5 Cathartic Hindi movies to cry your heart out and embrace healing tears
Grief is something hard to understand for people around you. No matter how close to you someone is or how hard they try, it isn’t something that you can explain to anyone. It’s a feeling or better to say a lack of feeling in most cases. When you lose someone, you lose a piece of yourself with them. There is s void inside you where once you had stored your love for them. You feel hollow within. When I lost someone, I felt so hungry all of a sudden. People expected me to cry and wail, hunger wasn’t something I was supposed to feel at the time, and yet I did. I was so hungry to fill the void within me. Trauma works in different ways for different people. That void is still there though. People come and go but some voids are there to remain for life. You don’t want to talk to anyone about this because talking doesn’t make it any better. So I feel these movies are the closest I have come across that can capture the intense swirling tornado of grief inside you. Just get inside your blanket in your room and watch these 5 cathartic hindi movies to cry your heart out and embrace healing tears which you may have been holding back for a long time.
1. Masaan
This movie tops the list and rightly so. The movie is based on the serene backdrop of Ganga Ghats of Banaras (Varanasi). There are two stories running simultaneously. One is about a girl who is in a relationship with a boy much younger than herself. Things take a dark turn when the couple are caught by the police in a hotel room. What follows after is only a glimpse of the real face of our legal system at the ground level. How the abuse of power intertwined with societal norms affects the lives of helpless victims. More than the girl herself, you will feel the emotional turmoil of the girl’s father. To see an old father arranging for money in however way he can only to get shouted at by a corrupt police officer, makes your heart ache. Sanjay Mishra has played this part so realistically that brings tears to your eyes.
Another story is a beautiful love story. A love so simple yet so pure! It was when Vicky Kaushal was a hidden gem not known to the world. You can’t help but marvel how realistic everything feels. This is how love stories happen in real life. They meet at a panipuri stall, the boy’s friends help him find the girl on social media while teasing him at the same time, the chatting, the talking on the phone for hours, everything about this love story is so real, including the pain. It not just a regular heartbreak, it is a loss so profound that it just leaves you with emptiness, a pain so overwhelming which permeates every aspect of one’s being, creating a void that seems impossible to fill. Deepak’s wails of pain for his lost love by the Ghats of Ganga is a scene so poignant that you can’t help but sob with him.
2. Tum Bin
This movie is filled with soul-stirring music but my ever favourite to this day remains ‘Koi fariyaad’. I can’t believe it has been so many years and yet it transcends the boundaries of time and evoke the same emotions of longing every time I listen to it. How beautifully it reaches the depth of your emotions! The lyrics of ‘Koi Fariyaad’ are not just words, they are an emotional journey that touches the deepest corners of the heart.
Tum Bin weaves a poignant narrative of love, loss, guilt and redemption. It’s difficult to describe in words what you feel when you watch this movie. If you have been through the pain of losing someone in your life, the grief you go through is not easy to explain. It can only be felt. Grief washes over you unannounced. Sometimes watching the snowflakes fall melts your heart, other times feeling a gust of wind in a starry night brings tears to your eyes. This movie captures these emotions beautifully.
3. Sanam Teri Kasam
Harshvardhan Rane is yet another actor who has not got the recognition he truly deserves. He has potrayed his character in the movie so well that sometimes dialogues aren’t even necessary, just his expressions are enough to convey the emotions be it love, pain, anger, guilt or helplessness. If you haven’t watched it yet, I really recommend to watch it atleast once and you won’t regret it. This is a poignant love story between a librarian Saru and her neighbour, a rebel Inder. Well, I’m not too fond of romantic movies, but this is more than just a love story. It is a journey of surviving in the world while fighting your inner demons, a journey of coming to terms with the pain of losing the love of your life bit by bit every day and finally a journey towards healing.
4. Talaash
Trauma works differently for different people. Like in this movie, we see Surjan Singh Shekhawat, a police officer, who is investigating the mysterious death of a popular actor, is also going through a personal trauma, the death of his kid. While his wife expresses her pain through her tears and her words, Surjan has everything bottled up inside him. He doesn’t cry nor speak about that day ever. He has numerous sleepless nights. We see him imagining multiple scenarios in his head of what could have happened differently that day to change the fate of his kid. If only he hadn’t napped that day and went along with his son to the lake….. or if only he convinced his son to play checkers instead…. or if only…. and this goes on. He keeps imagining little changes that could have saved his precious kid. This is how trauma works. You keep replaying that day over and over in your head and imagining if only I did not do this or that that day….
When Surjan navigates further into the investigation of his case, the ugly truth unfolds and the line between reality and supernatural get blurred. He is faced with his own inner demons all this while. He finally learns to stop resisting the things in this world which are beyond our control. Thats when we lets go of the past. He goes to the same lake and breaks down in tears. This scene is really intense and you won’t be able to hold back your own tears.
5. Dor
This songs says it all. 90s kids will definitely go through nostalgia listening to this. And this movie is a combination of good actors and director. If you have missed it somehow then I’ll recommend to watch this at least once. Meera is a young girl living in a small village in Rajasthan with her in-laws when all of a sudden she gets the news that her husband has died in Saudi Arabia, where he was staying for work. And her life turns upside down. All the colors from her life fade, quite literally actually. The rituals and traditions for a widow in villages are so harsh that they did not even give her time to grieve properly. That’s when she meets Zeenat and they become friends. Zeenat is an urban independent woman and Meera is amazed by her confidence. But Zeenat has a struggle of her own. Her husband is the one charged with the murder of Meera’s husband and she has come all this way to get the letter of forgiveness from Meera to present in Saudi Arabia’s court.
The emotional depth of “Dor” lies in its exploration of grief, resilience, and the human spirit’s capacity to endure hardship. Meera’s journey of coping with the loss of her husband, Zeenat on the other hand is facing the fear of losing her husband to a death sentence and the helplessness in saving him. She does all she can with with whatever little clue she had in a limited time.