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10 Movies To Watch When You’re Feeling Depressed

Movies often function as mood reflector or a mood hammer. When looking for the perfect movie to watch on a given evening or at any given moment, we tend to try to assess our mood: what do we feel like? Are we happy or bummed? Once that’s determined, the impulse can be to select a title that mirrors our mood back to us, so a happy movie if we’re feeling good about life, and a sad movie if we’re feeling like an outlet for our trapped emotions. In other cases, it’ll be the opposite. We’ll feel like a cheery movie to pick us up, or a downer because we’re in a state where we can actually handle something depressing.

12 Years A Slave

9) North Country

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North Country

Part of the reason 12 Years a Slave and Fruitvale Station are so profoundly upsetting is that, particularly when considered together, they illustrate the historical roots of racism as well as the ingrained prejudices, ignorance and misunderstanding that persist right up to the present. Being historically removed from the events depicted in 12 Years doesn’t lessen its moral punch but perhaps intensifies it. Likewise, North Country, the nearly forgotten but important and impactful 2005 film, portrays brutal sexual inequality and injustice from more than a generation ago but feels entirely relevant to today’s social climate.

Perhaps the reason it packs such a punch is from the way I just described it: more than a generation ago. That’s disturbingly recent. But the events depicted in the movie, culminating in the United States’ first successful sexual harassment lawsuit in 1984, are not only depressingly familiar, they’re barely in the past. And they’re as disgusting, disheartening and depressing as abuse depicted on screen can get. Post-viewing fury is a guarantee, and what I find even more upsetting is that director Niki Caro, who also directed Whale Rider, has only directed one movie in the almost ten years since.