Father car accident

Yeah, if I wanted to kill myself, I'd definitely try to do it by running into a pile of garbage cans.

I watched the film on HBO in late-1979. I always thought that the father suffered a heart attack, and died, and the car ended up crashing. The DVD re-release of "Luna" states on the back of the DVD package, that it was an act of "suicide".

During the late-1970s and into the 1980s, the US was in the grip of what Billy Joel described in a "Rolling Stone" interview as "The Invisible Depression". A lot of factories were closing, and millions of people lost their jobs.

Some people during that era, when they lost their job, or got into a major financial bind, would use their life insurance policies in order to pay off their debts, but to do so, they had to commit suicide, in a way that would look like an unfortunate accident.

The easiest way for the people that chose this sad path, was to drive their cars into utility poles, brick walls, or locked heavy metal gates. Insurance companies at the time almost always paid the survivors of the deceased.

Although no details were given in the movie, adults living during that time had a rough idea of what was happening. I was a teenager when I first watched this film, and did not know about people committing suicide to "get their families out of debt" until many years later.