MovieChat Forums > The Virgin Suicides (2000) Discussion > As someone who has experienced something...

As someone who has experienced something like this...

posted 10 years ago by Hardline_Pro
1 reply | jump to latest

I begin questioning the ethics of the people around - the society. This was in the 1970s so obviously mental health was treated differently in those days. I was not born then but I have experienced psychiatric care after being depressed for most of my time in high school. Long story short - I was in a psychiatric facility for 8 days and 7 nights, had to go to court-appointed therapy, and to this day I am still not 100% better even though I am on Prozac.

Anyways after the first girl's suicide attempt she would have been committed to a hospital for a set number of days until the doctor deems her mentally stable perhaps Danny DeVito didn't know the warning signs or just didn't care.

Secondly, someone should have reported the parents (mainly the mother) to DCF. Locking the girls in the house could be considered a form of neglect.

Finally, probably the most haunting thing about this film was the last few scenes where the boys were reflecting on everything. Not only did their parents move on like nothing had happened, but people were even making fun of them (like the guy falling into the pool at the party).

Suicide is a controversial topic and there are many people with absurd opinions like it. I've heard people say that people who kill themselves are cowards and selfish and that is simply not the case. Often times people kill themselves because they think nobody will miss them, or that they are doing the world a favor by ending their life because they do not feel like the contribute anything to society.

Anyways, that's just my 2 cents.

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[–] maxtshea 10 years ago

You can go one of two directions with teen suicide movies. You can be perverse, like "Heathers" (1989), or you can be sincere, like "Ordinary People," (1980). Virgin Suicides tried to split the difference and it didn't work.

I want through hard times of my own as an eighties teen. I have also dealt with people close to me committing suicide.

Unless the film is a farce, I want to see a good faith effort convey to the audience the individual pathology of each character who commits suicide.

Suffice to say, I thought VS spent too much time on the voyeuristic boys and too little time establishing the girls and their parents as characters. I though it was silly to have the surviving four all kill themselves in a suicide massacre on the same night. That was disappointing and ham-fisted treatment of the subject.