Suicide in movies

When my brother was in high school, he had a friend, a very nice kid, whose mother died of cancer. A few days later, his father walked into the woods. He was missing for a few days and was found to have committed suicide.

I had to mention this in conversation quite a few years later when people in my family argued that O.J. must have been guilty. He had been suicidal during the Bronco chase. Why else would he kill himself, especially after the mother of his children was killed.

Then there was a rich woman I knew whose ex-husband sent her daughter to one of those discipline-oriented boarding schools because he thought she was suicidal. He thought suicidal depression was a discipline problem.

And, of course, there are people who talk about suicide as the "coward's way out".

But unless they're characters in a samurai movie, people don't kill themselves because they've carefully weighed their options and decided that would be the most reasonable course of action. There's a very good reason why people who attempt suicide end up in the psycho ward.

Things may be different in other countries. I just watched a Japanese mystery movie from 1961. And I see that it was remade in 2009.

In one scene, a man's brother is convinced he was murdered. "He didn't have a reason to commit suicide." He says this as if suicide would have been perfectly logical if he had had a reason. He's not shocked or bewildered that his brother would kill himself. Just didn't have a reason.

Movie was pretty good though. It was based on a serialized novel by Seicho Matsumoto. I read another novel he's written and it was pretty good. Maybe he just had a great translator.

But it kills it for me when the logic of a movie depends on a rational explanation for a psychotic act.