Trend alert: Are we seeking joy through sad cinema?

This year’s most successful films have all covered harsh, human tragedies

Hollywood seems to have been taking over by misery-cinema over the past year. It seems like sadness is the new key to success in the film industry nowadays, with films like Manchester by the Sea, A Monster Calls, Moonlight, Lion, Loving and La La Land, reported Vogue.

If you have not seen any of these films or have been living under a rock and somehow managed to avoid all the Oscar buzz last month, then let us be the first to break it to you: they’re not exactly feel-good films. Nope, not even the singing and dancing musical La La Land is all rainbows and butterflies.

Granted, gritty dramas and biopics have always done better on the awards circuit. But the afore-mentioned films have received most nods or nominations this year and seem to cover particularly brutal matters: terminal illness, heartbreak, drug abuse, young children separated from their families and one tragedy so cruel and bleak that it defies description.



But if you tell people that you came out of the cinema with mascara running down your puffy cheeks and your sleeves all soggy with tears, you’ll find they’re already on their phones looking up when and how close the next screening of the said film will be. They are practically rubbing their hands in glee at the thought of sobbing through a Friday night.

Could this be a sign of these unsettled and unsettling times? Like Vogue pointed out, it feels as though humankind – movie enthusiasts, in particular – have never enjoyed crying more. If a trip to the cinema was once about escaping into a fantasy world, be it one filled with aliens or people you’d like to be, now we’re seeking entertainment - or, rather, perhaps, relief – in stories that mirror our own. Being given a free pass to have a good cry in public is now something we seek and the cinema is the place where we can find it.

Of course, there will be times when we feel like watching a comedy and or want to indulge our broken hearts in a good, old-fashioned romantic comedy. But for now, it seems misery is what is giving us our kicks. So if you’re a film buff with a list of the latest films to binge-watch, we suggest you stock up on some tissue because you’re going to need it.

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