i loved the film when it came out + can appreciate its beauty and dreaminess. but i do feel like it makes suicide look like this lovely, pure act.
i guess i don't know what i'm saying. i just think young girls can get lost in it a bit and i sort of wish there was more hard reality to offset the poetic quality of their deaths.
I thought the production made light of suicide, and I was offended. However, the film directly pointed out how we cannot control emotions. The film also pointed out how we hide, ignore, belittle people. This was an affluent city, where you want to believe that if someone needed help, they could get it. But the movie demonstrated that you couldn't tell who needed help, including themselves. The film portrayed the people as not in touch with reality, therefore, anything was possible.
"...as long as people can change, the world can change"
Personally I didn't feel the film at all glamorized suicide, but was honest about the reality of the situation. It was a time where people were less involved in other families' business because it was improper to get involved. We witnessed through the eyes of a young, infatuated boy the events that unfolded.
As he was young and "in love" with the idea of the Lisbon sisters, his narration of the events would naturally be told not in a dark and morbid way (as the events truly are), but with sorrow, sympathy and an air of mystery surrounding the specifics.
I think we each take from the feel of the film in a personal way. I've never felt it was a lighthearted portrayal of suicidr, but the opposite. Because of the lack the dark elements and almost passive telling of the suicides, I always found the story even more disturbing.
But, again, personal opinion.
I totally agree. People take movies too literally sometimes. The movie to me is about how the MALES saw these girls and how they haunted them the rest of their lives as a kind of metaphor for lost innocence. It's kind of interesting how you don't know WHO the narrator is other than he's male. In the book the narrator is a collective male "we".
The actual girls here are almost a complete mystery. The quintuple suicide is what I'd call a "conceit". It's not supposed to be realistic--it serves a higher purpose than a realism or, god forbid, some trite "social message". The movie is not meant to be any kind of statement on teen suicide. It's a movie about youth, beauty, lost innocence, and a overwhelming sadness for a idealized time you can never get back to.
i didn't take it literally at all and i'm not one to be Offended by things
i just think that the main feel i took away from the film was the beauty of these girls that took their own lives + so many young girls now look to the film for sartorial inspiration and i'd hate for the film to register on any level where suicide is this glamorous, pure, breathtaking thing (even though it has a deeper meaning + multiple meanings)
of course the book the film is based on is deep and operates on many levels but i don't think those films covered those levels as much as it was just this melancholic, beautiful thing
Well, every time an actual suicide (or suicide attempt) is depicted, it is done so with an abrupt switch from bright pink-yellow hues, and dreamy music, to harsh blue tones, silence, actual neighborhood sounds and ugliness.
Even the aftermath of both Cecilia's death and the Lisbon sister's deaths (the latter at Alice's débutante party) are cast in blue or green-blue hues, and given an almost disconcerting soundtrack or harsh variation on the main theme, respectively.
There's almost a cynical tone to the narration during the post-mass-suicide portions of the film. The boys obviously saw nothing glamorous or beautiful about what the girls did. They even call it selfish.
The film is constantly juxtaposing the idealization of the girls themselves against the horrible reality of their deaths (think of the first cut right before "Cecilia was the first to go"...even though it was an attempt and not an actual death).
Or how the boys were "dreaming of highways"...then they hear a thud only to see Bonnie swinging from a rope in the basement, surrounded by the decaying remains of Cecilia's first and only party.
Nothing glamorous there. Really, really ugly!
However, I give you my word that if I ever run an independent cinema, I will always run this as a double feature, and follow it with "Heathers".
"Teenage suicide...Don't do it!"