Tragedies - examples?

Luis Caffesse said:
Black Swan? Kind of...
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StMad said:
Interesting choice. Though her end is tragic, she achieves her goal.
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It's because the film is built on an ironic structure instead of a tragic one.

******Major spoilers***********

In the beginning, her career is at a negative but her health is positive. At the end, the two have switched. She gained something but at a cost. That's why ironic films are usually the best (but also hardest to write imo).
 
Dancer In The Dark
Jules and Jim
Wendy and Lucy
Eraserhead (based on my interpretation, anyway)

And you can't go wrong with Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, etc. There are plenty of film adaptations of each: there's Baz Lurman's Romeo + Juliet, as well as Franco Zefferelli's 1960s version, Olivier's Hamlet, though I think Branagh's Hamlet is better (the full 4 hour version, that is), Akira Kurosawa's Ran is based on King Lear. And there are hundreds more out there to choose from.

Although, the characters in all these films don't necessarily start out as moral, but they're still pretty tragic. I think Maybe Dancer In The Dark fits best.
 
Two oldies
East of Eden
Splendour in the Grass

Falling Down and One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest were pretty tragic and the latter featured one of the best villains of all time, the nurse!
 
Someone beat me to mosquito coast.
Many of the other films listed fit to greater and lesser degrees - god theres just so many great films isn't there?! Shakespeares- Lear, Macbeth foremost for mine are a given... But in terms of your particular reference for a tragic modern story of someone who truly pits their will against reality in an ultimately tragic losing battle - then mosquito coast is very hard to go past I think. While many of the other films listed are fantastic films and follow a tragic trajectory, the tragic arc/struggle is not really the underlying point of the whole piece.

In a more general marrying, I thought the recent Animal Kingdom is worth a reference. And I think you could add the aviator to the Scorsese films listed.
 
Just put mosquito coast at the top of my netflix queue.

Romeo & Juliet, no, because that's not really at all in the same vein as what I'm looking for. It's a couple of dumb kids who do stupid things and sure it's a sad ending, but I'm looking for more than a sad ending, I want the defiance and the ego that says "I know better than the world does, I can make this right, I can still win" even as the house of cards is starting to crumble down. There has to be a lot of deception, including self deception, and a moral core that says "yes, what I'm doing is wrong, but I'm doing it for the right reason!" And then, at the end, that moment of ... uh-oh, I blew it.

Romeo & Juliet, that's more of a "the world is full of meanies who just don't understand us" kind of mentality, but there's not an active will of trying to cheat and game the system, to build up a scenario of "the end justifies the means", of "this will all be worth it once it all comes together". I mean, I guess the core distinction I'm drawing is -- there really wasn't anything wrong with a Montague and a Capulet falling in love, and in fact it was the hardheadedness of the Montagues and the Capulets that caused the problem. Romeo and Juliet weren't doing anything wrong. So, I guess if you stood the story on its head and told it from the perspective of the Montagues and the Capulets, they were trying to enforce their will against nature, and it ended up costing them their children, so yeah, from that angle it's more like what I'm looking for, but they weren't the lead characters so it's still not really relatable.

Falling Down... hmmm... I remember seeing it when it first came out and being quite disappointed in it, but that's because I wanted it to be something other than what it was. Maybe if I revisited it as to what it is, rather than what I wanted it to be at the time, maybe it's more along the lines of what I'm looking for. But I'd love to find a well-received truly tragic tale of a house of cards falling down on the protagonist because of their pride, defiance, cleverness, and hubris...

As far as a "modern" telling, part of the reason for that is because soooo much is lost in the translation. Some of the ancient Greek tragedies would probably be perfect, except that if you don't really, really understand the idioms of the day, you'll miss so much...
 
The Boy in the Stryped Pajamas
Requiem for a Dream
United 93
The Mist
Alpha Dog
In Bruges (though it has a dark comedic twist)
Dear Zachary (of course...)
Shutter Island

Just some others off the top of my head..
 
My list updated -

Midnight Cowboy
Raging Bull
Taxi Driver
Fargo (already mentioned)
There Will Be Blood (Not a modern period...but a modern film, with the superb Daniel Day Lewis in a tragic role.)
Owning Mahoney (If you haven't seen this one....it's great. Very tragic character)
The Wrestler
Boogie Nights....(a tragedy of sorts.)
The Ice Storm
The Deer Hunter
Road to Perdition
Sid and Nancy
Into the Wild
 
What about Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?
RFK
Day Night Day Night
1984
Right at Your Door
Missing
La Bamba
American Beauty
the recent Woody Allen movies - the Tennis-y one...?
Cyrano de Bergerac with Depardieu!
Mary Shelly's Frankenstein
The Doors
 
defiantly "Dancer in the Dark" also just saw "The Other Bolyen Girl" Well acted, tragic, but not contemporary.
 
Hey folks, lookin' to do a little research into some full-fledged tragedies and just wanted to get some suggestions from you guys as to films that fit this basic model: a lead character who starts out with what he believes is a morally justifiable position, even if the end justifies the means, and who keeps working at it and working at it, garnering some success but finding that he has to keep going further and further to hold it all together, until at the end it all comes crumbling down.
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I think "Lord of War" is what you are looking for. Story, ambition, charecters well defined and formally structured. As David mentioned you'll never find a truly tragic end in this class though.

Superb tragic examples like 'Dancer in the Dark', 'Wrestler', 'Into the Wild' differ in the story structure & in protoganist's motivation(or rather lack of it) for wordly success. In this type of tragedies charecter's uniqueness create a story.
I dont consider tragedy adaptations of theater as cinema; it is great to watch Olivier's Shakespeare, but somehow it feels like a theater at the end of the day. Loose adaptations on the other hand is a different story; Kurosawa's 'Ran' for example might be the greatest Shakespearen tragedy.
 
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