Pump Up The Volume addresses it in an 80’s teen sort of way.
Not to mention that Harold’s ‘attempts’ are HILARIOUS. However, the above is wrong, though I don’t want to ruin the movie.
I wholly admit to the possibility that I mighta missed it in some of those lists that people posted, but I’ll be dagnammed if this thread goes on without a mention of Romeo and Juliet.
The Deerhunter
La Dolce Vita
It’s kind of hard to do this without spoilers. Abbas Kiarostami’s The Taste of Cherry is based around the story of a man trying to find someone to help kill himself.
In science fiction, there’s Arnie in Terminator 2, and a bunch of Zombie movies including Return of the Living Dead 3.
And I may be misremembering, but doesn’t the convict in His Girl Friday eventually jump out a window to his death, making it the earliest sort-of-suicide in a comedy?
Gattica has a suicide in the end.
Does self-sacrifice count? If so, Alien 3 ends with one, as do a bunch of others.
Jisatsu Saakuru (Suicide Circle) starts off with a pretty gruesome/spectacular one, but I don’t think it’s been released in the west yet. For that matter, lots of Japanese suspense and horror films have suicides in them.
Dead Poet’s Society - the guy in the play, who wants to be an actor, commits suicide (naked wearing only a piece of wardrobe -a crown of leaves from the play), because his father won’t let him.
Amp, so does GATTACA G
Harold & Maude has several “attempts”- of varying success
BUT let us not forget the really great musical suicide by Carl Anderson as Judas in JC SUPERSTAR:
also David McCallum (sp?) gets two suicide scenes as Judas in THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD (I saw one as his spiritual self-destruction & the other as his physical)
there’s also a vampire suicide in BLOOD AND DONUTS
Beetlejuice - there was a prolonged joke about suicide victims
Better Off Dead - teen comedy with John Cusack
Coming Home - I’ll avoid the spoiler
Devil in Miss Jones - porno movie that opens with the lead character killing herself
Lethal Weapon - Mel Gibson’s character was suicidal
Masada - TV miniseries about a mass suicide
Short Time - comedy about a dying cop trying to get himself killed on duty for insurance purposes
The Game has a recalled suicide and an attempted suicide. The movie in large part is about it and is pretty entertaining if you can suspend disbelief.
One of my favorite Japanese movies is Masaki Kobayashi’s “Seppuku”
Like “Seven Samurai,” it takes place after the civil war when the clans were disbanded. An unemployed samurai shows up at the door of one of the remaining clans and asks for a hand-out, threatening to commit harakiri on the doorstep to disgrace the clan if he’s denied. The clan call his bluff and invites him to use their courtyard. They tell him (shown in grisly flashback) how another samurai had made the same threat earlier, and how he too had been obliged to kill himself in the courtyard - even though he only had a bamboo kendo sword (ouch!) At the end of the story, the samurai says “I know. That was my son-in law!” and goes through the place like a buzzsaw.
I can’t believe I, as this film’s most vocal detractors, am about to do this:
Thelma and Louise.
I feel so dirty.
Happiness.
That was one hell of a movie.
Cleopatra
Julius Caesar
The Devil’s Advocate
Fatal Attraction
Commandments
Memento
There was a movie about jazz musicians in Germany during the beginning of the Holocaust called “Swingers” or something to that effect which had one of the swingers slash his wrists.
Oh yes, and End of Days had Ah-nold as a suicidal security guard.