Why I Like Depressing Movies

Everyone saw Dark Knight this summer. I saw it twice. It was pretty cool. I do enjoy these feel good movies with car chases and love triangles and the good guy gets the girl in the end... Ok, so Batman wasn’t exactly like that. Still it’s become a cliché to say that people like these movies b/c they provide an escape. This begs the question, an escape from what?

I’ll tell you, but please don’t take it personally. These “happy people” movies help you forget about your own miserable life and assuage the challenges of further contemplating the brutal realities of what it means to live in our society and time. It’s been pointed out, most notoriously by Kevin Smith, that The Empire Strikes Back is the best Star Wars film for the very fact that it’s a series of down notes and that this sequence of events is so real and powerful that it captures life much better than the other movies.

It’s not popular to make such a statement but I’m not here to make friends or get your vote for the PTA. For a lot of people life is a never ending downer in the pursuit of happiness. One continuous losing streak, day after day after day. Working unsociable hours in a job you hate, getting so depressed even your friends hate you, having no love life, no one to comfort you or turn to, and waking up wishing that you hadn't. This is why Dark Knight will always be loved by more people than a biting discussion of nihilism set in a period piece (No Country For Old Men, my favorite movie last yr).

The other huge reason I have an affinity for this brand of cinema is that even if the movie makes you feel a little blue, at least it made you feel something. I watched Dark Knight, Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk this summer. Other than a temporary rise in testosterone, I felt nothing from all 3 of them. And those were actually decent movies. But if they don’t touch you, what’s the point? It’s kind of like having sex with someone who you don’t really like. It feels kind of good right when it happens, but it really doesn’t do anything meaningful for you. And in the long run, you’ll probably regret the experience (unless you sleep with me, of course).

And here is a short clip from the 1998 film Happiness, written and directed by Todd Solondz. They go a little overboard in the movie but it’s still really well done and the acting is remarkable at times.