Movies about death
by temrok9 | created - 24 May 2017 | updated - 24 May 2017 | PublicThis is not a list of films that deal with grief or scenaria about dying people; this is rather a list of films that take a look at the prospect of death from a Heideggerian point of view, if I may say so playfully, not because they are exercises in philosophy but because they consider the mindness of death as vital element of human beings;and try to come in terms with it. No wonder, they are all masterpieces, in my opinion, of their-or any-kind. Here's the list:
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1. Halloween (1978)
R | 91 min | Horror, Thriller
Fifteen years after murdering his sister on Halloween night 1963, Michael Myers escapes from a mental hospital and returns to the small town of Haddonfield, Illinois to kill again.
Director: John Carpenter | Stars: Donald Pleasence, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tony Moran, Nancy Kyes
Votes: 306,933 | Gross: $47.00M
John Carpenter's best film captures iconically the moment of horror as the moment of the unexplainable intrusion of death in the fake normality- and safety- of our daily routine. He who comes home, and kills without reason, is not the incarnation of evil, he is not Satan, he is beyond that, he is Death himself;and the crying of Curtis at the end, the worrying look of Pleasanse, when they see that he hasn't died, that the streets where people were roaming carelessly before are now haunted by him for evermore, are because now they do know that death is real and noone gets out of here alive!
2. Don't Look Now (1973)
R | 110 min | Drama, Horror, Mystery
A married couple grieving the recent death of their young daughter are in Venice when they encounter two elderly sisters, one of whom is psychic and brings a warning from beyond.
Director: Nicolas Roeg | Stars: Julie Christie, Donald Sutherland, Hilary Mason, Clelia Matania
Votes: 62,355 | Gross: $0.98M
Of the two films that connect Venice with death ( the other being Visconti's Death in Venice), this is my personal preference. The whole film is a labyrinth of misleading paths, begininning from a dramatic loss which the couple tries to deal with. But it is the end that makes it so complete and powerful, when the art of editing is revealed as an imitation of the memory lane in the wake of the upcoming end of it all.
3. The Fog (1980)
R | 89 min | Horror, Thriller
An unearthly fog rolls into a small coastal town exactly 100 years after a ship mysteriously sank in its waters.
Director: John Carpenter | Stars: Adrienne Barbeau, Jamie Lee Curtis, Janet Leigh, John Houseman
Votes: 83,050 | Gross: $21.38M
The Fog is a more complicated- and therefore often accused of not being equally excellent in excecution- film than Halloween, but one in which Carpenter takes the Halloween idea of linking horror with death even farther. The epigraph by Edgar Allan Poe at the beginning of the film leaves no doubt. At the end of this unique and extremely beautiful movie, it's not a plot that is over, it is the mystery of being alive waiting for the Fog to attack again that comes forth.
4. The American Friend (1977)
Not Rated | 128 min | Crime, Drama, Mystery
Tom Ripley, who deals in forged art, suggests a picture framer he knows would make a good hit man.
Director: Wim Wenders | Stars: Dennis Hopper, Bruno Ganz, Lisa Kreuzer, Gérard Blain
Votes: 18,615
The Wim Wenders' adaptation of Highsmith is a meditation on death, not only because the central character is dying from cancer but because everything points in a feeling of decay; this great movie is an excellent mourning over a loss that is so obscure but profound that you know it but cannot put it in words.
5. Venus in Fur (2013)
Not Rated | 96 min | Drama
An actress attempts to convince a director how she's perfect for a role in his upcoming production.
Director: Roman Polanski | Stars: Emmanuelle Seigner, Mathieu Amalric
Votes: 20,976 | Gross: $0.34M
At first glance, the Polanski film has nothing to do with death; it is when you see under the surface, experiencing the film through the direction of the genious of Polanski, that you feel that exiting the theater where the play we watched was on( a play between the two, the male and the female) means the end of everything, means the real end of the play we'd been playing all along
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