most depressing movie you have seen

[ChocolateChipCharlie]

Most serious, well-made movies about the Holocaust and/or WWII are depressing as hell.

Sophie's Choice
The Pianist
Schindler's List
Saving Private Ryan
Life is Beautiful
Etc.

Requiem for a Dream is another good one that has been mentioned.  From my childhood, I remember it was a serious blow in Neverending Story when the horse dies in the swamp.  Lord. 

Ditto for Bambi - that's a great movie for 3 and 4 year old kids.  "Ooh!  A fun Disney movie!  Now let's all watch Bambi's mom get shot and killed.  Now you'll spend the next year or two trying to get over the idea of being orphaned as a child because of your mother's brutal killing right in front of you!"

Are documentaries excluded?  Because if they're not, I'd have to say that GASLAND really shook me up a lot when I saw it.  Maybe more than any movie I've seen before.  I think the part that got me the most was seeing the map of gas wells across the country, seeing the whole country fill up with little red dots, and thinking "my wife and I are about to start a family - where the hell can we possibly live that isn't tainted by this?"

Now that I'm an adult, I can get past movies that are pure fiction and depressing (The Mist is an example - it would be depressing but it's so far out there that it's not realistic enough to depress me).  It's the ones that are based on real events or are close enough to reality that I could see them, those are the ones that get me.

1984 would be on my list, but I read the book first so I knew what was coming and had already gotten past the worst of the depression from it.

Joe mentioned And the Band Played On - that movie is haunting.  Well-done, but really disturbing.  Matthew Modine's quotes: "we could've stopped it...."  "How many dead hemophiliacs does it take?  A hundred?  A thousand?  Give us a number so we won't annoy you until it becomes more profitable to save people than to kill them."  Ack.  Such a powerful movie.

[Umaril The Unfeathered]

Kudos for your mention of Requiem For A Dream, ChocolateChipCharlie.

The way Ellen Burstyn's character kept thinking she needed to take speed to lose weight for a game show she'd never be on was especially hard to look at.  Andwhat happened to the kid's arm from using infected needles should be a cautionary tale in it's own right.

Another one that dosen't get much mention is The Virgin Suicides. If any of you fellow Bad Movier-er's have seen it, nuff' said.

[Pilgermann]

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is a total downer.  Violent and hopeless, but very well made.  Chinatown has become one of my absolute favorite films, but it drains me by the time it's over and leaves me depressed and angry.  Stroszek has been wisely mentioned before, but it's a film that I love and find a strange comfort in.  Supposedly Ian Curtis, Joy Division's singer, had watched it shortly before commiting suicide.

[claws]

Most depressing for me was 21 Grams (2003).

[Couchtr26]

Quite a few Shaw Brothers movies lately for me.  It has nothing to do with the movie itself and more to do with the fact that the movies seem to end in a non ending.  An assumed ending, I find that depressing as I would like to see the story have some resolution.  I guess it is more realistic to end things that way as we can't see a characters whole life and are just watching a snapshot.  When I feel unresolved I find that sad.