Top 10 Saddest Movie Goodbyes

Robin Williams stars as John Keating, an English professor whose untraditional methods earn him the love of his inspired students and the ire of parents and administrators. Keating is unfairly forced out of the prestigious private school where he works. Empowered by his teaching and love of poetry, his former students stage a protest. Keating, visibly moved and proud, bids them farewell. Although inspirational, the ending makes it clear that the teacher who had the most profound impact on his students is the one seen as a threat to the school’s status quo.

This 1945 drama involves two people who meet by chance at a train station and carry on an extramarital affair that threatens their respectable, English, middle-class lives. Though deeply in love, they agree to mutually end their relationship. Their final goodbye at the train station is interrupted by an acquaintance of Laura’s, who fails to realize the significance of what’s going on. They’re not even granted one last moment alone together without life catching up to them. It’s so bittersweet because they know they shouldn’t be together and we know they shouldn’t be together, but there’s obviously real emotions there. It’s all played under the surface because that’s what they have to do.

When Dorothy Gale landed in Oz, she was scared and alone, and wanted nothing but to go back home to Kansas. The Cowardly Lion, the Tin Man, and the Scarecrow made it so she wasn’t so scared and alone anymore. They gave the courage and camaraderie it took to persevere, confront the Wicked Witch of the West and finally see the Wizard. At the end of her journey, however, when she realizes she’s always had the power to leave, it’s not so easy to return home without her new companions. We know the whole point of the story would probably be lost if she stayed in Oz. But it doesn’t make the goodbyes any easier.

Having conquered Sauron and returned the evil and all-powerful ring to the fires of Mordor, Frodo Baggins and his hobbit friends return home. Frodo and Sam, his best friend, have been through a lot already. They were even prepared to die together on Mount Doom. But in “The Return of the King’s” epilogue, as Frodo, his uncle Bilbo, and Gandalf are about to set sail for the paradise of the Undying Lands, we watch them say goodbye for one final time. It ends with a tearful hug on the docks before Frodo boards the ship and gives Sam one last smile.

While her husband and children are away, farm wife Francesca meets National Geographic photojournalist Robert. They fall passionately in love over their few precious days together. The last time they see each other is in the rain. They say a silent goodbye. Francesca is with her husband, who drives her home, unknowingly tailing Robert in their truck and unaware of his wife’s suffering in the passenger seat. We want so badly for her to run and join Robert, but she doesn’t. Instead, we watch as Meryl Streep plays one of the most tragic and aching scenes in her entire career.

This Oscar-winning movie about nonconformity and individualism set in a psychiatric hospital kept the Ken Kesey novel’s downer ending. When Jack Nicholson’s troublesome McMurphy arrives, he begins an uprising that has his fellow psychiatric patients defying authority. McMurphy goes too far when he attacks Nurse Ratched in a fit of rage and despair. His mostly silent pal, Chief Bromden, finds him and realizes he’s been lobotomized. Knowing that McMurphy yearned for freedom above all else, the Chief tearfully smothers him. In a way, this was the only way to keep their promise to leave the hospital together.

Rick Blaine and Ilsa Lund are lovers pulled apart by World War II. By the time they reunite unexpectedly in Rick’s bar in the neutral country of Morocco, Ilsa is in love with a resistance leader, and Rick is almost pathologically neutral to the escalating war. Nevertheless, their connection still burns brightly. Although it would satisfy their deepest desires to be together, they must say goodbye at the airport for the sake of the greater good. Their personal problems, Rick tells her, aren’t worth anything when stacked up against the Nazi threat. It sounds hamfisted when you say it out loud, but the movie makes you believe every word and reason they can’t be together. Their iconic goodbye is unforgettable.

10-year-old Elliott Taylor meets and befriends the alien hiding in his shed. Pursued by government agents, the two race to get E.T. back to his home planet. But when the time finally comes for them to separate, director Steven Spielberg turns the waterworks up to an 11. Bathed in the lights of a flying saucer, E.T. reminds Elliott that he’ll always be with him. The John Williams score builds, and if you can manage not to shed a tear as the alien friend boards his ship, you’re stronger than the rest of us.

Midlife crises and cultural isolation collide in this movie about two Americans, an aging movie star and a college graduate, suffering from depression and loneliness in Tokyo. Their first goodbye scene on the street is nice, but not at all satisfying. They get a second chance when Bob passes Charlotte in his taxi. He runs after her. The two share a moment, with Bob whispering something inaudible in her ear, and they share a kiss. Fans still debate what he said to her, but we’ll probably never know. It’s a moment that feels intimate and remote to us all at once. In a movie full of missed opportunities and misunderstandings, it’s a reminder that some things can’t be totally understood.

Oskar Schindler is an industrialist who managed to save over a thousand Jewish prisoners by giving them work in his factories. As the war ends, however, he knows he will be arrested as a Nazi Party member so he prepares to flee. Facing the people he saved and their kindness, he is overcome by the feeling that he could have helped more prisoners escape. It’s a harrowing moment as he’s haunted by all those who didn’t survive. Still, there is gentleness and hope here as his employees see him off, hoping their testimony will protect him this time around.

What movie goodbye do you still cry over? Tell us in the comments.