Suicide as chosen silence: socio-political metaphors, moral fatigue, and death in Malayalam cinema

This study explores suicide as an act of chosen silence within Malayalam cinema, where suicide marks an end to suffering, but also functions as a resonant metaphor for estrangement, dignity, and moral fatigue. Focusing on the films Sukrutham (1994) by Harikumar and Kadhavasheshan (2004) by T. V. Chandran, the analysis examines how characters approach suicide as both an existential threshold and a socio-cultural commentary. Drawing on Durkheim’s Le Suicide and Heidegger’s concept of being-towards-death, the study situates these narratives at the intersection of personal anguish and the moral architectures of society. In both films, the narratives present suicide as a deliberate and ethically-inflected withdrawal that stages a quiet protest against social alienation and philosophical disillusionment, rather than an impulsive rupture of existence. This article examines the representation of death and its relationship to moral fatigue as a cinematic site for reflecting on the politics of living in tension with the pressures of self-erasure. It foregrounds Kerala’s cultural imaginaries of dignity, despair, and moral choice, showing how the films mobilise the trope of suicide to trace characters’ lives thinning into absence and their speech yielding to silence, presenting it as a tragic end, but also a contemplative assertion of agency.