Good grief: 20 films that can help viewers process trauma

Global trauma is the subject of Lars von Trier’s Melancholia, which takes place when Earth is about to crash into a rogue planet that will bring an end to all life on the planet. The film is aptly titled, since the only thing the characters can do when faced with certain oblivion is simply abandon themselves to a feeling of melancholy, a mourning that can have no resolution. When the trauma of the end of the world is imminent, there is nothing else to do but simply accept the inevitable.

Brothers is an embarrassment of riches when it comes to its cast, including Tobey Maguire, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Natalie Portman. Maguire and Gyllenhaal play a pair of brothers, one of whom has to try to work through his severe PTSD in order to try to rebuild the life that he left behind. Maguire is particularly inspired in his performance, and there’s something especially haunting about the way that he captures the broken psyche and mind of a man who has endured the unspeakable while a prisoner of war. 

Wes Craven's Scream  breathed new life into the genre of the slasher film, and Neve Campbell has become indelibly associated with Sidney Prescott. By the time the third film comes around, she has been thoroughly traumatized by the various iterations of Ghostface and the many times that she has either lost someone close to her or come close to death herself. Though the third film’s various conceits might wear a bit thin at times, Scream 3 does nevertheless show the extent to which Sidney’s life has been marred by her previous experiences.

Horror is a genre that is uniquely positioned to engage with trauma and the way that it can affect a person’s life. In the case of The Others,  which stars Nicole Kidman, trauma even affects a person beyond the grave. Kidman’s Grace Stewart is a woman who grapples with the absence of her husband and the seeming haunting of her house. As it turns out, however, Grace actually took her own life and those of her children as a result of the trauma of her husband’s death.

Born on the Fourth of July is all the more powerful and poignant due to the fact that it is based on the true story of Ron Kovic. It also features one of Tom Cruise’s most memorable performances. Given that it focuses on Kovic’s life during and after the Vietnam War, it makes sense that it would also grapple with the issue of PTSD and the way that it can change a person’s life forever. In Kovic’s case, it led him to become an antiwar activist.

Those who have seen The Silence of the Lambs  are probably more familiar with the plot that revolves around Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling and her attempt to apprehend the serial killer Buffalo Bill. However, a major part of her backstory is her trauma as a result of her father’s death when she was still very young. Foster gives one of her most memorable and heartfelt performances as Starling, and she allows the viewer to see the extent to which her childhood experiences shaped her eventual drive and personality.

Before she earned international fame due to appearing as Galadriel in The Rings of Power, Morfydd Clark earned acclaim for playing the character of Katie, a nurse who rechristens herself as Maud after her patient dies. The film is structured largely around her grappling with this trauma and the way that it has terminally twisted her sense of reality and her perception of herself. The film is a skilled blend of horror and thriller, and the ending is as both shocking and deeply tragic.

The Shining remains one of Stephen King’s most beloved and terrifying novels, and Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation is a classic in its own right. In 2019, it received a sequel in the form of  Doctor Sleep, which features an older Dan Torrance (played by Ewan McGregor), whose struggles revolve around the horrifying events that happened during the events of the previous film. As with the best of Stephen King, and the best horror films generally, it’s really the fundamental human struggle with trauma that gives this film its emotional punch.

Clint Eastwood can truly do it all, and Mystic River is one of his most deservedly acclaimed films. One of its key characters suffers extraordinary trauma, and the film is unflinching in its depiction of the central tragedy that exists at the heart of its story. Among other things, the film reveals the extent to which trauma can truly blight both the life of those who suffer it and everyone in their vicinity. It’s the kind of film that a director like Eastwood was born to make.

Lee Daniels has always had a keen eye for a melodrama, and no film illustrates this quite as hauntingly as Precious. Among other things, the film features a true star turn by Gabourey Sidibe, who plays the title character. The film certainly pulls no punches when it comes to its depiction of abuse and trauma. Though Sidibe is the heart and soul of the film, she is matched by the other members of the cast, particularly Mo’Nique, who explores the terrifying depths of the human soul.

Few film stars have exerted as strong a hold on the collective imagination as Marilyn Monroe, and even decades after her death, she remains a true icon. The film Blonde, based on the novel of the same name by Joyce Carol Oates, highlights the numerous traumas she endured throughout her life and how these shaped and misshaped her life and career. Though the film can be disjointed at times, there’s no doubt that Ana de Armas gives a truly haunting performance as Marilyn, bringing humanity to this most troubled of stars.

For all that PTSD is disturbingly common among those who go to war, it still remains distressingly underrepresented in popular culture. The issue is the beating heart and soul of My Dead Friend Zoe, which focuses on a young woman struggling to cope with her dead friend, who appears as a darkly comic shade. Both Sonequa Martin-Green and Natalie Morales give haunting and powerful performances in their respective roles, and the film finds a remarkable balance between the humor and pathos of grief.

Gregg Araki is one of the most visionary and iconoclastic filmmakers of the movement known as New Queer Cinema. Like most of Araki’s films, this one grapples with some heavy material, most notably sexual abuse. It’s particularly notable for showing — in a way that is authentic and powerful — how such abuse during one’s childhood can have effects that ripple throughout a lifetime. It sometimes makes for difficult watching, but this is precisely what makes it such an important film, now more than ever.

Released in 1946, The Best Years of Our Lives is one of the most acclaimed and beloved post-World War II films grappling with the impact the war had on the men who fought. Given that the male main characters all come from different lives as civilians, they face various challenges as they attempt to return to civilian life that they had before they went off to the conflict. It was a true critical darling, going on to win several Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor. 

Margot Robbie gives a heartfelt performance in I, Tonya,  in which she portrays Tonya Harding. The film forces the viewer to rethink what they thought they knew about the infamous Harding and the equally infamous attack on fellow skater Nancy Kerrigan. Among other things, the film proposes that Harding endured abuse at the hands of her husband and her mother, both of whom inflicted a great deal of psychological and physical damage on her and set her on a dark and treacherous path.

Released in 1978, The Deer Hunter  is one of the most notable films of 1978. Taking place in a city along the Monongahela River, it focuses on a group of friends as they grapple with the damage that the Vietnam War inflicted on the psyches of the young men who fought in it. It has a remarkably bleak look and feel, which is precisely what gives it its remarkable emotional power. The film is also notable for Meryl Streep’s performance, which earned her an Academy Award nomination.

Zoë Kravitz made quite an impression with her directorial debut. Starring Naomi Ackie, it focuses on a young woman who goes to an island that belongs to a powerful billionaire, only to find out that something dark and dangerous is going on there. The film doesn’t shy away from some sinister and disturbing material, including and especially trauma. Ackie’s Frida is a remarkable heroine, and she eventually is able to use her trauma to become something more powerful and dangerous than any of the men in her life expect.

Trauma always lurks in the background of Ang Lee’s powerful western melodrama Brokeback Mountain.  In this case, the trauma is the fact of being two men in love with one another in a culture and a part of the US that is destructively homophobic. The tragic romance between Heath Ledger’s Ennis and Jake Gyllenhaal’s Jack is one that etches itself in the heart and mind of the viewer, and it demonstrates the extent to which the trauma inflicted by a society can blight even deeply felt romantic love.

PTSD is given a new and fascinating look in Jacob’s Ladder,  which stars Tim Robbins as a man who struggles with the trauma of his time in the Vietnam War. It’s a haunting and at times quite beautiful film, and it’s also one of those that tends to raise more questions that it ends up answering. Even so, it remains a powerful testament to the ability of surrealism as a film convention to grapple with the emotional and psychological challenges posed by trauma and, potentially, death itself. 

The devastatingly true story of Brandon Teena is at the center of Kimberly Peirce’s Boys Don’t Cry, the trans man who was murdered in 1993. Even before the hate crime that takes his life, however, Teena endures a great deal of trauma, largely due to the fact that he is a trans man attempting to live his authentic life. This film is one of those that is not for the faint of heart, and it is a timely reminder of the violence that trans people have repeatedly faced in America.