Films where there is no hope.

I haven't seen it, but I'll have to keep an eye out for it.

I don't think any film can top the hopelessness of Haneke's Funny Games (1997). I mean, come on, people. The movie was designed to mock the viewer's hope.

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Letterboxd

1984


Not much hope there.

The Gambler (1974) with James Caan.. Whew it just gets more and more bleak.

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"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow." - Agent K.

I think Midnight Express is hopeful at the very end, what with the uniform thing, and the montage of the reunion. All before is pretty bleak but nevertheless compelling.

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"Miss Jean Louise, Mr. Arthur Radley."

First mention of "Requiem for a Dream"? You guys are slipping.

Am I really the first one to mention either of these two films...?

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"If it was priggish for an older generation of reviewers to be ashamed of what they enjoyed and to feel they had to be contemptuous of popular entertainment, it's even more priggish for a new movie generation to be so proud of what they enjoy that they use their education to try to place trash within the acceptable academic tradition." -- Pauline Kael

Skinamarink.

star 80

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Almost forgot about this one. The absolute definition of "There is nothing out there except for that one thing, and you're not going to like it when it finally catches up with you."

I don't know. Considering that the film is already significantly more hopeful than the book with the explicit inclusion of that ending---I get the feeling that we are meant to leave feeling good!

(Still, what you suggest isn't an unlikely outcome. haha)

Speaking of Haneke, The Seventh Continent also fits here---especially after the scene with the fishtank.

The Road. Not only is there no hope, but in this dismal, blasted, polluted, ruined world, hope would seen delusional.

Even still, the movie is entirely driven by hope, isn't it? That what compelled them to keep walking, it's what kept the boy wanting to see the good in people?

Ishtar

To me, it didn't seem like a realistic hope, just the kind of thing you do to keep your kids going for the moment, a kind of desperation. Anybody who saw the world with an adult view knew that nothing would come back any time soon. For me, it was too close to a Holocaust movie to have any hope.

It's been a long time since I watched The Road but didn't it...

Yeah, I got the impression that I can give you at least 10 movies I find more depressing than The Road.

Yeah, but I think that just so you would end it all before you got to the parking lot. The idea of a saving remnant is an old one in many cultures (like Noah and the Ark, Deucalion and Pyrrha, other flood myths, etc), but it's a pretty darn slim hope.

I don't remember it will enough to recall the parking lot scene. But no doubt about it The Road is one bleak movie. One of the bleakest I've seen...along with the other films I mentioned here in this thread.