For some reason I can only recall two movies, the similarly titled 'night, Mother and Mother Night.
Any one about Van Gogh, obviously (Vincent and Theo was a good one, there’s also Lust for Life).
Whose Life Is It Anyway, IIRC - doesn’t he get his way in the end?
The Hours, about Virginia Woolfe
Sylvia, (Sylvia Plath) (haven’t seen it, but she did off herself IRL)
Harold and Maude (repeatedly) (bwahaha)
Here’s a whole database of 'em. Seems skimpy, though, and isn’t limited to main characters.
Heh, I know of a few, though an IMDb keyword search would probably be your best bet.
Leaving Las Vegas
Full Metal Jacket
Shawshank Redemption
Thelma and Louise
Gattaca
A Few Good Men
Also a few where the lead is suicidal but lives through the credits:
Julian Po
Lethal Weapon
Groundhog Day
Scent of a Woman
ETA: Oops, A Few Good Men doesn’t qualify; it was a minor character (the informant) who got dressed in his formals and blew his brains out. And with Gattaca it wasn’t the lead, but pretty close. (Though c’mon, Private Pyle was the lead of the first act of Full Metal Jacket.)
I always wondered about the end of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon…was her jump off that tall-ass mountain another ethereal wire-fu moment, or was it a death dive?
All I’m gonna say is that the ending to the movie *Pi * was :eek: .
Alien 3, although the very existence of this movie is in some dispute.
Falling Down - (suicide by cop)
Death dive. Nothing else makes sense (just to start, it wouldn’t be an ending, were it a wire-fu moment.)
The Sea Inside.
Ellis Dee, the suicide in Shawshank Redemption is a side,not main character.
Inasmuch as he could be considered the main character, Sin City.
Booboo, not only did the movie not exist, she was recreated from her DNA complete with memories, so could it really be considered a successful suicide?
Vanishing Point. A rather spectacular suicide, actually.
Armageddon.
The Front – Zero Mostel is the second lead, so I think that counts.
Hamlet – Ophelia definitely.
Romeo and Juliet – both main characters, actually.
A Tale of Two Cities.
The title character in Carrington and the supporting male (and love rival, played by Joseph Fiennes) in **Enemy at the Gates ** both kill themselves, but only after knowing their love will remain unrequited. The latter merely had to expose himself to a Nazi sniper.
Here’s a few born of a more-immediate desperation:
The male lead (played by Jake Weber) in the **Dawn of the Dead ** remake – but he only does it to avoid becoming a zombie, after being bitten.
The female character in Open Water, with no immediate prospect of rescue, and only after surviving the sharks long enough to become utterly exhausted and demoralized (esp. from watching her husband die) – she releases herself from her buoyant scuba gear. (Although I very much doubt she would have had the luxury of drowning before the sharks attacked.)
The suicidal characters (Tea Leoni, her dad Max Schell, and her mother, Vanessa Redgrave) who opt for death in **Deep Impact ** do so either by pills or exposing themselves to the deadly tsunami.
The only suicide I remember from Shawshank is the librararian (Brooks?), who is a pretty major character.
How about Gene Hackman’s preacher in The Poseidon Adventure. . .
“. . . take MEEEEEEE!” I love that scene!
So, what, they just died? Geez, I’m glad I missed that one.
Next thing you know, someone’ll do time-elapsed videos of old geezers in nursing homes, catch their final minutes.
Officer and a Gentleman, not the protagonist, but one of the main characters does himself in
That’s an interesting debate. Reminds me of a short story that goes something like this:
Guy invents a teleporter, which becomes a staple of everyday travel. But he realizes (or always knew) that it doesn’t actually teleport people at all; instead, it kills them and recreates a perfect facsimile on the other side, complete with all the person’s memories. Eventually he is the last person left alive who has never teleported; every other human was in effect just a doppleganger. In the end he is forced to go through against his will, so the last true human dies.
Anyone know the name of this story and/or the author?
ETA:
I was thinking of Tim Robbins’ character. (Andy?)
The Warden blew his brains out and he was very much a major character.