10 Greatest Movies About Death

Citizen Kane may have recently lost its 100% Rotten Tomatoes score and been supplanted by Paddington 2 as the site's highest-reviewed movie, but beyond being a landmark piece of filmmaking, Orson Welles' astonishing directorial debut is also an excellent film about life and death.

The mystery at the core of the movie is of course the meaning of media mogul Charles Foster Kane's (Welles) last word, "Rosebud."

While Welles certainly takes the scenic route getting to the answer, the film's extensive flashbacks to Kane's younger life provide the shading necessary for its final payoff to hit as hard as it does.

The climactic revelation, that Kane's final word was in reference to his childhood sled of the same name, punchily surmises that, in our final moments, we think back to those we savour most.

For Kane, the sled symbolises his childhood innocence, which was promptly snatched away from him when he was taken into the care of banker Walter Parks Thatcher (George Coulouris), leading to a life of tremendous wealth yet little in the way of true joy or fulfilment.

Citizen Kane is of course about so much more than just death - the American dream, memory, the role of the media, and politics - but it ultimately comes down to a deep desire in those left behind to figure out what Kane's enigmatic final utterance meant.

For all of his riches and apparent success, Kane was truly his happiest as a young boy without anything more than snow and a sled to his name, a memory that he cherished and chased until his dying day.

Cinema doesn't get much more heart-wrenchingly existential than that.