Most heartbreaking film you have ever seen

[ManlyBanisters]

El Cid.

Best ending ever - cry my eyes out every time.

It's not a film but the last episode of Blackadder where they all ran out into no man's land to certain death was extremely sad and poignant, all the more so because it was unexpected at the end of a comedy series.

Yup - one of the best moments of British TV in its history so far.

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). The machine gun tracking shot nearly makes me vomit. This is a masterpiece of a movie.

Absolutely agree. Horrifying and beautiful at the same time.

House of Flying Daggers - The decision she made at the end of the movie... much more climactic than the ending of Crouching Tiger.

Better movie all round, the ending is particularly beautiful.

All of those and I would add:

An Awfully Big Adventure - again for the ending.

Salvador - brutal and heartwrenching

Just talking scenes:
The scenes from Braveheart where he's burying his wife, and when he's being tortured at the end.
The scene at the end of the Great Escape when Donald Pleasance's character dies
Willem DeFoe dying in Platoon
The scene in the Outlaw Josey Whales where his wife and son are murdered.

I don't count Schindler's List as heartbreaking - it was beyond heartbreaking, it was brainbreaking. Maybe that's just me (I had spent a semester studying war poetry, including poetry by Concentration Camp survivors and victims), but I doubt it.

 

[Guy-jin]

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). The machine gun tracking shot nearly makes me vomit. This is a masterpiece of a movie.

You might really like the film Fires on the Plain, or at least the novel if you can't find the movie.

 

[2322]

Thanks Guy-jin, I'll take a look at it.

 

[Mem]

Like Mem0 said... and, thank god, for once, it was only 3 words!

(Here's one more word) BITCH!

 

[What to do?]

Pay It Forward - The end kills me.

I hadn't thought of that movie in a while...the end is a tear jerker!

 

[Tickled Pink]

What about ET or Moulin Rouge?

 

[MASSIVEPKGO_CHUCK]

In no specific or general order-
ET,
Schindler's list,
Against All Odds

 

[nudeyorker]

It's my Party!

 

[London_Calling]

Dancer in the Dark with Bjork - I love this film but fuck, I couldn't speak for hours afterwards, I found it so distressing.

Sophie's Choice for all the reasons mentioned before.

And I'm almost embarrassed to mention it so I'm only going to whisper the title!
The bridges of Madison County!

God, I'm such a poof!

 

[yhtang]

Brokeback Mountain - I also cried like a baby, for Jack, for Ennis, for the pain that their characters caused their families. Getting a post card returned with "DECEASED" marked on it is so harsh.

Ordinary People - The end when the father realizes that his wife lost all emotion after her firstborn, and favorite, son died. Despite the pretense, she could no longer love anyone in the family. I was sad for the son, the wife, the father.

Somewhere in Time - The end when Richard meets Elise after they are both dead. (the movie involves time travel.) Knowing that Elise must have pined for Richard for decades when she visited him as an old woman to give him that watch made it much more sad.

My choices include the above, for the same reasons.

And I would also add Il Postino - The Postman. It is an Italian film, I seem to recall.

 

[DC_DEEP]

Brokeback Mountain has to be high on the list.

There are many others, but I think that Mr. Holland's Opus deserves mention in this thread. His one desire was to be a professional composer, and music is his life. He takes what he thinks will be a temporary job (teaching, which slowly becomes the most important thing in his life,) has a (deaf) son whom he doesn't figure out how to relate to, or even communicate with, until his life is almost over. One of the almost unbearably crushing scenes is where he is arguing with his wife over what school to send their son to; she wants a signing school (considerably more expensive) or an oral school that their doctor recommended. She breaks down, crying, on the kitchen floor, and tells him something along the lines of "you get to go to school every day and spend time with your kids, and I can't even tell my own son I love him!"

 

[camper joe]

On Golden Pond

An aging couple Ethel and Norman Thayer ("Ethel Thayer, I almost didn't marry you cause it sounded like a lisp."), who spend each summer at their home on Golden Pond. They are visited by daughter Chelsea with her fiancé, where they drop off his rebelious son. The story explores the relationship, among other things the relationship that she had with her father growing up, as well as what can happen to a couple in the later years of a long marriage.

 

[SpoiledPrincess]

I think I'm alone in that if I'd seen ET in my house I'd have been straight on the phone to pest control.

 

[Mem]

Love Story and Brian's Song. I haven't seen them but from what I understand they fit this category.

 

[D_Bob_Crotchitch]

Bambi, the mom gets shot.

 

[naughty]

Love Story and Brian's Song. I haven't seen them but from what I understand they fit this category.

See them and then make your decision. They are wonderful but they are definitely movies of their time.

 

[D_Bob_Crotchitch]

BTW guys, Brian really died from testicular cancer. Keep up your self-exams.

 

[prince_will]

What about ET or Moulin Rouge?

to tell you the truth, Moulin Rouge has a heartbreaking ending, but the thought that you already know it's going to happen from the beginning takes something away from it.

 

[prince_will]

I think I'm alone in that if I'd seen ET in my house I'd have been straight on the phone to pest control.

screw that. that takes time. i was going to run and find a heavy shovel.

 

[alex8.5]

Love Affair - Annette Bening
Pay it Forward.