10 Harrowing Scenes Of Suicide In Film

4. Full Metal Jacket (1987)

Stanley Kubrick's celebrated Vietnam movie has often been called two films dressed as one, as the latter, war-set portion of the film is tonally and narratively quite isolated from the former segment, which takes place at the military training camp and follows a select few U.S Army recruits €“ including slow-witted bumbler Leonard "Gomer Pyle" Lawrence and his burly harassment by Drill Instructor Hartman. It is with good reason that the earlier part of the film is more celebrated than the location-shot, explosive finale, as we're treated to scene-stealing Ronald Lee Ermey as the roaring, relentless Hartman €“ armed with a seemingly bottomless arsenal of profane, oddly motivational insults which he uses to pelt his earnest recruits. But, as a result of this, we also have one of the most powerful, unsettling moments Kubrick ever filmed €“ Pyle's suicide. Played in recognisably Kubrickian slow-motion and set to a deep, foreboding score, Pyle's self-murder by shotgun (pre-empted by the brutal shooting of Hartman) has the tone of a horror movie €“ and rightly so. While suicide is unfortunately common, being witness to a suicide is relatively not so, yet Matthew Modine's protagonist James "Joker" Davis has the unfortunate privilege of playing audience to the whole thing. The scene is bloodily brutal and pulls no punches as Kubrick skillfully illustrates the full sense of horror inherent in being witness to something so terrible, and to have passed beyond a point where such an act could be seen as unthinkable. Weak-willed Pyle has been prodded to the very edge by the man he eventually kills, and his broken spirit is explosively personified as he blows his brains out all over the wall. The fact that it comes amidst one of the most heinous, pointless conflicts in recent military history grounds the whole dreaded affair in a sense of realism not usually permitted to Kubrick's consciously filmic efforts.