Evocations of despair

[Melville]

So Ebert calling Antichrist the most despairing movie he's ever seen got me thinking about depictions of despair in films. What do you think are the best depictions of despair/depression/anxiety, not in terms of being depressing or bleak, but in terms of evoking the feelings of the characters? What films best evoke that feeling of everything just falling apart, like your whole body is aching with nervous energy and you feel like tearing your arm off or doing anything to get some kind of release, but everything you do only makes it worse? Or the more subdued feeling that the only thing lying in your future is endless gray days of hopelessness, a never ending succession of moments that you dread?

The first things that come to my mind:
- the scene in Requiem for a Dream when Harry calls Marion from jail, or the later scene when the nurse tells him that Marion will come to the hospital, and he says "She won't come"
- the scene in Mulholland Drive when Diane kills herself
- the ending of Time Out.

EDIT: wait, I've got a better one for Mulholland Drive: the dinner party, just before Camilla announces her engagement. There's a clatter of wine glasses, and Diane flinches. That moment is brutal.

[Dead & Messed Up]

The Mist

When David Drayton starts dry-clicking the gun in his mouth.

[Bosco B Thug]

I commonly cite Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Seance as the film that's gotten me most racked with feelings of hopelessness and squirm-inducing despair/anxiety.

Can't quite think of another prime example of the top of my head...

[baby doll]

Going back to Ebert's original blog post, when he says the film "says we harbor an undreamed-of capacity for evil," I think he means "despairing" in the sense of it having a bleak philosophical outlook, rather than the characters feeling a sense of despair.

[soitgoes...]

The end of The Seventh Continent. Ugh. Or one of many other scenes in a Haneke film.

[Amnesiac]

The scene in After The Wedding, where Jørgen finally breaks down regarding his imminent death and how much he doesn't want to die. Pretty unforgettable.

[Melville]

Going back to Ebert's original blog post, when he says the film "says we harbor an undreamed-of capacity for evil," I think he means "despairing" in the sense of it having a bleak philosophical outlook, rather than the characters feeling a sense of despair.
I think he means both. But there are plenty of movies with bleak philosophical outlooks, so it didn't seem very interesting to ask which is the best at being bleak. It seems to me that there really aren't many movies that examine and evoke the subjective experience of despair. Most movies display it in an objective manner, from the point of view of an outsider, or they dilute it a whole lot. I'm hoping that Antichrist really delves into it with abandon (though it might be evoking Trier's feelings rather than the characters').

[baby doll]

I think he means both. But there are plenty of movies with bleak philosophical outlooks, so it didn't seem very interesting to ask which is the best at being bleak. It seems to me that there really aren't many movies that examine and evoke the subjective experience of despair. Most movies display it in an objective manner, from the point of view of an outsider, or they dilute it a whole lot. I'm hoping that Antichrist really delves into it with abandon (though it might be evoking Trier's feelings rather than the characters').Well, all movies display things in an objective manner. That's what photography and film is: a machine that represents the outside of things. Obviously films manipulate our feelings, but I don't know of any that made me lose all hope.

[Derek]

Well, all movies display things in an objective manner. That's what photography and film is: a machine that represents the outside of things. Obviously films manipulate our feelings, but I don't know of any that made me lose all hope.

You don't believe a film can convey the subjective experience of despair without making the viewer lose all hope?

I'll add Bresson's L'Argent and second The Seventh Continent.

[Pop Trash]

Most of Lilja 4-Ever and Wendy and Lucy left me pretty effed up.

[baby doll]

You don't believe a film can convey the subjective experience of despair without making the viewer lose all hope?

I'll add Bresson's L'Argent and second The Seventh Continent.Isn't that what despair is? To lose all hope?

When you watch Vertigo, and the camera zooms in while tracking out, do you feel like you're falling? We understand that Scotty feels like he's falling, and as viewers, we can empathize with him. But that's not the same as feeling it yourself.

Taking your two examples (L'Argent and The Seventh Continent), both are, first of all, fiercely materialist in their style: no dream sequences or subjective flashbacks; uninflected acting; lots of shots of hands performing mechanical tasks (the passing of money from one hand to another in Bresson's; the nuclear family smashing all their stuff in Haneke's).

Bresson's is despairing only in that there's no hope in the story; the world as a whole is corrupt and evil. In Haneke's, the family's suicide is motivated by despair. But watching neither film did I feel a sense of despair myself.

[soitgoes...]

Bresson's is despairing only in that there's no hope in the story; the world as a whole is corrupt and evil. In Haneke's, the family's suicide is motivated by despair. But watching neither film did I feel a sense of despair myself.
You might want to spoiler tag that.

[baby doll]

You might want to spoiler tag that.No, before I saw the film, I read reviews that mention that. I don't think it's a big surprise or anything.

[soitgoes...]

No, before I saw the film, I read reviews that mention that. I don't think it's a big surprise or anything.
Maybe it was despairing because I didn't know that going into the film.

[baby doll]

Maybe it was despairing because I didn't know that going into the film.Well, the movie is pretty "despairing" even before they start smashing everything up.

[Spinal]

No, before I saw the film, I read reviews that mention that. I don't think it's a big surprise or anything.

Yes, you need to use spoiler tags. Please consider this a warning.

EDIT: Sorry for the melodrama, but there have been complaints from other members.

[SirNewt]

Bergman's 'Through a Glass Darkly'

The whole F'n movie is ridiculous. After this film I've massively spread my Bergman intake not because his films aren't great but his films are a rough way to spend two hours.

I'll throw L'eclisse up for consideration as well. No one does despair like the new wavers.

[Derek]

Taking your two examples (L'Argent and The Seventh Continent), both are, first of all, fiercely materialist in their style: no dream sequences or subjective flashbacks; uninflected acting; lots of shots of hands performing mechanical tasks (the passing of money from one hand to another in Bresson's; the nuclear family smashing all their stuff in Haneke's).

Yes, I realize the similarities of their materialist styles, but I realize now that I misread Melville's question. I didn't feel despair myself after watching either of those films.

[Milky Joe]

Almost all of Synecdoche, New York. Specifically I think of all the scenes where he's cleaning.

I also think of Henry Gibson on stage at the end of Nashville, though it's quickly followed by a great dose of hopefulness.

Oh. The raincoat monologue in Lenny.

[chrisnu]

The endings of The Conversation and Safe felt irredeemably bleak.

[MacGuffin]

Most of Lilja 4-Ever and Wendy and Lucy left me pretty effed up.

I saw the last shot of the latter movie as one of good hope for things to come.

[Melville]

Well, all movies display things in an objective manner. That's what photography and film is: a machine that represents the outside of things. Obviously films manipulate our feelings, but I don't know of any that made me lose all hope.
I'm not sure what you're saying. Are you denying that a film can evoke a character's subjective state of mind? That seems patently ridiculous. I'm not talking about literally making the audience member's state of mind identical to the character's, but "calling forth, bringing to mind or recollection, or re-creating imaginatively" that state of mind. I'm talking about using filmic techniques to represent a character's feeling of despair, not necessarily inducing it in the audience (though it can certainly do that too; but it can do that just by showing a bunch of depressing things, or just by catching the audience on a bad day, without trying to evoke a particular character's state of mind). Even a purely materialistic depiction of events can do that, if done right, though I'm mostly thinking of more expressionistic, overtly subjective depictions (e.g. the "chest-cam" in Requiem for a Dream).


Yes, I realize the similarities of their materialist styles, but I realize now that I misread Melville's question. I didn't feel despair myself after watching either of those films.
I'm not sure that you did misread my question. You said a film could "convey the subjective experience of despair", which sounds about right, unless I'm misunderstanding you.

[trotchky]

Punch-Drunk Love
Bad Lieutenant
L'Enfant
Fargo
Inland Empire
The Piano Teacher
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
Mysterious Skin
Frownland
Yeast

(The last two are part of what I like to call "The New Grindhouse")

[Melville]

Punch-Drunk Love
Seriously? Which parts?

[trotchky]

Seriously? Which parts?

All the parts before he falls in love.

[B-side]

In a Year with 13 Moons. Particularly, the ending.

[Melville]

All the parts before he falls in love.
Hm. I guess. Though I think it was more successful in evoking the love part. Popeye songs and blue lens flares for the win!



In a Year with 13 Moons. Particularly, the ending.
Oh. Well now I do want to see it; indifference to Fassbinder be damned.

[Boner M]

Roughly 1/3 of the films mentioned thus strike me as cathartic rather than despairing. Wonder what that says about me?

[Melville]

Roughly 1/3 of the films mentioned thus strike me as cathartic rather than despairing. Wonder what that says about me?
You're too happy. Snap out of it.

[Amnesiac]

All the parts before he falls in love.

Definitely.

[Bosco B Thug]

Safe's a good one. Also... The Seventh Victim and Chinatown.

[Melville]

Chinatown.
Really? I'd say that falls more into the bleak-philosophy category than the evocation-of-character's-despair category. But, boy, does that ending make the movie. Thank god Polanski won that fight.

[Spinal]

The Sweet Hereafter

[Bosco B Thug]

Really? I'd say that falls more into the bleak-philosophy category than the evocation-of-character's-despair category. But, boy, does that ending make the movie. Thank god Polanski won that fight. Ok, yeah, I see the distinction you mean. But yes, totally, the ending is devastating.

[Qrazy]

The Fire Within (Malle)
Toby Dammit (Fellini)
Irreversible (Noe)

[baby doll]

Yes, you need to use spoiler tags. Please consider this a warning.

EDIT: Sorry for the melodrama, but there have been complaints from other members.Really? I try to be sensitive to this sort of thing, but I think fundamentally you can't discuss a film without giving away some of the plot. How would you describe The Seventh Continent? A film about a "typical" Austrian nuclear family who live according to a monotonous, highly repetitive routine, and... well, I can't tell you anymore without ruining the surprise.

[Watashi]

It's not that you can't spoil the movie... just use spoiler tags.

Jesus, is that hard to understand?

[baby doll]

I'm not sure what you're saying. Are you denying that a film can evoke a character's subjective state of mind? That seems patently ridiculous. I'm not talking about literally making the audience member's state of mind identical to the character's, but "calling forth, bringing to mind or recollection, or re-creating imaginatively" that state of mind. I'm talking about using filmic techniques to represent a character's feeling of despair, not necessarily inducing it in the audience (though it can certainly do that too; but it can do that just by showing a bunch of depressing things, or just by catching the audience on a bad day, without trying to evoke a particular character's state of mind). Even a purely materialistic depiction of events can do that, if done right, though I'm mostly thinking of more expressionistic, overtly subjective depictions (e.g. the "chest-cam" in Requiem for a Dream).Well, taking the chest-cam example, how does that technique represent a character's feeling of despair? It's used repeatedly throughout the film in different contexts and is associated with at least two different characters. It's usually employed after something terrible happens, but that's pretty much every scene. When Marlon Wayans is running away from the (spoilers!) guys shooting at him, he seems less despairing than afraid, while if memory serves (more spoilers!), when Aronofsky attaches the chest cam Jennifer Connelly, it's just after selling her body for drugs, and the sequence ends with her throwing up into the camera in disgust. In other words, it's a pure technique with no fixed emotional association.

[baby doll]

It's not that you can't spoil the movie... just use spoiler tags.

Jesus, is that hard to understand?But how much of a movie's plot can we describe before having to use tags? Is there a number of minutes after which the plot becomes classified, or are we going by act breaks? In which case, can I tell you that Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz gets caught in a tornado that drops her house in the magical land of Oz?

[Grouchy]

But how much of a movie's plot can we describe before having to use tags? Is there a number of minutes after which the plot becomes classified, or are we going by act breaks? In which case, can I tell you that Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz gets caught in a tornado that drops her house in the magical land of Oz?
Yeah, exactly. You're ok up until the first act break.

Unless it's something like Passion of the Christ.

[Melville]

The Sweet Hereafter

Irreversible (Noe)
Which characters' despair is being evoked, and in which scenes? Both movies are pretty depressing explorations of the fragility of human life, but I don't remember any particular character's despair being evoked. I guess I can see The Sweet Hereafter, but Irreversible seemed more like general horror and ugliness than despair/depression/anxiety.


Well, taking the chest-cam example, how does that technique represent a character's feeling of despair? It's used repeatedly throughout the film in different contexts and is associated with at least two different characters. It's usually employed after something terrible happens, but that's pretty much every scene. When Marlon Wayans is running away from the (spoilers!) guys shooting at him, he seems less despairing than afraid, while if memory serves (more spoilers!), when Aronofsky attaches the chest cam Jennifer Connelly, it's just after selling her body for drugs, and the sequence ends with her throwing up into the camera in disgust. In other words, it's a pure technique with no fixed emotional association.
I wasn't suggesting that it had a fixed emotional association—just that it is used to evoke a character's state of mind. The fact that our point of view corresponds in a one-to-one manner with the characters' movements and is fixed on the expression on their faces helps to express their subjective experience (obviously aided by the soundtrack and other elements). Returning to your Vertigo example, when the camera zooms in while tracking out, it doesn't necessarily make me feel vertiginous, but it brings to mind that feeling.

I'm still not sure what you're trying to argue here.

[Qrazy]

Which characters' despair is being evoked, and in which scenes? Both movies are pretty depressing explorations of the fragility of human life, but I don't remember any particular character's despair being evoked. I guess I can see The Sweet Hereafter, but Irreversible seemed more like general horror and ugliness than despair/depression/anxiety.


The film itself is despairing. It closes with Time Destroys Everything (trite but very despairing) and pretty much everyone is in despair... after the rape. But if you're looking for existential despair than the other two fit better.

Also (I'm assuming the film doesn't have to end in despair, the characters just have to experience protracted despair at some point in the film)...

Cantata (Jancso)
Blue (Kieslowski)
Hour of the Wolf (Bergman)
21 Grams (Inarritu)
Paths of Glory (Kubrick)
Nights of Cabiria (Fellini)
Umberto D (De Sica)
The Bicycle Thief (De Sica)
Stalker (Tarkovsky)
Apocalypse Now (Coppola)
Rome, Open City (Rosselini)
Woyzeck (Herzog)

[Spinal]

I'm guessing that you don't remember The Sweet Hereafter very well. It's there in almost every scene.

[Melville]

The film itself is despairing.
Sure. But that doesn't really fit the criteria ("the best depictions of despair/depression/anxiety, not in terms of being depressing or bleak, but in terms of evoking the feelings of the characters")—not that we can't open up the question a bit.


Hour of the Wolf (Bergman)
Good call. The scene in which von Sydow begins to make love to a woman and then sees all the vampires standing looking at him, and the woman laughs...that's probably one of the best fictional depictions of social humiliation outside a Dostoevsky novel.


After reading synopses of some of the films mentioned in this thread, I really want to see The Seventh Continent and The Fire Within.


EDIT:

I'm guessing that you don't remember The Sweet Hereafter very well. It's there in almost every scene.
Possibly, but I re-watched it last year, I think. It's powerfully sad, but the only example I can think of where it evokes a particular character's despair is the story that Holm tells about his child. That story bears on the whole film, but it's the only time it really felt like one particular character's subjective state of mind, rather than an overall, enveloping sadness.

[Spinal]

The bus driver? Holm's daughter on the phone? The empty tryst in the hotel room? The confrontation near the wreckage? The first meeting Holm's character has with the family that lost their child?

[Raiders]

Or the more subdued feeling that the only thing lying in your future is endless gray days of hopelessness, a never ending succession of moments that you dread?

This would be a rather perfect description of the characters' emotions in The Sweet Hereafter. It is why they cling to the Holm character's promises of redemption and hope through legal action.

[Melville]

The bus driver? Holm's daughter on the phone? The empty tryst in the hotel room? The confrontation near the wreckage? The first meeting Holm's character has with the family that lost their child?
I don't know. None of those scenes, except maybe Holm's conversation with his daughter, seemed to evoke the characters' states of mind for me.


This would be a rather perfect description of the characters' emotions in The Sweet Hereafter. It is why they cling to the Holm character's promises of redemption and hope through legal action.
Yeah, I agree. But the film seemed to provide a God's-eye view, focusing on the tragedy as a whole, as a collective despair, rather than evoking any individual's experience. To me, the shots of the bus from high above seemed emblematic of the film's God's-eye approach. All the scenes that Spinal mentioned add up to a very devastating sum, but none of them really grabbed me and called to my mind the feeling of personal despair (except, as I mentioned, the scene where Holm recounts the story of the spider-nest; in that scene, I thought all the grief throughout the movie coalesced into a very personal picture). Obviously, based on people's varying suggestions in this thread, what accomplishes this depends on the person, and, presumably, on what relates most closely to their own experiences.

[Spinal]

OK, if you are denying The Sweet Hereafter as an evocation of despair, then I really have no idea what you're looking for and cannot help you.

[Yxklyx]

I'll second Lilya 4-Ever. One not mentioned is The Forest for the Trees.

[Melville]

OK, if you are denying The Sweet Hereafter as an evocation of despair, then I really have no idea what you're looking for and cannot help you.
Well, I'm not looking for help. I'm looking for discussion. I'm guessing that our experiences of The Sweet Hereafter are simply different.

In case people aren't clear on what I meant, here's the most apt definition of what I meant by "evoke":
"to produce or suggest through artistry and imagination a vivid impression of reality: a short passage that manages to evoke the smells, colors, sounds, and shapes of that metropolis. "(The definition is from Dictionary.com)

So what I'm talking about is a film giving a vivid impression of the actual first-hand subjective experience of mental anguish, hopelessness, overwhelming anxiety, or emotions akin to those. The scenes I mentioned in Mulholland Drive are really the best examples of that that I can think of. Here's the final scene (spoilers follow, obviously): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrtIPL45x_8
The sound of knocking and screaming, juxtaposed with a close-up of Naomi Watt's very tired-looking eye, the flickering blue lights, and the repeated cuts to the object that she's actually looking at (which we, the audience, recognize the importance of in her misery) convey her subjective experience extremely powerfully. Other, less obvious techniques can accomplish this as well, but I think that example conveys best what I'm talking about.

[origami_mustache]

The Fire Within (Malle)


This is probably the most depressing thing I've seen.

[Boner M]

Oh god, I just remembered the final shot of Wanda. Now that's the purest evocation of despair I've ever seen on film. Brings a lump to my throat even thinking about it.

A similar moment is the final shot of Chabrol's Le Boucher.

[MacGuffin]

A similar moment is the final shot of Chabrol's Le Boucher.

Shh, nobody say anything more! I finally got this and La cérémonie to watch.

[Qrazy]

Sure. But that doesn't really fit the criteria ("the best depictions of despair/depression/anxiety, not in terms of being depressing or bleak, but in terms of evoking the feelings of the characters")—not that we can't open up the question a bit.


Yeah I chose to ignore/only partially acknowledge that. :P

[Kurosawa Fan]

A similar moment is the final shot of Chabrol's Le Boucher.

Absolutely.

[trotchky]

Visitor Q, up until the parts where the sickest shit starts happening, then it just becomes funny and cathartic.