fictional works only, please...

My pick:

Sophie's Choice - her choice, obviously.

I don't remember ever being more emotionally distraught over a scene in a movie than watching Meryl Streep forced to choose which child she can "keep," her young son or her toddler daughter, and which child shall be taken away to a concentration camp and/or killed.

It happens in such a trivial moment...one minute Sophie and her two children are being herded towards a train with Jews...she approaches a Nazi Officer and tells him there's some mistake, she's not Jewish, she's Polish - Aryan - like he is. His reply is simply evil:

"You may keep one child."

At first, she doesn't understand...but he explains it to her: she either chooses which child shall remain with her and which will go with the German, or he will take both of them from her.

She begins to plead and the German finally goes to take both children from her when she thrusts her daughter at him and screams, "take her, take my baby!"

And he does.

The look of complete and utter horror on Streep's face kills me, every time. In fact, I always vow to never watch the movie again after that scene comes on. But I can't keep that promise because Streep and Kline and MacNichol and Pakula made a perfect, glorious film.

"Irreversable" the whole friggin' thing.

"Lilya 4 Ever" When the main character starts prostituting, but that may not be the worst of it.

"Platoon" The part where Dafoe is running in the field to be shot down.

Wow. Nice topic. I can't possibly choose a single moment, so I'll just mention one for suggestion. The death scene at the end of Menace 2 Society was particularly brutal for me, because when watching it, you not only feel for the character but all the people dying on the street day after day, it was just a shot to the gut for me. I know this film and Boyz From The Hood will always be compared, but this one was far more powerful to me because of its stark realism and the way it didn't hold back in the process.

The old man on the swingset in Kurosawa's "Ikiru" will always be the most powerful image for me. As Roger Ebert said, it is one of the few movies that might actually move you to lead a better life.

Going by results, though I can't figure out WHY this moment destroyed me the way it did: Martin Sheen's death in The Departed

EDIT: oh, and in Saving Private Ryan when Adam Goldberg gets stabbed in the attic, oh my I wish I didn't see when I was so young

The ending of Au Hassard Balthazar. And, for all the wrong reasons, the "Tomorrow Belongs to Me" number in Cabaret, an underappreciated masterpiece.

I probably haven't seen enough films to comment, but the ending of Decalogue I is just heartbreaking.

In Mystic River where Sean Penn learns his daughter is dead. As the set up for the whole movie, you know it's coming, and yet it's written and acted so well that it just absolutely hits you like a hammer.

Wow. Obviously one of those gems I just never got around to seeing yet. Just reading your post has blown me away. Really. I will see it now. Thank you.

Robbie Benson's confession to his GF (Glynnis O'connor) in Ode To Billy Joe after sleeping with a man absolutely was a punch in the gut. The subsequent fallout from his suicide for O'connor and the (final?) scene where she is talking to the man Benson slept with (you may know him as Roscoe P. Coaltrain) is just...wow. Great movie and backstory.

Honorable mention: Laura Palmer, her innocence lost and her life past the point of no return, explaining to BF James Hurley how the girl he loved disappeared. Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me

First thing I thought of on seeing the thread title. I watch this movie probably 3 times a year, but I don't think I've seen this scene more than twice. I just can't watch it.

My other choices are the first time they shwo ground Zero in 25th Hour, the ending of Castaway, and the entirety of The Sweet Hereafter

Oh yeah, and when Wash dies in Serenity (right after "I'm a leaf on the wind")

There are some other moments that are oddly effecting also for no good reason, like when Radha Mitchell's character gets jacked at the end of Pitch Black...

(SPOILER!!!!!!!!!!!!!)


Also, different category, but Bodie's last scene in "The Wire"

(/SPOLIER)

<response to spoiler>

Bodie's death didn't nearly get to me nearly as much as Wallace. I guess I'd put D and Stringer before Bodie as well. And I suspect Dukie's death when it happens in season 5 will be the worst of all.

I didn't even love the movie, but the end of Requiem for a Dream just gutted me.

cause a few of us in here had seen Infernal Affairs and had already been shocked by that death

seriously though, I still can never get over the youngest brother in Legends of the Fall getting torn to bits by a german machine gun in that WWI scene. It messed with me when I was a kid, it messed with me when my brother was in Iraq, and it messes with me now. As an older brother, it's just gut wrenching to watch and put yourself in Tristan's position

Hell, the entire film of 21 grams was insanely devastating and just left me brutally cold after watching it

21 Grams is an example of too much devastation. It didn't add to the story, it was the story.