Suicide Club (2003, DVD)

Suicide Club, winner of a couple of awards from the Fantasia Film festival, aka the sci-fi convention of pacific moviemakers, was brought to america one day and given subtitles and left for innocent Americans to stare at and wonder. What the heck was that? Secretly I believe that Japanese culture as a whole who saw this was like, what the heck too. Any person who doesn't think, wow, that movie made my head hurt should probably get their head looked at. Anyways, to move on to the plot of the movie, I warn you that if you are under the age of 18, or are weaked by reading gory details. Please turn back and never watch this movie. Period.

The movie I believe strives to extend the idea that suicide isn't natural. It's totally satirized throughout the entire movie. The mother chopping off her hand. The comic stabbing his throat. It's not so much the actions that we need to scrutinize to feel the movie, it's our reactions. Why do we find this so horrifying? People don't commit suicide when they're happy. They don't smile and call it fun. Why do these kids do it? I'm not able to grasp an answer, but sometimes questions are just as good as answers. The question like, what binds us to ourselves? That question will haunt me for a good long time. I don't know if we are ourselves after we die or we lose connection with ourselves. Are we ourselves after we die or are we something different. And the only explanation I have to all the suicides is... i don't, i tried writing something about how if we keep the connection with yourself, how would that explain the motive to suicide. But it doesn't matter on how you look at it. There's a missing piece in the puzzle that help us explain why, and if that bothers you. Don't buy it. It's not all about the why does this happen. I figure it has as much to do with the scene in the house with the mother making dinner and slicing off her hand or the four women acting on a stage hanging themselves. They long for that connection with each other that at that exact time they were trying to remembrance. They show that physically and figuratively through the whole film. Both of Kokuro's children died. And I bet you could assume they died together. Kokuro's suicide was the only abnormal suicide of the entire movie. It was motivated by rage, by fear, by loss. And that was THE DEFINING point of the entire movie to understand the ridiculousness of suicide. What good did it do for him to commit suicide? You had over 100 happy suicides before him, and he committed his in a fury of tears.

That was just my little shpeal on the plot. Probably the best part of the movie was the actual idea of the movie more so than the actual music or direction. The movie was non-linear for the most part, spouting off like a Japanese movie on little subplots and shunts of sometimes seemingly little consequence. The musical interlude with Genesis seemed to have no purpose while "Dessert/Dessart/Desart/Desert" seemed to have plenty of meaning to it. The filmography though post the first 20 minutes of it, was fairly good. A lot of excellent lighting added to the mood, and by excellent lighting I really mean the idea of bright as day. Outside, the suicides we're on a sunny day supporting the "happy" idea.

Conceptually all parts of the movie work together. But there's so many parts to the puzzle that just fly at your face via the sheer amount of question, it's overwhelming to try to decode the movie on the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, six, i don't know how many times. It's embarrassing sometimes.

So, I recommend this movie to guys who want to take girls to go see a gory movie who have a sense of style with movies. This movie is thought provoking along the lines of Memento, and gory like Saw. Kind of a mesh between both. I mean, you look totally cultured by saying, lets go see a foreign film, and simultaneously it's creepy, inspiring and makes a terrific date movie.

Rating 84%