Disclaimer: This article may contain spoilers!
As I sat down on the basement couch with my sister for her first viewing of Titanic, I knew we would inevitably resume one of our longest-running arguments: a debate about whether or not sad movies have the capacity for cinematic greatness.
First, allow me to briefly introduce my sister and myself so you can better understand the origins of our opinions. My sister, Julia, is two years younger than me, and we could not be more different. Her brain is a wonder of logical reasoning capable of incredible empathy. Rather than read a book, she prefers to build something with her table saw, or ride her unicycle. Her favorite genre of movie is comedy, and she likes to live out her life in the style of one as often as possible. I, on the other hand, am the embodiment of a right-brained liberal arts nerd. I lack logical reasoning skills, so I find a thrill in experiencing the emotions that a carefully thought-out work of art stirs up, be it a book, poem, song, or movie. My favorite movies are romantic comedies, and I pride myself on finding the quirkiest hidden gems that the genre has to offer.
For the sake of the argument, let’s assume that a “sad movie” constitutes any movie with a particularly devastating ending or central plot point. This could range from a Pixar film (Up comes to mind) to a full-blown tragedy like Titanic. Most movies contain a low point in which all hope seems lost, but some are more tear-jerking than others.
With that in mind, the initial difference between Julia and me is clear in our viewing of Little Women as directed by Greta Gerwig in 2019. When Beth tragically died, Julia clambered for the tissues with tears streaming down her face. I sat stone-faced. Watching Jo lose her closest sister to scarlet fever made my heart ache just like anybody else’s, but my wonderment at the intricacies of how that feeling was transported from the screen into my heart stopped my tears. While Julia harbored anger at Louisa May Alcott for inflicting the pain of Beth’s death on her, I found that looking for the nuances of the craftsmanship behind the art makes it exactly that: a work of art.
My lack of tears for Beth’s departure is not out of the ordinary. I have never cried during a movie. I didn’t shed a tear over the death of Tony Stark nor the murder of Mufasa. My family claims that I lack empathy, which could be true, although the plethora of angsty high school poetry sitting on my desktop says differently. Julia appears to possess more empathy than I do, which is made abundantly clear when she cries in the theater during the Pixar short film before the movie even starts. Occasionally, this even causes her to suffer the pain of a sad movie to the point of being unable to enjoy it. With our opposed reactions in mind, I’ll let you decide who walked out of Avengers: Endgame more emotionally injured.
Regardless of who suffers more, the point is simply that it doesn’t matter. The viewer’s level of empathy does not make the work of directors, writers, actors, and so many more artists behind the film any less creative. And if Endgame doesn’t live up to some semblance of cinematic greatness in your book, then take Inception, an indisputable classic, a masterclass in creativity. This did not live up to its ratings in Julia’s opinion; in fact, according to her, it’s a bad movie. When she so boldly uttered this claim, I took my argument to the next level.
I reached back into my memory for a movie she disliked in particular: La La Land. As the movie comes to a close, Mia strikes it big in the acting world and marries an unintroduced character for which the viewer has no attachment instead of Sebastian, the previously conceived love of her life. I remember reacting just as shocked and confused as everyone else in the room, but I had loved the movie up until that point, and I wasn’t about to let the ending ruin it for me. The more I reflected on it, the more I appreciated it. Mia and Sebastian had very different dreams that neither could fully pursue while maintaining a healthy marriage to the other. Their decision seemed realistic to me, even if some viewers cannot envision themselves doing the same.
This is the crux of the sad movie: the aching realism that it portrays. The tough pill to swallow. The hard truth. The fact that no matter how hard we try, our lives will not look like comedies or rom-coms, at least not in their entirety. People fall in and out of love. People die. People make incredibly difficult trade-offs. It’s all an inevitable part of life, and sad movies help us come to terms with our own realities. In the right cinematic hands, a sad scene or two become integral parts of making a movie a work of art. One could even go so far as to believe that the lowest points of your life contribute to making it a work of art just the same.
Now I return to Titanic. Titanic is, first and foremost, a tragedy and a love story; that much was clear to me the first time I watched it at 13 years old, when I lacked a developed analytical eye. Watching it five years later with a robust high-school humanities education, I found the story carefully interwoven with strong themes of feminism and class dynamics, and I noted a surprising level of balance in the relationship between Rose and Jack. These themes shine through the love story to add texture and a level of complexity, showing that the movie is more than a surface level romantic tragedy.
Julia enjoyed the movie up until Jack’s death, which she felt was unnecessary. On the surface, Jack died for Rose in a sacrificial gesture of his love for her. However, his death was also a direct reflection of inescapable outcomes pre-determined by class structure. Wealthy, privileged young women like Rose survived, and almost all male steerage passengers died. That was the reality of it, and though heart-wrenching and arguably avoidable, Jack’s death reflected it. Titanic may be a devastating movie, but it earned its title as a work of cinematic greatness through the beautiful portrayal of a story that is so much more than romantic.
Julia’s argument has emotional merit. But rejecting sad movies because you don’t want to confront the realistic view of the world they present does not function as a logical argument, and no amount of empathy will discredit the artistry of a film. And with that being said, I have one word for her:
Checkmate.