Suicide?


Mmmm... since the junkie shots Antoine from behind first, it's not believable his death can be considered suicide

However, this film is so sad...


I'm Winston Wolf, I solve problems

And no dream is ever... just a dream...

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Well, yes it can.
He paid or asked the "junkie" to kill him. In other words, he wanted to die, but asked someone else to do it. It was still his decision. It might look like murders to the people who find him, but he didn't care about that. He wanted out, but couldn't manage it alone.
It's similar to "suicide by cop", where a person intentionally does some dangerous, like waving a gun, to be shot, murdered, by a policeman.

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Well, that's not what I meant.
What I meant was: can the dynamic of his death be considered a suicide, since the
junkie shoots him from the behind? By the way, I've just checked, and he even shoots him two times.


I'm Winston Wolf, I solve problems

And no dream is ever... just a dream...

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Quite.. How can anyone have thought it was suicide? It was close, but well beyond arm length.. no powder residue on his hand / clothes. mostly other finger prints.. and - the best for last- as you say - shoots himself TWICE!?
What sort of initial investigation thought suicide? (We know it did, because at the beginning the papers said so.. OK, they soon changed.. but what evidence was there to lead to the initial suggestion it was suicide??)

OK, as a fictional film we have seen.. 'Suicide by someone else' (as an act of kindness by a friend) is what we are supposed to believe.. but (in the supposed 'real world' within the film )who would ever accept that story?

Perhaps the film maker is trying to make a political point about the "unfeeling and blinkered attitude of the authorities" who we know will not see it that way, and will "unfairly hunt down and persecute the shooter"? Maybe.

few visible scars

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In fact, I think the "suicide assistant" seems so removed from Charles' inner world and preoccupations that the act appears to switch from a remunerated request for terminating him to a deliberate borderline murder. This is suggested by Charles' last acts and words. He stops and listens to a piece of music by Mozart coming from a TV set (he has slowed down while the paid aide walks rapidly and almost robotically, probably eager to proceed with his "customer"'s bleak request as quickly as possible. As they both stroll about in Père Lachaise cemetery, the last words pronounced by Charles are something like "Je pensais que j'aurais des pensées sublimes en ces derniers moments" (I thought that sublime thoughts would come to me at the last moment). In fact, the poor young man is expressing some doubt in disguise when realizing that death is going to be indeed as trivial and depressing as life itself - as he is seeing or perceiving it. However, pecuniary considerations (as attested by Bresson himself in his own analysis of the synopsis of The Devil Probably) have already sealed Charles' fate and he will not have the chance to turn around and ask for a time out...
The junkie's clearly acts like a total stranger and a thief and he has shot Charles without any consideration for the latter's interests. A more sensitive person would have listened more closely to Charles and might have perhaps stopped him from going on with the assisted suicide. But then again, such a sensitive person would never have the ability to shoot Charles so cold-bloodedly ! Thus the question remains and that's Bressons' point in showing the two articles. There is a terrible ambiguity in this apparent "assisted suicide".

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I'm wondering why the psychiatrist gave him the idea after he said something not so dreary. As for the end, the guy wanted his heroin. Had he not shot him then, it could have gone on for a while, but maybe his pride would be too much to say "forget it"

I thought it started and ended well, could have been Bresson's best, but there's a lot of *beep* in the middle, which is very unlike Bresson.

7/10

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