Any time you are taking the time to watch a movie you are setting yourself up for some form of emotional response. Happiness, fear, awesomeness (probably more accurately elation), anger and yes even sadness are generally the most common. The better the movie the better the emotional pay off, and for the most part you will know what you are getting going in barring a few surprises because even as seasoned as a movie goer/watcher that I am movies still find ways to surprise me on occasion and even more specific I find a lot of those surprises have to do with eliciting sadness out of me. In my personal experience out of the emotions listed above most people tend to avoid movies that play heavily on your sadness the most, although one could make a similar argument for fear as I know a lot of people that avoid the horror genre just anecdotally I know a lot more that avoid or complain about how sad movies make them feel.

Now, contrary to most people I know I actually love sad movies. I love it when otherwise not sad movies have something sad that happens and manages to make me feel sad in turn. I have embraced my sadness of late (I can pinpoint the exact moment this happened actually, it was watching the movie Inside Out the first time which I watched in theatre opening night) and if a movie can make me feel the feels then it has done it’s job very well. Upon personal introspection (because I actually do this a lot) I have noticed that often animated movies are usually the ones that can reliably move me to tears during a watch or rewatch. Sadness is often an avoided emotion and possibly more so in choice of entertainment consumption but it can make enjoyment so much better, imagine a hero coasting through a movie with little conflict or effort, then imagine the same hero suffering great loss and pulling out an impossible move to subvert a hopeless situation at the last second. The joy you feel for the latter hero will be increased exponentially based on the sadness you felt before (there I go with the math formulas again). On the other had not all movies have happy endings, the best some can hope for is redemption or finding what happiness they can or possibly even can not by the resolution of the story. Sadness like most emotions takes many forms.

These many forms can be to our benefit as we are a movie discussion thread so we have a rich tapestry of sorrow to draw upon, a deep well of melancholy movie mourning mentions if you will. To simplify the prompt, do you have favourite sad movie(s) or movie moment(s) you would like to highlight? Mine goes back to first year university when I read Once Were Warriors for a Literature class and we watched the movie as well. I have since watched this twice and each time it hits harder, with the last time wrecking me for several days. Without getting into spoilers it is all kinds of sad and really gets to me at the deepest level, but also I need that in my life every so often. If you happen to go watch it and have not done so yet I will add a content warning for sexual assault and suicide. So I will watch this one again in a few years… probably alone in the dark for extra effect.