The saddest country in cinema history, according to science
Is a happy ending always a good thing? Sometimes, there’s nothing better than having your feelings obliterated by a tragic ending to a gut-wrenchingly sad movie, allowing you to have a good cry and cathartically process some heavy emotions.
A sad film can sometimes do you good, perhaps helping you to see the upsetting things in your own life a little bit more cinematically or simply reminding you of the natural balance of life. Without sadness, we wouldn’t experience the highs of euphoria and happiness as intensely.
So, while it’s good to indulge in a happy ending, can you really blame us emotional sadists for indulging in a tear-jerking, core-shaking film? There’s a reason why recent movies like All of Us Strangers and Aftersun were so popular (it seems Paul Mescal has a thing for emotional torture), with many audience members strongly resonating with hard-hitting themes like grief, something many of us can relate to but find it hard to process. That’s why it becomes art’s job to help make these intangible feelings – ones of hopelessness and despair – feel a little more bearable, or at least understandable.
Titanic became a worldwide sensation upon its release in 1997 for similar reasons; people love to cry at movies because it can often feel like a strangely purifying and releasing experience, and when you’re crying because of a movie, you can feel these cathartic emotions without having to actually live through what the characters are going through. While a scene might remind you of something in your own life, at that moment in time, you’re safe, watching the movie from the comfort of your home or a theatre.
Why Spain makes the saddest films in the world
When it comes to finding a sad movie to watch, there are certain countries that are more likely to deliver you a tragic storyline with an unhappy ending, so if you’re searching for your next sob-into-your-pillow movie, you need to be venturing into the world of European cinema. A study conducted by Stat Significant, which assessed over 40,000 movies from 80 countries, sought to find just how many movies ended happily, and the results concluded that Spain is the saddest country in cinema history.
The study found that 51.2% of American films tend to have a happy ending, while Spain has just 19.1%. There are many powerful and emotionally moving movies from Spain, like The Sea Inside from 2004, which sees Javier Bardem play a man who embarks on a quest to legally end his life after suffering an accident almost 30 years prior. Then there’s Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth, a tragic film that is at once unnerving and beautiful, following a little girl’s journey into a fantasy world as a backdrop of war prevails.
Even the films of Spanish auteur Pedro Almodovar are rife with sadness and grief, despite his penchant for humour, as demonstrated by his seminal All About My Mother, which centres around a woman suffering from the loss of her son. A more recent example of his is Pain and Glory, which explores physical and mental pain through the lens of creative struggle.
Hollywood might be keen on delivering audiences with a happy ending that can pacify viewers and leave the masses uplifted and satisfied, but Spanish filmmakers clearly have other ideas in mind when making movies. While countries like France, Turkey, and Nigeria also mark low on the happy ending scale, it’s Spain that stands as the location with the least uplifting movies.
