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The saddest movie I have ever seen (1 Viewer)

Steve Schaffer

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I've not been able to rewatch Grave of the Fireflies. My second choice would be Artificial Intelligence.
 

Hanson

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I think what makes Grave of the Fireflies so devastating is that these horrors are happening to children. I don't think it would even be watchable if it were live action.
 

Bruce Hedtke

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I found Grave of the Fireflies to be an exceptionally well crafted film but it really didn't hit me emotionally. It was bleak and harrowing but I just couldn't bridge the gap to connect with the characters. However, when I watched Crazy/Beautiful, I totally connected with Kirsten Dunst's character and the waterworks were in overdrive that day.
 

Malcolm R

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Bruce Hedtke said:
I found Grave of the Fireflies to be an exceptionally well crafted film but it really didn't hit me emotionally. It was bleak and harrowing but I just couldn't bridge the gap to connect with the characters.
Same here. I shed tears pretty easily at emotional moments in films, but for whatever reason "Grave" didn't affect me that much.
 

PatW

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I have to think about this for awhile. Never saw Graves of the Fireflies. Hopefully I'll be able to catch it one day. First movie that sprung to my mind was The Road. I've not read the book and I don't know if I want to. That movie was just so sad and bleak. Even the cinematography put me in a depressed mood. Though the ending was suppose to be slightly uplifting because the boy found a family you knew they were doomed sooner than later. I wasn't in tears watching that movie but just an overall depressed mood that lasted for awhile.
 

Aaron Silverman

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I read the book and had that same feeling about the movie. :) I hear the film followed the book pretty closely.
 

PatW

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Well I thought about it for awhile. There have been several movies that had me in tears but the one that had me sobbing was The Green Mile. There have been other movies that I thought were sadder or more depressing but for some reason this one really affected me. I can remember seeing it with my brother in the theatre and I was sobbing so hard and I couldn't control it, so I had to get up and stand at the back of the theatre for awhile. My brother kept asking me if I wanted to leave. Totally embarrassed myself that night.
 

Edwin-S

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What's Eating Gilbert Grape had a pretty depressing scene near the end. If the rest of the movie was like that, I'm glad I never bothered watching the whole thing.
 

bujaki

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What about They Shoot Horses, Don't They? I saw it during its original run and remember crying during most of its running time. My eyes were swollen when I left the theater and could barely drive home.
 

Steve Schaffer

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Aaron Silverman said:
There is an interesting view of Grave of the Fireflies, where it is seen as intended to symbolically show the childlike Japanese being crushed by the monstrous US as a revisionist metaphor for the war itself. I have only seen part of the film, but, being fairly knowledgeable about the war and Japanese revisionism, I can understand that view.
I honestly didn't get that impression. What I took from the film was that the Japanese public was decieved by their government into thinking that Japan actually had a chance of winning a war with a vastly larger and more powrful nation with almost infinitely more in the way of resources and industrial capacity, and were totally unprepared for the devastation that resulted. Flashbacks to the celebrations as the Imperial fleet left harbor early in the war contrasted with shots of B29 formations flying unopposed overhead gave me the impression that the film makers were trying to depict the fact that the people had been deceived by their rulers and were suffering a holocaust brought about by their own ruler's refusal to surrender.
 

Aaron Silverman

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To Westerners, it's subtle, but you have to consider it from the Japanese POV. There are still mainstream elements in Japan who deny responsibility for the war. This is part of why a lot of other Asians are still very worked up about it. Note this comment of the director (from Wiki):
However, director Isao Takahata repeatedly denied that the film was an anti-war anime. In his own words, "[The film] is not at all an anti-war anime and contains absolutely no such message." Instead, Takahata had intended to convey an image of the brother and sister living a failed life due to isolation from society and invoke sympathy particularly in people in their teens and twenties, whom he felt needed to straighten up and respect their elders for the pain and suffering they had experienced during arguably the darkest point in Japan's history.
This could be seen in terms of trying to rehabilitate the image of the people who were around during the war. However, I haven't seen the full text of the interview, so I don't know what else he said. Again, this is just one view that I find interesting to consider.
 

mattCR

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While Grave is definitely sad, I've never been as completely blindsided as Up. The moment you get the feeling she has had a miscarriage and cannot have a child is such an honest unexpected gutshot that I can't think of any other film - except for Schindlers List where people gasped. Its also the only film I'm seen in a theater that kicked me twice in the gut for such different reasons... The sadness at the beginning, sad realizing the kids father has walked on him, and the redemption and joy at the end of Walter fulfilling the untaken journey of his life being a father to the chold
 

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