Films you think while difficult are important to watch

[Baconyum]

In response to the thread on films some regret seeing I thought it would be interesting to start a thread on films we think people should watch, if only just once, because of the issues they address rather than just because they're 'good'.

I personally think films aren't just to entertain (though they can be individually), but to enlighten, educate, inform and challenge.

Mine are:
An imitation of life
Blackboard Jungle
A time to kill
Girl, interrupted
Magdalene sisters
In the name of the father
Butterbox babies
The boy in the striped pyjamas
An eye for an eye
Kathy come home
The color purple
Corrina Corrina
The impossible
Children of a lesser God
Flowers for Algernon
American history x
The elephant man
Death of a salesman
Glengarry glen Ross
JFK
Silkwood
My fellow Americans
Wag the dog
Kramer vs Kramer
Ma vie en rose
One flew over the cuckoo's nest
The jazz singer - either version
12 angry men
Boyz n the hood
Born on the fourth of July
Ghandi
Pay it forward
Cry freedom
The accused

Geez better stop as that's quite a lot.

Thoughts?

I was right the first time

With books though I was thinking of non-fiction, but even with fiction if it's a subject you're interested in (or feel you should be interested in) you would surely read more than one. There tends to be less films available for specific historical topics and even less without Hollywood spin.

I never said films are the only medium by which people should gain information/education. As it happens I'm an avid reader of fact and fiction. As to bias as a pp said there's bias in all media.

To the pp who said 'I studied JFK at school' etc you'll have only been given limited information there too. Also do you mean you studied the president? His assassination? The events of the film? Because the film is about the deeply flawed investigation into the assassination and how the investigators were stifled and stonewalled etc.

So why not read/watch film & TV/discuss important events/people/issues in all ways?

Thought of another - all the President's men.

There is a reality to seeing something on film that study of the facts doesn't always get across. Sometimes it's not about learning or being informed about something, but more about conveying the emotional impact of something. (I may not have explained that very well.)

Grave of the Fireflies came as close to breaking me as any film I have ever seen. Plus, it's one of the rare films that actually focuses on children in wartime.

Another vote for Shoah. Clips are on YouTube if you want a flavour of it. Nine hours of victims, perpetrators, and bystanders of the holocaust describing their experience.

Gone Girl
1984
V for Vendetta
Eden
Cloud Atlas
Atonement
Educating Rita
The Lives of Others
London to Brighton

Mary and Max. Fantastic film.

OP, if you enjoyed Girl, Interrupted the book is a squillion times better. You might also like The Bell Jar, quite similar.

Rabbit Proof Fence

Magdalene Sisters

Made in America (I know, not very serious but I think there are important issues about race, identity and belonging)

Shirley Valentine
I know it's a comedy but I think it speaks volumes about the misery of some working class married women in the 1970s and 1980s who didn't work. Around them the world was changing and women were being represented as newly powerful players in the neo-liberal economy but for most women life as a suburban housewife was exactly as it had been for their mothers- miserable and lonely.

Not Citrus - You read flowers for Algernon in 20 minutes?!

A Clockwork Orange

Agree with Precious honesttodog

Also, Jonestown Paradise Lost.

I'm another who agrees with Trills. A film is a film.

You watch them for your own reasons. But don't try to make your reasons my obligation.

And some of the films listed are appalling, twee, schmaltzy, poor representations of reality.

So why not read/watch film & TV/discuss important events/people/issues in all ways?

I don't think anyone said they wouldn't do this as well.

Absolutely, VulcanWoman.

I agree with pp about the role of films and other media not being specifically to educate and certainly there is a danger of a dramatisation being taken as Gospel. Still, films (along with books etc) can be extremely thought provoking.

My contribution would be Balibo.

Glory was very powerful I thought, and led me to find out more about a subject which I hadn't considered much before.

With the OP's kind permission, we are going to punt this over to Films in a tick.

Films often give a different perspective on things, and provoke discussion - though there is a real danger of films (particularly documentaries) being taken as gospel when they present a point of view. That said, my list would be:

Rabbit Proof Fence
The Lives of Others (though I don't find it difficult to watch per se, and the ending is sublime)
City of God
My Name Is Joe
Sweet Sixteen
The Grapes of Wrath (and the book)
Au Revoir Les Enfants
Malcolm X
The Deer Hunter
The Wind that Shakes the Barley
The White Rose
Jarhead - not many films actually show the boring side of war, if that makes any sense

The War Game -- for everyone who thinks its good for us to have nuclear weapons

The Chekist -- for all the communist sympathizers

Sharkwater, Blackfish, The Cove -- for everyone

Silkwood

Silkwood

The boy in the striped pyjamas

Yes based on a children's book. But is very hard to watch at the end.