also apparently one of the only motion pictures to be shot on Velvia filmstock to get that saturated, painterly look.
But woah - Requiem on the other hand, really thought that one was terribly overblown, and got its notoriety mainly on its shock basis. For a film treatment with a more interesting and humane take on of the depths of addiction, along with all of the pathos, but a good bit of redemption - I have to recommend Jesus’s Son, which came out around the same time but to perhaps less renown.
For most depressing - (not sure if mainstream or not) would nominate these two
Paris,Texas
Stroszek
That list should also contain all those Marvel and DC superhero movies.
Maps to the Stars.
And yet we’re gracing it with engagement. That’s the problem here
My entry: “Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence”.
If you think about it, both “Brazil” and “Blade Runner” don’t really have an uplifting finale either
La Strada
My father, with Antony Hopkins was excellent
No man’s land was both funny and bleak
Watership down and the snowman affected me a lot when I was small.
Stromboli is really pretty depressing too. A bit like La Strada (by Fellini) in that both have that weird Catholic “she dies horribly, miserably, and abandoned and alone” but somehow it’s all grand because she had a vision of tha baba Jesus or some shit.
Neither are my faves by Rossellini or Fellini.
Oh wait: Nights of Cabiria is fantastic but I’m not sure I can actually watch it again. It’s too much.
They were all pretty mainstream at one point I believe but if we want obscure….
Well, if we go back to the earlier classics, “Roma Città Aperta” by Rossellini is pretty harsh. And the 1981 movie “Das Boot”.
