Most Depressing Cinema/Music/Etc?

[KOMega]

I like this one. It has a feeling of melancholy or ambivalence.

 

[Kinitawowi]

Spoiler: English version of the fabled Hungarian Suicide Song

 

[deathbydeath]

Worm [http://parahumans.wordpress.com/] has this so hard. Admittedly most of it is anything but sad, then shit goes down. There were a handful of chapters where I had to set it down for a day and visit the Heartwarming/Funny pages for that series on TVTropes before I could continue reading.

 

[Axolotl]

Not sad in the traditional way but I think the lyrics are deeply tragic

 

[spartan231490]

Yeah, I'm going to put this here:

Spoiler

More points for enthusiasm than anything.

/thread. Really, I just did a thread like this on another site, "Christmas Shoes" beats all. If you're familiar with the song, just reading the title will bring a tear to your eye. Though I do prefer the Natalie Maines version.

 

[tippy2k2]

Johnny Cash: Hurt

While I'm a big NIN fan, JC just does it better in this cover.

I know NIN's wrote the song but seriously...Johnny Cash owns the shit out of that song. The tail end of his incredible life/career just perfectly fits that song.

If you want something that truly kicks you in the gut and has a massively depressing nature then I recommend the ending to the film, "The Mist" which has a much more soul crushing conclusion than the original novel.

Also an excellent choice. I love too that Stephen King is on record saying that he liked the films ending better than his books ending

As for my own choice:

Spoiler: Adams Song; Blink 182

Love me some Blink182 and this is one of my favored songs by them. Poor kid...

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

There's something about Pantera's "Flood" that gets me every time, aside from the whole never going to hear another Dimebag solo again obligatory... its not the words, its the solo and the outro that seem to hurt so bad yet sound so awesome at the same time. Evokes memories of my brother who died of liver failure and one of my best friends who died in a car accident within almost a year of each other.

EDIT: Also "Theif" by Our Lady Peace is a song i just can't listen to despite it being a masterpiece imo.

EDIT #2: "The Kill" By 30 Seconds to Mars for 2 reasons... one because its just chilling for some reason and the subject matter hits me personally, and because its a bit of jealous depression cuz' dammit Jared Leto is both musically and theatrically talented...

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Oh OP... what have you unleashed from me.

First five...

Spoiler

I honestly find it weird that I've seen so many comments about the piano in this music because... it's just obvious to me that the heart and soul of the piece comes from the violin.

I'm honestly surprised at how moving this song was and still is for me even before you see the ending of the game. Somehow the creator of the game was able to sum up my feelings at the end of the game in a song halfway through it.

Second five.

Spoiler

Not as good as Hurt but it's still very good in my opinion.

If Black Blood Brothers had been more popular then I bet more of you guys would know about this song.

And this is nowhere near all of the sad songs I could pull out here but I'll stop myself from posting more... for now at least.

 

[OmniscientOstrich]

How about some Funeral Doom to keep that frown right the fuck where it is?


Everything you love will die.

Anyways, search up Depressive Black Metal on Youtube, boom, there you go. No, seriously, it's a thing.

As much as I hate the idea of naming sub-genres based on lyrical content, your comment did remind me that this thread could with some Xasthur. If Psycho Mantis' theme raped a destitute heroin addict, the resulting unwanted spawn would probably sound like this:


Other stuff to kill your holiday spirit:

Swans - Failure [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5I2HiSM-iag]
Dinosuar Jr. - Don't [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Krz11xrRcaE]
Panopticon - Resident [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-CItCWdqyA]
Nick Drake - Place to Be [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IUqN9ozmhw]
Neurosis - Purify [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omKId6Lhr3A]
Explosions in the Sky - What Do You Go Home To? [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsiwtBbGC1M]
Deftones - Change [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy41l5iYoBw]
Radiohead - All I Need [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZkIhV58_qc]

 

[RustyParker]

Chris Garneau's music really gets to me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPUm7zbD_NA

Just... There's no other way to put it. His music and style are so in sync with how it can be to be truly depressed. I listened to him a lot when I lost my family.

 

[hazabaza1]

EVERYONE ELSE LOSES

Seriously it's amazing how well done that whole scene was done, actually makes you give a shit about the characters in such a short time.

 

[Barbas]

How about this extended version of the ending music from the recent film 'Grey', when Liam Neeson finds himself in the wolves' lair and realises it's the end:


I usually prefer pure instrumentals to any music with lyrics.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

The most depressing film I saw was buried it's about a contract worker in iraq who gets kidnapped and buried alive it just toys with you and gets progressively darker I like it still not something to watch again

Holy hell do I second this, seriously the most depressing film I've ever seen. It's not even the situation the main character finds himself in, though that's depressing enough, it's that:

Spoiler

By the end of the film, not only does he die, he realizes through the course of it that his family isn't going to get any money (so they're screwed) his friend has been killed, he tortures himself for no reason, and the guy who has been his only ray of hope in all of this has been lying to him the entire time. Seriously, I couldn't make something any more depressing if I tried.

 

[Tanis]

This song popped up in my playlist, and I thought of this thread:
Cowboy Bebop - Rain (Female Vocal Version)

Yoko Kanno knows how to make some truly depressing stuff.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Latin American cinema in general is pretty depressing. Since every country was more or less plagued by military regimes throughout the 20th century it means we have a lot of depressing material to quickly whip out Foreign Award dramas. Low budget doesn't help either.

 

[Jolly Co-operator]

Listen to Take Me Back to Then by Bobby Caldwell when you're feeling nostalgic. It'll break your heart.

Spoiler

[link]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=284eIEFwSqA[/link]

 

[Random Argument Man]

Tim Robbins's character in Mystic river is the type of character you must evade when you're already depressed. I cried that night.

 

[Vegosiux]

For films, I'd have to say Grave of the Fireflies. Fantastic film, but... one watch was enough.

This is the single most depressing thing I have ever seen, and I don't regret it for a moment.

I see Kafka has been brought up too. I like how his work can be both depressing and amusing at the same time.

Oh, and then there's...uhhh, pretty much all the Slovenian literature from 1700 on or so, seriously, "the suffering of the little man" seems to be an all-permeating concept that made me make my literature teacher in high school hate me after I told her I'm kind of fed up with this self-flagellation.

 

[Zombie Badger]

Film-wise, City of Life and Death would be a good choice. A fairly recent Chinese film about the Rape of Nanjing, when the Japanese Army invaded the then-capital of China and made a very earnest attempt at the all-time war crime record. Unusually for a Chinese film, it's largely seen from the perspective of a Japanese soldier who becomes increasingly depressed by everything happening around him, and the director's choice to humanise the Japanese soldiers instead of portraying them as fundamentally evil got him quite a few death threats and the film almost wasn't released. It's a good movie, but the near-constant death and rape (the event really earned its nickname) are not exactly uplifting, and what really makes as soul-crushing as it is is the knowledge that all of it actually happened.