Top 15 Saddest Moments

So, here it is. Valentine’s Day. And I’m single. So like many others across the globe, I feel sad around this time. But, I was thinking, this year I’ll go out, hit the town! Find a nice girl and have a great time.

Then I thought “screw it, I’m going to make everyone else as sad and miserable as I am”, so here’s my top fifteen saddest moments.

15. The Mist – Four Bullets, Five People

Yes, we start off with the 2007 film based on the 1980 story by Stephen King, which came out in the same year as ‘The Fog’. Anyway, the film focuses on a large group of people, including David (Thomas Jane), his son Billy (Nathan Gamble), and sort-of-a-love interest Amanda (Laurie Holden) surviving at the local grocery store as a mist covers the city and monsters roam outside.

As time passes, religious fanatic Mrs Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden) turns most of the people in the store into a cult, turning them against our sane group and the military when it turns out a top secret project opened a portal to another world, where the mist and monsters are coming through. After killing Mrs Carmody, David and his group flee, which results in the deaths of half their group, leaving David, Billy, Amanda, Irene (France Sternhagen) and Dan (Jeffrey DeMunn).

Their vehicle however runs out of fuel, which means that they’re now out in the open, surrounded by blood thirsty monsters. There’s a gun, but there’s only four bullets, which means that one of them will have to kill the others. David kills the others, wanting to spare them a violent death, and we see him break down. Well, he didn’t just kill his friends and his new potential love interest, he killed his son. He didn’t want to do it, he had to do it, he breaks down and yells in anguish. He gets out the car, ready to face the monsters, to face death and rejoin them in the afterli...

 

Oh you’re kidding.

The military was literally two minutes away?! Jesus Christ! David now faces the realisation, that if he had just waited a couple of minutes, they would have been saved. He just sacrificed everything he had left in the world, for nothing. It was just a cruel, sad moment, as we watch David collapse in such grief, such sorrow, as two soldiers wonder what the Hell is wrong with him.

14. Blackadder Goes Fourth – “Goodbyeee”

Four series on and Blackadder (Rowan Atkinson) and co has avoided every attempt on their lives so far, avoiding multiple beheadings in ‘Blackadder II’ and being saved by Lord Flashheart from Baron von Richthofen included. And then comes the last episode of the last series, where Blackadder and co have been order to charge across no-man’s land towards the German trenches in World War One.

Now, a quick history lesson, the reason why the area of land between trenches is called no-man’s land, is because the second anyone sets foot on it, they’re very likely to be killed.

This is something that is put across very clearly, with Blackadder, Baldrick (Tony Robinson) and George (Hugh Laurie) talking about how they’ve lost many friends during the war. George is naive and wants to meet Gerry head on, only realising too late that he’s scared stiff, Baldrick cries about how pointless the war is, and Blackadder tries his best to get out of the suicidal charge across no-man’s land. Even Darling (Tim McInnerny) finds himself being put in the charge when Melchett (Stephen Fry) suddenly puts him in, and we see Darling beg to stay behind, before later mentioning his hopes and dreams when the war finished, dreams which will now never happen.

 

This last episode was truly sad, it has its funny moments but it focuses more on the emotional aspect of the First World War. It makes the audience feel the true horror of war, as the realisation that none of these characters can get out of it sinks in.

We don’t even see if they survive or not, as it fades to a field of poppies, reminding us of the sacrifice men and woman have made for freedom.

13. Murdoch Mysteries – “Pray With Me”

I literally only just watched this episode yesterday, so I had to do a quick alteration to the list. Murdoch Mysteries follows Detective William Murdoch (Yannick Bisson) in Toronto, Canada, using methods which were unusual at the time, but can be found in everyday police investigations today.

In the episode ‘Voices’ (Season Four episode ten), Murdoch meets up with his long lost sister, Susannah (Michelle Nolden) at a nunnery where a body has been uncovered in an open grave. Murdoch and Susannah clash numerous times, as Murdoch is a man of science while Susannah has become a woman of faith, bringing Murdoch’s faith into question, but you can tell they’re trying to look past that and to try and reconnect.

 

It doesn’t help when Susannah confesses to a murder she didn’t commit to cover up for someone else. But eventually the real killer is revealed, and Murdoch and Susannah meet up in the chapel, where she reveals she’s leaving to return to her nunnery in...somewhere. He’s pretty upset by this, saying that they’ve only just found each other again. However, she then reveals that there was another reason why she confessed to the murder; she’s dying.

Dude! That came out of nowhere! Susannah tells Murdoch that she loves him, and you can see the devastation in Murdoch’s face. He has been reconnected with his sister after over a decade of separation, and she tells him she’s returning to her original place of worship to die in peace, it’s like he’s losing her all over again.

She asks Murdoch to pray with her, which he does. We’re not sure if he’s doing it because she asked him, or if he has regained some form of faith, but either way, it was a really emotional scene, even if it was brought upon us so quickly.

12. Futurama – Waiting Forever

‘Futurama’ follows Phillip J. Fry as he is frozen and wakes up in the future, where he falls in love with the cyclops Leela, becomes best friends with the robot Bender, gets a job with his great(x30)nephew Professor Farnsworth and his crew. In the future, Fry has adapted really well, he has friends, a somewhat great job, everything he didn’t have back in the year 2000.

And then in ‘Jurassic Bark’, we find Fry doesn’t have everything. We learn that Fry befriended a stray dog which he would later call Seymour. In the future, Fry finds that Seymour’s fossil has been put on display. Fry then does whatever he can trying to get back Seymour, so that Farnsworth can resurrect him.

Upon finding that Seymour died at the age of 15, Fry halts the project, assuming that Seymour lived a full and happy life. The final flashback shows us otherwise. While the other flashbacks show that Seymour is trying to save Fry to no avail, the final one shows us that Seymour obeyed Fry’s last order, and waited at the pizzeria Fry worked at.

Seymour waited, and waited, and waited. Seasons change, years pass by, and Seymour continues to wait. Mr Panucci (Fry’s boss) and Seymour age, the pizzeria starts to crumble, but Seymour continues to stay, still waiting for Fry to return.

Seymour didn’t live a happy life, he waited for Fry to return, and we the audience know that that wasn’t going to happen. Seymour shows great loyalty, but the flashback shows that for his remaining twelve years, Seymour lived a sad and depressing life, and died in a way no-one wants to; alone.

11. The Walking Dead – Leaving Merle

In a world where the dead are rising, we follow Rick (Andrew Lincoln) who is trying to find his family. On his journey (Episode two) he comes across a group of survivors in Atlanta, which consists of T-Dog (IronE Singleton)  and Merle (Michael Rooker). There’s tension between T-Dog and Merle, as Merle is shown to be racist, calling T-Dog a...well...the N word.

Rick intervenes in a fight between the two and handcuffs Merle to a pipe. While Rick and the others try to find a way out of the city, T-Dog is given the key to the handcuffs. Unfortunately, when the time came to run for the safety of the vehicle Rick got a hold of, T-Dog drops the key down a vent. Despite Merle begging not to be left alone, T-Dog flees; though he does chain the door so the infected can’t get through.

Before this Merle was acting tough, a jerk yes, but tough. Leading up to the point when everyone was leaving, Merle was begging to be let loose. You know the saying that when you’re scared, the real ‘you’ appears? That’s essentially what happens here. Merle acts tough, but when it comes down to it, he’s just as scared as anyone else, the tough guy act was a smokescreen to hide how scared he was.

We don’t even know what happens to him. In the next episode he pleads with God for help, before trying to free himself again. When Rick, T-Dog and Merle’s brother Daryl (Norman Reedus) return to free Merle, he’s gone. The handcuffs are still there, and so is Merle’s hand, but not Merle. So not only was Merle left scared and alone, he was forced to cut his hand off in order to survive.

It’s just sad to think that this guy was left alone and was force into such a difficult position, and then we don’t even know if he’s alive or not. And we’ll probably never find out.

10. The Lion King – Mufasa dies

You knew this was coming! Disney seems to be a hotspot for sad moments; Bambi’s mother dying, the Beast falls, Dumbo’s mother being locked up. Originally this was going to be Bambi’s mother’s death, but  be honest, I wasn’t really that upset by it. Yes it’s a sad moment, but when I was a kid, I must admit, I wasn’t that upset by it.

Anyway, I decided to go with Mufasa’s death from ‘The Lion King’ since I felt more emotional towards it. A young kid watches his dad fall into a stampede, and when he finds his father again, he thinks he’s sleeping, like any kid would. The fact that, despite Simba’s pleas, Mufasa won’t wake up. Simba starts to cry as his efforts prove to be futile, then his uncle Scar tricks him into thinking his dad died because of him, so Simba runs away and lives for years thinking that he killed his father.

It really is a sad moment for a child to watch, Hell, it’s sad for anyone to watch. Unless you’re Boycie. He laughed at the death of Bambi’s mother.

9. The Green Mile – Coffey’s Execution

An adaptation of another Stephen King novel pops up, as we see Paul Edgecomb (Tom Hanks), a guard working death row, comes across John Coffey (Michael Clark Duncan), a man who appears to be mentally challenged but possesses Linderman’s power of healing. And fly manifestation.

The film essentially follows the journey these two men take as Edgecomb executes other individuals on death row, and how Coffey is innocent. Oh believe me, I didn’t give anything away, oh no, not when it says that Coffey is innocent on the back of the freaking box! And yeah! The guy who is afraid of the bloody dark, isn’t a killer! No shit!

But it doesn’t take away the emotional impact that Coffey’s execution gives. The fact that, after all this time, the guards do not want to execute Coffey, and who can blame them? I mean, Coffey refuses having a bag over his head, because he’s afraid of the freaking dark! This guy is a gentle giant, he’s a sweet guy who only wants to see the good in people. Duncan makes you fully engrossed in this character, you just hope that something comes along to help Coffey, to save Coffey.

But it’s pretty much the fact that Edgecomb and the other guards know that Coffey is innocent, but they can’t do anything about it. The only thing Edgecomb can do is offer to leave the door open so Coffey can escape, but he declines, stating that the world is too cruel to live in. How can you not feel something for that?

8. Armageddon – Harry’s Sacrifice

Again, you knew this was coming. While it appears most people don’t like Michael Bay films, I like them, and yes, my reviews of the Transformers films will be coming, probably April. But anyway.

Armageddon follows an oil crew being sent into space to drill a hole on an asteroid which is one a collision course with Earth. However the remote detonator is damaged so someone has to stay behind to manually detonate it. It was originally going to be A.J (Ben Affleck), but Harry (Bruce Willis), not wanting his daughter (Liv Tyler...who was awful!) to lose him, forces A.J back into the ship and takes his place.

The sadness from this scene though comes from Harry pouring his heart out to his daughter, saying sorry that he had to break his promise of returning to Earth. How he praises his crew and how proud and how much he loves his daughter, and all she and the crew could do, is nothing but watch and listen. And the fact that the image that races through his mind when he detonates the nuclear device, is of his daughter. Seriously! Whether you hate or love Michael Bay, you can’t deny the emotional value of that scene.

7. Ghost Town – Passing On

Wow, Ricky Gervais caring about someone, it’s bizarre. Gervais stars as dentist Bertram Pincus, an antisocial jackass. After a near death experience, Pincus can now see ghosts, one of which, played by Greg Kinnear, persuades him to break up the relationship of his ex (Tea Leoni).

Of course we get that point where the guy screws things up and he feels depressed. After getting some advice from his colleague (Aasif Mandvi), Pincus decides to help the ghosts who were asking him to help them and the loved ones they’ve left. These include the mother whose letter to her daughter was hidden under the carpet, the three workmen who want a crane operator to know that it was an equipment malfunction that killed them, not him, the biker who wants his girlfriend to wear a helmet (Since not wearing one was what killed him), and the father who wants his daughter to have her teddy, the one item that reminds her of him and that can get her to sleep.

While it is a happy scene, because these spirits are moving on to the afterlife to rest in peace, it’s still a moving scene. For some of them it’s because of the sentimental value the items have to the person still living, for others it’s knowing that the living are safe and secure, and for others, it’s knowing that they weren’t the cause of their death, that it was entirely out of their control.

I actually started crying from just typing this but up, it’s a beautiful scene, end of story.

6. Joyeux Noel – The Ending

Well, you already know how I feel about this film, this is, what, the third time I’ve mentioned this film? Well, you should know what this about now, German, Scottish and French soldiers all put down their weapons to celebrate Christmas together.

But after that how can they shoot and kill the person they called brother and friend? The film delivers a great anti-war message and is very emotional as the characters struggle whether to follow country or friendship, but the choice is the forced upon them. The Scottish and French are split up and the Germans are sent to the Western front to face the might of the Russian army.

The emotion comes from, not only not knowing whether these people somehow survive the war, but whether or not they meet up after the war.

5. Cast Away – Losing Wilson

Well, well, Tom Hanks again. This time he plays Chuck Noland, a FedEx employee who gets stranded on an island when his plane crashes. The film follows his survival and, eventually, escape from the island.

While the ending is sad, in which he finally reaches civilisation and finds that his long-term girlfriend has married someone else, it’s a scene on the ocean that gets me. You see, Noland manages to create a face on a football from his blood, calls it Wilson, and talks to it, as a means to keep sane. Okay he’s talking to a football but you know what I mean. He’s sane enough to know it’s still a football, but it’s the only thing he has to talk to.

But on the raft on the ocean, Wilson falls in and disappears. Noland starts screaming for Wilson and searches franticly for him, screaming in agony. Not only is he alone again, but he’s now lost his only friend. Noland is overwhelmed by loneliness, you forget that Wilson was a football and start to think of him as a living breathing person.

And the worst thing is, Wilson doesn’t get a film credit.

4. Fresh Prince of Bel-Air – Will’s Dad Leaves. Again.

Hey, it’s a fictionalised version of Will Smith, but it still matters! We all know the story, in West Philadelphia, born and raised, he got in one little fight and his mom got scared and said “you’re moving with your auntie and uncle in Bel-Air”.

In this show, Will was raised by a single mother since his father bailed on him when he was younger. So can you imagine his joy when his father (Ben Vereen) turns up in ‘Papa’s Got a Brand New Excuse’? The only problem is that at the end of the episode, Will says he’s leaving with his dad, but his dad is leaving without him.

After having an argument with Uncle Phil (James Avery), he tells Will that he has some business to take care of and therefore has to postpone their trip. Will says it was great seeing you ‘Lou’, refusing to call him dad, then says it’s cool to Phil, initially using his bravado to shield himself. Will tells Phil how he learnt how to fight, how to shoot hoops, how to drive, how to shave, how he did everything without him.

But as Will lists all these things, you can see the kink in his armour, you can see the wall he’s hiding behind crumbling away, eventually yelling at the top of his voice “To Hell with him!”. Will then begins to cry, showing his defence has fallen, saying “How come don’t want me man?”. He and Uncle Phil hug, as the camera zooms in on the present Will bought his father, a statue, of a father hugging his young son, of the love and commitment, the one thing Will always wanted from his father, but never will have.

3. Titanic – Nearer My God to Thee

Yes, yet probably another film which you expected to be one here, but was it the moment you expected? It isn’t the point where Rose (Kate Winslet) let’s Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) go, oh no, it’s the point when the band plays Nearer My God to Thee.

You see, up until that point, they were told to play cheerful music, but as the ship continues to sink, the people on the ship start to panic. The band starts to break up, until the violinist (Jonathan Evans-Jones) starts playing Nearer My God to Thee. The other musicians look at him, then join in. The film then cuts to some calm moments within the ship, like Captain Smith (Bernard Hill) entering the bridge as water slowly leaks in (the water will later burst in, killing him), before going down into the ship where Mr Andrews (Victor Garber) prepares to go down with his creation, an old couple huddle together on the bed as their room floods, then there’s the Irish mother who gives her children a bedtime story, being unable to make it the decks.

Then we go back to the decks, and it’s here where panic really kicks in; it’s not until the musicians play their final song, that the chaos truly starts. The front of the ship is now fully submerged, one of the last (If not the last) lifeboat is stuck, inside the famous stairway starts to flood, and people are racing towards the back of the ship as it raises higher into the air. Fear and chaos has taken control.

And as the musicians finish their song, they watch the water slowly approach them, and the violinist says “Gentlemen. It’s been an honour playing with you”, and they accept their fates.

The song playing along with these images is such an emotional image, it brings me to tears every time.

2. Of Mice and Men – Shooting Lennie

Now I first saw this in English class, back in, oh, year ten maybe? Maybe year eleven? I was fifteen? I can’t remember, anyway, I saw the 1992 film first. And I became instantly captivated by it, I loved the story, I loved the characters, I loved Gary Sinise and John Malkovich.

George (Sinise) and Lennie (Malkovich) go to work on a farm, but get into a conflict with Curley (Casey Siemaszko) who doesn’t like Lenny. However Curley’s wife (Sherilyn Fenn), well, likes the company of men...who isn’t her husband. She isn’t a whore, at least I don’t think so, she just wants to have a life outside her house. Unfortunately Lenny kills her. Lenny runs to meet George at a certain place, where George tells Lennie about the piece of land they plan to get, about how they’re going to live “off the fatta the land”, where they’ll have loads off rabbits to look aft...

BANG!

Jesus Christ! George just shot him! I mean, I can understand why he did it. Curley was going to torture Lennie for killing his wife, inflict a slow and painful death, and George can’t run with Lennie this time, not after Lennie accidentally killed someone. But. My God!

At least George made it easier for Lennie. He made Lennie look in another direction so that he can’t see the agony on his face, he has Lennie think of their dream so that his last thought was a happy one, and he shoots him in the same spot Carlson (Richard Riehle) shoots Candy’s (Ray Walston) dog, so it’s painless and quick.

Of course, doing this means that the dream he and Lennie had has died, not even Candy can persuade George to stick with it. George may have acted like he didn’t care, but he really did. You can see how remorseful he is, how much he regrets killing Lennie.

But, again, I hadn’t read the book before, so this wasn’t just sad, this was shocking and upsetting. Seriously, I was really upset when I first saw this. I was still upset when I got home from school. It’s that upsetting.

1. Paths of Glory – The Firing Squad

Another World War One film, and...my God. We have French General Mireau (George Mcready) order his division on a suicidal run across no-man’s land to capture a heavily defended German position called the ‘Anthill’; at the same time he refers to the unit as percentages, rather than actual people. This results in a massive defeat with huge losses to two of the squads, whilst the third was pinned down in their trench.

Mireau orders an example to be made from the troops, which General Broulard (Adolphe Menjou) 

persuades him to court martial three soldiers (one from each division) instead of a hundred. The trial results in guilty verdicts, so the three soldiers are sentenced to be shot. The man who defended them, Colonel Dax (Kirk Douglas), receives information that “could be useful” the night before the execution.

The three men are lead to the stakes where they’ll be tied and shot by the firing squad. Private Ferol (Timothy Carey) is having a mental breakdown and crying, Corporal Paris (Ralph Meeker) already had his breakdown and is ready to face Death, the third man, Private Arnaud (Joe Turkel) is unconscious from a fight; that’s right, he’s not even awake while being executed. The three men are tied to their stakes, and after watching these men for the last forty odd minutes, we’re expecting a last minute breakthrough, we’re expecting that useful information to save these men from...

BANG!

And they’re dead.

Bloody Hell. This was done to great effect. Paris, yeah, he already had his breakdown in the cells, where he sobbed and cried, he even prayed for the first time in years. Ferol was now having a breakdown, which everyone would go through when they know that they’re going to die. No-one wants to die, especially by those serving their own country. I don’t even want to think about Arnaud, dreaming one second then poof! Nothing. A life sniffed out in an instance.

They even had excuses not to be executed. Paris was selected to stop him from reporting that Lieutenant Roget (Wayne Morris) for friendly fire and falsifying reports. Ferol was forced to retreat since everyone else with him was shot down, therefore he couldn’t take the Anthill by himself. Arnaud meanwhile was selected by chance, despite the fact that he was cited for bravery twice. The trial was a farce as well! Yeah! It was illegal! No statement of charges was announced, no recordings of the trial were made and any evidence to defend the three soldiers wasn’t permitted. And that useful information? It was a statement from an artillery commander (John Stein) and witnesses who refused an order from Mireau to shell their own men in order to get them out of the trenches, without following proper procedure and putting their own men in danger, so Mireau will now be put on trial.

It appears to be just desserts, but at the same time will he get the same treatment the three executed men will get? This was certainly one of the most shocking, one of the most upsetting, one of the most saddest moments to ever hit the silver screen. And books.

Great, that list backfired. All it did was make me even more miserable! Fantastic(!) Well, I suppose I still have ‘The Muppets Take Manhattan’ to help cheer me up, we'll see how that goes.