Many movies pull on our heart strings, but often the most affecting films are those that are based on true events. There’s something about knowing that what you’re watching is someone’s real pain, real struggle, that really hits home. Even though we all know that the events of these movies are completely dramatized and characters are often created out of thin air, we still love them for what they are. And, when they’re done right, they can help heal and movie on from personal struggles. It’s always nice to know that you’re not alone in going through hardship.
Here are 8 films that are emotionally devastating, and are also based on true stories.
On October 13th, 1972, an Uruguayan rugby team’s plane crashed in the Andes mountains, and the 1993 filmAlivetells the story of that crash, and how, against all odds, some of the players managed to survive. The resulting film is brutal, but is entirely rooted in fact. The film was based on Piers Paul Read’s 1974 bookAlive: The Story of the Andes Survivors.
The film depicts in terrifying detail the crash itself, including the splitting of the plane and how the survivors eventually had to eat the dead to stay alive, before eventually finding a way back to the world. It is deeply disturbing, and yet based entirely on a true story.
9Changeling
Imagine sending your son to the movies, only for him never to return. The news spreads nationwide, and the LAPD follow up on numerous leads. Five months later he is returned – but you, as the son’s mother, are positive it’s not actually your son. This is the true story depicted in Clint Eastwood’sChangeling, featuring afantastic Angelina Jolieas the increasingly upset, frantic, and eventually vindicated Christine Collins, mother of young Walter Collins.
The story ofChangelingeasily qualifies as a ‘stranger than fiction’ story, albeit one with a devastatingly emotional story. Rather than listen to her concerns that this new boy is not her son, the LAPD didn’t believe her. They persuaded her that she was wrong, and she even tried for weeks to convince herself that the obvious child imposter was in fact her son, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong.
In both the film and the true story, rather than ever admit to their mistakes or believe Ms. Collins, the LAPD resented her insistence that her son was still out there, and accused her of being a terrible mother and trying to make fools of the police, culminating in her being committed to a psychiatric ward. It’s a terrifying story, because, of course, Christine Collins was right. The imposter eventually admitted he was not her son, and she was released, only to find out that Walter, her actual child, was a victim of sadistic serial killers.
8Schindler’s List
It was impossible that Stephen Spielberg wouldn’t make this list, butSchindler’s Listmight as well be its mascot. The movie follows Oscar Schindler, a German industrialist who saved more than a thousand mostly Polish-Jewish refugees from the Holocaust by employing them in his factories during World War II. The film, which was presented in black and white, depicts the despicable treatment of human beings by the Nazis in numerous soul-churning scenes, while also focusing on the ground level and messy heroics of one deeply flawed man trying to do what he can against an evil most of us can’t possibly imagine.
There have beenquestions of the specific accuracyof the film to actual events, but these criticisms seem to miss the points. Films exist to contextualize truth within a story that we, as the audience, can digest, understand, and even empathize with the main character. Schindler’s list is a deeply moving, devastating film, based on the real life actions of the few against the unimaginably enormous enemy.
Related:Steven Spielberg Talks Schindler’s List’s Cemetary Ending
7Fruitvale Station
Fruitvale Station, directed by Ryan Coogler and kicking off many collaborations between him and Michael B. Jordan, portrays the last day in the life of Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old man who was shot and killed by a police officer in Oakland early on New Year’s Day in 2009. Rather than focusing on the aftermath of the shooting, which included protests and trials, the film chooses to focus on the mundane, and poignant, moments of the day before Grant met his demise.
Coogler worked closely with public records, news stories, and Grant’s family to portray a realistic account of the day he met his tragic fate. Rather than focus on the shooting and the outrage that followed, the movie chooses to realistically humanize the man who, sadly, has since become another name in a long line of people of color who have met their end at the hand of police officers.
6Braveheart
Mel Gibson’sBravehearttells the story of William Wallace, a 13th-century Scottish warrior who led the Scots in the First War of Scottish Independence against King Edward I of England. It shows his introduction to the atrocities committed against his people by the English, his secret romance to avoid the King’s doctrine of prima nocta, and his reluctant transformation into an unstoppable warrior and leader of armies before his eventual capture, torture, and execution.
While many, many aspects of this film are embellished to create a dramatic arc for its hero, the fact is that William Wallace did exist, and did inspire the revolution that eventually freed the Scots from British rule. The film is beautiful and brutal, and features one of the most chill-inducing cries of the word “freedom” ever captured on screen.
5Flags Of Our Fathers
Clint Eastwood’s double feature epic about the battle for Iwo Jima, and the famous photograph of American soldiers putting up the flag that would eventually become a statue, isan epic achievement. The films together successfully create empathy for the soldiers on the ground on both sides of the famous WWII battle.
InFlags Of Our Fathers, the focus is not just on the battle, but on how the actual photograph was taken, and subsequently used as propaganda to keep American enthusiasm for the war high. They even used the actual soldiers, clearly suffering from PTSD, in a campaign on American soil to promote a questionable narrative that the soldiers themselves seem to struggle with.
4Letters From Iwo Jima
InLetters From Iwo Jima, Eastwood accomplishes the same thing, but for the Japanese soldiers who dug incredible tunnel systems into the tiny island, the vast majority of whom did not survive. In letters to their loved ones, it becomes clear that their orders are to dig in and die for their country.
Taken together, the films are incendiary; simultaneously an indictment of war and the war machine – specifically those who give orders to risk their lives without ever coming near the conflict themselves – and a timeless commentary on the power of propaganda to twist any narrative into one that serves the agenda of those in power.
James Cameron’sTitanicsucceeded in putting a face on one of the greatest tragedies of the 20th century, fueled entirely by mankind’s hubris. By adding the romance between American pauper Jack Dawson and Rose Dewitt, whose family has a name and the money associated with it, he managed to pull on people’s heartstrings through their entirely fictional predicament. Billy Zane as her suitor, Cal Hockley, played such a good villain it arguably destroyed his career. The film just worked, which is why, until very recently, it was the highest grossing film of all time – even though it was released in 1997.
However, the Titanic was real, and it really did hit an iceberg due to the mistakes depicted in the movie, and it really didn’t have enough lifeboats. It really did sink, and it took thousands of lives with it. It is a tragedy that already garnered interest in the decades following it, long before the movie added the faces of Kate Winslet and Leonardo Dicaprio to its story. Many characters in the film are depicted as they were described in real life, especially Kathy Bates as the “Unsinkable” Molly Brown. The movie ends in tragedy – anyone who doesn’t feel a pull on their heart strings is likely a sociopath. However, the real story of the Titanic is equally tragic, providing a valuable lesson in the ruthlessness of nature against the hubris of man.
Related:Victor Garber Thinks Jack Dying in Titanic is the Most Plausible Ending
2United 93
Paul Greengrass’sUnited 93attempts to show in great detail something we only know of from correspondence: that on September 11th, 2001, passengers aboard a plane attacked the terrorist hijackers who had taken it over and brought the plane down before it could hit its designated target.United 93portrays the horror of the passengers' circumstances realistically, as they slowly realize they won’t be surviving their ordeal, and then respectfully but accurately chronicles their decision to fight back (according to what little cell phone correspondence there was between passengers and their loved ones on the ground).
The story ofUnited 93is true, insomuch as we can verify from the records left behind. The passengers on that plane were heroes who turned desperation into courage and fought back against the most important terrorist attack in American history, even if it cost them their lives. It would have been easy for a film like this to feel exploitative or overly patriotic, but instead, it threads the needle in creating tension out of a believably horrifying predicament, and then shows the slowly rising courage within its characters. Of course, the ending is only a fraction as devastating as what happened in real life.
112 Years A Slave
The story of Solomon Northup, a violin player living free in New York with his wife and children, who ended up being enslaved in the South for 12 years is tragic beyond imagination. Chiwetel Ejiofor’s performance in12 Years a Slaveis sublime yet devastating, and the film forces us to confront this true story from both an intellectual and emotional point of view. It’s absolutely a difficult watch.
However, there’s no way around the fact that the events in this movie actually occurred, and not just when it comes to Solomon. Free men were often captured and then sold as slaves, with their dignity, their rights, their truth, and their reason stripped from them through brutal treatment and backbreaking work. It’s sad because it’s true.
