10 Harrowing Scenes Of Suicide In Film

1. Control (2007)

This entry is unique in that it is the depiction of a suicide that really took place, which makes it contextually more arresting than any other previously listed, despite the fact that we don't actually see it. Control, the black-and-white biopic of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis, grounds the torrid reality of suicide in expertly-realised 1970s Manchester, grim and stark as the works of its chosen subject, and culminates in the infamous death by hanging of the troubled frontman. Much has been written about what drove Curtis €“ here played by Sam Riley €“ to take his own life, with Control itself adapted from widow Deborah Curtis' biography 'Touching From a Distance', but Anton Corbijn's film very firmly places the singer's long battle with epilepsy as the foremost culprit, with his failing marriage to Deborah a largely contributing factor. The infamous event is played with the utmost mental and physical anguish by Riley, whose Curtis suffers from a terrible seizure after a night of drinking alone and hangs himself in the kitchen the next morning. It is the undiluted, true insight into a man's unrelenting pain and the inevitable self-murder is so convincingly portrayed that Control almost flirts with the idea that suicide is a reasonable way out, so hard-hitting are Curtis' moments of agony. As aforementioned, the suicide itself is not seen, but the sequence is not robbed of any impact. Curtis, in tears, takes hold of the rope, which is then shown tightening ferociously as the man himself dies off screen. The dreaded, recognisable sound of falling weight then underscores our fears, as our imaginations are spoonfed by Corbijn's creative direction and the dramatic irony of already knowing how this one ends. Joy Division's haunting 'Atmosphere' plays the film out, and the banal reality of suicide as a common means to an end, a distressing act of human desperation that is constantly taking place behind the closed doors and curtains of our friends and neighbours, begins to hit home as the tragedy of Ian Curtis sinks in €“ reinvigorating the notion of suicide as an unspoken possibility sitting idle in the darkest corners of our human psyches. Like this article? Let us know in the comments section below.