Landscape Suicide

It may sound strange if I said that I find a film about murderers really inspiring, but yes, Landscape suicide is one of those few films that shows me what I love about cinema and encouraged me to experiment into the possibilities that the medium offers. 

Benning approachs to true-crime subgenre with total different intentions and manners that most of filmmaking of the topic. First, because its thought-provoking nature and less exploitative in the graphic-violent / sexual details than stories presented carry. Landscape suicide, that also offers a terrifiying sensory experience based on images, sounds and text, mixes the crimes investigation with a geographical / social portatrait of America, with moments of lynchean-mystery and an inevitable nostalgic feeling that somehow gives comfort to the public, despite the horrifying tales that are presented. Benning makes questions, about why an murdered it's committed, if the surrounding environment influence or make to proto-murder more vulnerable to act with sometimes the most ridiculously cathartic yet primitive way of human violence demonstrations, and finally, if the evilness that induced Ed Gain and Bernadette, the two ones that lead both stories presented, to commit such abhorrent acts, it's natural or not, into the American, rural and city context. The director does not limit to present those testimonies, images and material about the crimes, but he leaves scattered clues that could help us to answer the questions formulated through the entire run-time. One of those clues is what seems to be a typical evangelistic message (one that focuses in spread fear to the eternal condemnation, instead of making the listener reflect about they sin condition in front god, that would be the correct, according to the Bible) by a christian preacher (differentiate from catholic please) playing on a car's radio, in a scene where we travel through the suburbs where Bernadette, a girl who stabbed her friend, lived, and the same preacher (I think) during the Gain's segment, but this time talking about violence as a result of rebellion against the (biblical) God's will. In the Bible, the first official induced-dead, occurs after Adam and Eve committed sin (eating a prohibited fruit that seemed delicious, encouraged by the devil that took the form of one part of their environment) and God, after giving them advices and announcing the results of their action, kills a lamb to use its fur to cover the two sinners that until that moment, used to be naked and not feeling ashamed. They basically acquired conscious of their condition into the environment (the landscapes) and needed something to escape the consequence of that state; something that it's later refered as a metaphor of the sacrifice Jesus (the killed lamb offered by God), in the New Testament, to cover the sins of his chosen ones. In the two interviews with the murderers, we first listen: Bernadette accepting her guilt and clearly still in an unconscious state of shock that doesn't allow her to articulate some sentences and avoid thinking about the punishment she was near to affront (at least that's what I can infer of her words), even if we can read her in a letter mentioning that she ruined her life, it doesn't seem she's being completely conscious of all the consequences of what she did. And Mr. Gain showing himself convinced that he didn't commit murder. Nurture (the landscape and American culture) influenced or at least gave the possibilities to those two to kill. Benning portrays the cities were the murderers took place, through static shoots, images that stay still, paying attention to all the possibilities of time. Images that carry sorrow, mystery and pain, of the sins of this people and country. It's a film about lost and found fault and sin of American culture. The film ends with a man opening the fur of a killed deer in a wood. I don't know if putting biblical imaginary was intentional, but it was impossible to me to not make the relation.

Landscape suicide establishes as one of the better executed experimental films of the 80s and, as in great films, it surpasses its original intention and acquires a metaphysical/filmic level. The study of landscape and their effect over people, unintentionally, ends up being one of the life-changing power of images, of the nature of cinema, of what (unconsciously) affects the most, despite the person's knowledge / pretentions at the moment of approaching the medium. I can assure the ones who have enjoyed films like Fire walk with me or Su Friedreich's Sink or Swim or Fincher's Mindhunter (?) a great experience here. Let yourself be consumed with Benning's disturbing psychological piece, it's amazing.

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