Bring On The Sad Movies. I’m Not Looking For a Happy Ending.

Spoiler Alert!

This blog post contains spoilers for the following movies:

• Saving Private Ryan
• The English Patient
• The Painted Veil
• The Notebook
• Schindler’s List

Stop reading now if you haven’t seen these films yet. (What are you waiting for?)

Time to fire up the blu-ray player…

 

I’m disillusioned with happy endings. At least for this weekend. Maybe it’s because of the rain and cold temps. Sometimes wallowing in sadness is what I crave.

Like someone who needs a good Drano cry to clean out the emotional pipes, it was time to camp out on the couch under a blanket and work my way through my standard lineup of tear-jerker movies. Ones that really get the waterworks flowing…unless you’re just completely dried up inside…it’s my way of sweeping away the internal cobwebs.

First off, Saving Private Ryan. All they were supposed to do was find Ryan and bring him back. And then the squad members start dying. Poor Tom Hanks. Here’s a guy thrust into a position of authority no one wants to be in. He just wants to get back home to his wife. Spoiler alert: Dead.

Next, The English Patient, a beautiful story told through a series of flashbacks. She’s married, he’s smitten, let the illicit affair commence. Enter one distraught husband. It does not end well for anyone. Not even the lovely nurse afraid to love anyone. Can I just imagine that she and Kip eventually end up meeting each other at the church after the last of the war? It’s a nice idea but the movie is just tragic enough that you know it doesn’t happen. Spoiler alert: Dead and dead. Time to invest in a second box of Kleenex.

Moving on to The Painted Veil, a story of an immature woman stuck in a loveless marriage with a medical doctor with no social graces. After finding out about her affair, he moves the two of them to the middle of rural backwoods China so he can treat villagers afflicted with cholera. Spoiler alert: Somehow the two of them come together and find love, only to have it taken away when the doctor contracts and dies from the very disease he’s trying to eradicate. Dead.

Another turn at a difficult love story with The Notebook. Boy from the wrong side of the tracks find girl. Boy loses girl. Boy finds girl again. And then girl loses a lifetime of memories (dementia, anyone?) and thinks boy is a stranger trying to creep her out. How sad would it be to become a stranger in the failing mind of your most loved one? Spoiler alert: Dead and dead.

Time to make some popcorn and grab another box of tissues before heading into the very powerful, emotional Schindler’s List. The day started with World War II and might as well end with the same period. If there is a movie that horrifically showcases man’s inhumanity to man, Schindler’s List is the one to do it. I can’t make it through the shower scene, or the scene with the German “treasure room” with piles of gold teeth and watches, without losing it. What a terrible time in our human history. Spoiler alert: Some live, millions die.

 

By the end of this sob fest, you would think I’d be ready to suck on a shotgun and end the suffering, but oddly enough I feel much better. By facing a movie collection of painful emotions I can work through my own (seemingly insignificant) sadness.  

An afternoon with death, war, infidelity, and crippling physical deterioration is just what I need to highlight the great things in my real-world life and get me out of my own head.