The Virgin Suicides
| Director | Sofia Coppola |
| Release year | 1999 |
| Genre | Drama / Romance |
| My watch history | 2018-06-18 2022-08-04 2023-09-18 |
| Actors | Kirsten Dunst, Josh Hartnett, James Woods, Kathleen Turner, Michael Paré, Scott Glenn, Danny DeVito, A. J. Cook, Hanna Hall, Leslie Hayman |
| IMDB | IMDB |
Review
Group of man reminisce their youth years, their love of the Lisbon sisters and the mystery of their suicides. They try to figure out what happened to those girls and they want to understand their inner world. They have collected their personal items like the diary of the youngest Lisbon sister but the lifes and deaths of those young girls remains a mystery even after years.
I have seen this movie multiple time and I have liked it before and I like it still a lot. This remains a masterpiece what is unsolved mystery to me as much as the fate of the Lisbon sisters is to narrators of the story. So many clues, so many possibilities and yet still so many uncertainties.
This movie gives so many questions in a good way and it makes you wonder what is all about. It might be about the awardness of the suicides in America or especially in the youth and how those comes as a surprise for many. Not all people who ends their life in tragical way have clear signs what is easy to see by outsiders and those come as a surprise to people around them because of it.
It is easy to see and blame the mother in this movie about being too strict and what caused their deaths, but I feel that it could be just too oversimplified viewpoint. These girls felt multiple disappointments by many people in their life and as the normal life in the society continued after their deaths it shows also the cruelty and coldness of the adults when somebody mocks teenage drama.
Interestingly the first girl in this movie who ends her life talks about the death of the species to her mother, she does not want their tree to be cutted down and she also gives a hint of joy when she sees the young boy who is a little bit different arriving on her party. When others seem to mock her she feels sad, goes away the party and ends her life. Maybe her heart was too hurt to see others being mocked?
Role of a women in this movie is also something to think about. The contrast between mother and her girls are huge. Girls wants to be wild and free and grow as a woman, but their mother seems to be too worried about their growing that she is letting them die even when they are alive without maybe even realizing it. As she tells in the end, there were no lack of love in their home. Limites are love, but too much limits can make life feel like a prison and it will make the life feel empty and vain.
Some ways it feels like this movie is also about the change of society and how these kind of changes in society can cause tension between parents and their kids. Values, rules and morals in the home conflicts the values of the younger generation. Even if we think about the strictiness of the home of the Lisbon girls it would be too harsh to say that their lifestyle was too different from others in the same area as we see in the movie. Younger people had good manners and they were even wearing modest clothing so the society where those Lisbon girls were living was totally different. Society had more strict values and manners as a whole so the contrast of the Lisbon family is not that huge to their society than what it would be in current society.
All in all, what this movie is really about remains a mystery to me. I can just make guesses and analyze it like the boys analyzes those deaths of these girls in their past.
Review written: 2023-09-18