What is the most depressing film you have ever seen? (Fiction only)

[Chan790]

13. Irreversable.

I really love Gaspar Noe's experimental work as a filmmaker and his willingness to fuck with his audiences in subtle non-visual ways. (During the murder scene and the rape scene that bookend the film, he dubs in a inaudibly-low-frequency tone pitched exactly to cause nausea and headaches. He wants his audience to be as discomfited physically as they are by the events on the screen.)

That said, there is a realization from almost the first scene of this film told entirely in reverse that none of the major characters are ever going to be even close to okay ever again. A man is dead, two other men looking only for revenge find it hollow and bitter, the woman they both love has been raped so brutally that it's implied that she will commit suicide mere seconds after the close of the narrative because she can't live with it, everything is forever fucked, everybody's life is ruined by two senseless impulsive violent acts. The entire film is, as one reviewer called it: "A simultaneously beautiful and terrible examination of the destructive nature of cause and effect, and how time destroys everything."

So, yes...it's a depressing film. It is however so powerfully acted that it made stars of its' cast of unknowns including Monica Bellucci and Vincent Cassel.