Few emotions are as cathartic and profound as shedding tears, and a good movie is surprisingly powerful enough to elicit such raw feelings. Break out the tissues, because it’s time to start exploring some of the saddest movies Hollywood has to offer.
1. What Dreams May Come (1998)
You don’t need a few tissues to watch Robin Williams in What Dreams May Come. You need the whole tissue factory. The movie starts on a high note, with Williams’ character, Chris, getting married and having kids. Then two car crashes occurring four years apart claim their children and then Chris himself, leaving his wife, Annie, to cope alone. Unfortunately, she takes her own life, which Chris learns means she will go to Hell.
What Dreams May Come will leave you an emotional trainwreck, and it doesn’t help that Williams is in the lead. A man once so funny and bright so perfectly plays a desperate husband trying to save his wife from eternal damnation.
2. Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Brokeback Mountain follows two cowboys who fall in love in Wyoming but cannot be together because of societal and cultural restrictions brought on by brutal homophobia. Ennis, one of the partners, marries a woman, while Jack perishes in an accident.
This gorgeous, Oscar-winning movie candidly expresses the sadness of unrequited love that was never given permission to exist and is guaranteed to leave no one in the room without tears.
3. Pieces of a Woman (2008)
This heartbreaking film should not be watched by easily shaken people, particularly expecting mothers. The film’s opening ten minutes are devoted to a home delivery gone wrong, which results in the infant’s death.
The rest of the movie, driven by lead actress Vanessa Kirby’s performance, falls short of the emotional punch of the opening moments but is nonetheless relentlessly depressing.
4. Sophie’s Choice (1982)
Meryl Streep plays Sophie, a Polish immigrant and Holocaust survivor, in this profoundly devastating movie. Sophie faces an impossible choice that would be agonizing for any parent. She is forced to choose between sending one of her daughters to a labor camp and death chamber after being detained by the Nazis and transported to Auschwitz during World War II.
The guilt of her choice plagues her perpetually, and the movie’s closing moments only make it worse.
5. Life Is Beautiful (1997)
Following a father and his young son through World War II concentration camps, the father invents games with rules to keep his son alive while keeping him unaware of the terrible reality.
There is something particularly emotional about parents lying to protect their kids from the world’s suffering, and that’s amplified by the Holocaust.
6. Steel Magnolias (1989)
This heartwarming melodrama details the unbreakable bond shared by a close-knit group of friends in a small Louisiana town as they encounter life’s many challenges and victories. Sally Field plays M’Lynn Eatenton, a loving mother bursting with pride as her vibrant daughter Shelby (Julia Roberts) prepares to marry and have a family.
When Shelby’s diabetes fight puts her life and all she has been dreaming of in danger, the happy period takes a tragic turn.
7. Schindler’s List (1993)
The epic historical drama Schindler’s List, directed by Steven Spielberg, is rightfully hailed as one of the best movies ever made. It tells the story of German entrepreneur Oskar Schindler, who saved more than a thousand Polish-Jewish refugees during the Holocaust.
Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, and Ben Kingsley are among the film’s stellar cast members. The World War II drama went on to win seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Spielberg.
8. If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)
The tale, based on a James Baldwin novel, follows a young couple named Tish and Fonny as they have a passionate love affair. After Tish falls pregnant, Fonny is falsely detained and imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. The struggle to get Fonny out of jail that follows ultimately exposes the flaws in the legal system and the extent people will go for the ones they care about.
9. Marley & Me (2008)
On its release, movie lovers flocked to the cinemas en masse, hoping for a happy ending for the titular puppy. You can’t help but cry when the labrador retriever’s life is painlessly taken after becoming such a crucial part of the family throughout his lifelong journey from puppyhood to old age. The essential life lessons he taught made up for his antics.
10. Old Yeller (1958)
Another classic drama about the heartbreaking death of a loyal dog breaks the hearts of spectators everywhere, becoming one of cinema’s most frequently referenced and profoundly upsetting movies of all time.
Knowing that Old Yeller would eventually pass away made it even harder to accept and observe. It was heartbreaking to watch as the loving dog devoted himself to the Coates family, especially their eldest son, Travis.
11. Hotel Rwanda (2004)
A tragic film that portrays Don Cheadle and Sophie Okonedo as the brave married couple who assisted in giving asylum to more than 1,200 refugees during the brutal conflict at the Hôtel des Mille Collines. It chronicles the bloody and ruthless massacre during the Rwandan genocide in 1994 and the heroic actions of hotelier Paul Rusesabagina and his wife, Tatiana.
12. My Girl (1991)
Revolving around pressing topics such as mortality, sorrow, mental illness, and the growing pains of youth, this movie is perhaps most known for the emotionally devastating bee attack resulting in the death of Culkin’s character Thomas.
The scene where Chlumksy’s Vada is noticeably upset while visiting Thomas’ burial and noticing he’s not wearing his glasses still makes even the most hardened viewers cry.
13. The Pursuit of Happyness (2006)
This movie hardly features cheerful moments despite what the title may suggest. Almost every scene in the film, starring Will Smith and his natural son Jaden as a father and son coping with homelessness, is depressing. Smith’s character constantly meets an impasse in his struggles but never gives up. It’s heartbreaking to think that this is based on a true story.
14. King Kong (1933)
If you didn’t feel even the slightest bit of sadness for Mighty Kong as he tumbled down the Empire State Building, then we can’t be friends. Sure, Kong may have caused a ruckus, but how pleased would you have been if a bunch of puny humans invaded your island, knocked you out with gas bombs, then chained you up and put you on display? You also have to factor in that Kong ultimately fell in love with the blond-haired Fay Wray, which led to his untimely downfall.
Even for an oversized claymation gorilla, Kong exhibited enough emotion to draw viewers in and get many onto his side.
15. Lion (2016)
Dev Patel plays a man looking for his biological parents after growing up abandoned by his adoptive parents, an Australian couple played by Nicole Kidman and David Wenham, and getting lost in his Indian town. Years later, now an adult, he uses Google Earth to search for his family in India, satisfying the lost feelings he had been contending with.
16. Coco (2017)
Despite his family’s forbidding of music, Miguel continues to pursue his love of singing. He accidentally lands in the Land of the Dead and discovers that his great-great-grandfather was a renowned singer. You’d think we’d be ready for tears, given that the movie is mainly centered around the idea of death. However, the motion picture succeeds in extracting every single teardrop.
17. One Day (2011)
The romance drama that stars Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess suddenly shifts from the couple that fell in love despite obstacles placed in their path by fate to a dreadful happening that alters the course of their relationship. It is a lovely, thought-provoking love story.
Source: Reddit
