Suicide Club (Suicide Circle)
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DVD details
Actor: Akaji Maro, Hideo Sako, Masatoshi Nagase, Ryo Ishibashi, Saya HagiwaraBrand: TLA RELEASING
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); Japanese (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Running Time: 94 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-11-18
Audience Rating: Unrated
Model: TLA049
Studio: TLA Releasing
Product features:
- A wave of unexplainable suicides sweeps across Tokyo after 54 smiling high school girls join hands and throw themselves from a subway platform into an oncoming train. Detective Kuroda (Audition's Ryo Ishibashi) and the rest of the police force are baffled as the bloodbath triggers a wave of suicides across the city. When a cryptic phone call tips off police to a strange website that appears to
DVD Reviews of Suicide Club (Suicide Circle)
DVD Review: Commentary on a disasociated Japan *spoilers*
Summary: 5 Stars
On a purely visceral level I dug it, on a cinematic level I dug it, but on an intellectual level I feel that it falls somewhat short. There's just too much that doesn't add up for me and at times it felt like it was being obtuse for the sake of being obtuse. I wouldn't call it pretentious or smug like some other obtuse movies I've seen (Public Access for one. A movie my friend aptly dubbed "the cinematic equivalent to blue balls"), but I definitely agree with the person who said that the only way to understand everything would be to crawl into the brain of the Shion Sono.
I got the whole point about the act of suicide being up to the individual, and that it was a choice between being an individual and becoming part of society. The teenagers that jumped off the roof weren't linked to the little kids in rainslickers because there was no sports bag found. Therefore their decision to jump reinforces the idea that society or the group is really the culprit behind everything. Especially when you realize that the last girl to jump was the very first girl to stand on the ledge (I rewound the DVD three times and counted to be positive.) Had the others not joined her on the ledge (peer pressure) perhaps none of them would have jumped.
I could even see that suicide was merely a metaphor for the obliteration of one's identity in order to become part of the group. The girls jump off the tracks, we see one girl's face (her identity) pulverized by the train and then just buckets of blood. Afterwards in the morgue, the "body" of the victim that they find is a combination of several bodies mashed together. When the teenagers jump off the roof we see them fall and then, once again, blood. We don't see the bodies afterwards other than the ear, but whose ear is it? And when the girls jump off Osaka Castle it happens off-screen. Once they become part of the group they no longer exist.
Unfortunately, both of those ideas seem to be contradicted several times throughout the movie, so I can't be certain that those theories are valid. In fact, half of the movie seems to directly contradict the other half.
If the whole point of the suicides is to enforce the idea that being an individual is more important than being part of the group, and if the chain of skin is supposed to represent that we are all connected to one another, how do those two ideas co-exist? Why did those who chose to commit suicide and those who didn't commit suicide BOTH have their backs shaved? Wouldn't it have made more sense to have those who chose suicide be the sole donators to the skin chain? Instead of living as an individual they elect to have a big hunk of skin taken off with a plane and commit suicide just so they can belong to the group. Maybe its just me, but that makes a whole hell of a lot more sense then what actually happened in the movie.
Also, IF the message of the film is individuality over faceless society, then why did the second child berate Detective Kuroda for not caring about any of the victims until they were personally connected to him AFTER the first child "explained" the whole connection dealy? "Scum!" That seemed more of a "we are all connected and should take care of each other" message than a "live for yourself" message.
If we know that the kids who jump off the roof of the school AREN'T connected to the other suicides because of the lack of the sports bag and its contents, then what about all of the other suicides that ARE linked to Dessert yet have no gym bag? There was no gym bag found at Mitsuko's boyfriend's suicide (since his skin was on one of the other skin chains) nor was there one at Detective Kuroda's house, but obviously both are connected to the original mass suicide.
When the girls jump off of Osaka Castle while the young detective is staring at the website the red dots blink onto the screen AS he gets the phone call telling him about it, not before. So how could this jibe with what The Bat originally tells them about the dots appearing BEFORE the suicides? Especially since the suicides HAD to have happened some time before he got the phone call. Shouldn't those dots appear immediately after the Q&A with the audience of creepy children? That's supposedly when they decide to kill themselves or not, right?
Other scenes just raise questions with no discernable answers or make no sense to me at all. Why did the security guard see the ghosts of the two nurses? Was that scene even necessary? Why didn't the other comedian kill himself too? Did he know his partner was going to knife himself in the throat? He must have, because he didn't even blink while the audience ran out screaming. Why are the little kids wearing yellow rain slickers? Did they get them on sale or something? How come BOTH of the mysterious kids who called the police cleared their throats after every speech, yet NONE of the kids in the audience did? Are there TWO sets of little kids? One group who runs the www.maru.ne.jp website and keep baby chicks and another group with post nasal drip who runs the Ruins.com website and keep rabbits, or are the two sites related? Why set up a website that says "Send this message to stop the suicides" if you're just going to call the people that sign up and tell them there is no Suicide Club? And what purpose did the other website serve other than being a psychotic score board? Why did three times as many girls/women kill themselves as boys/men? Were there only three sports bags and three skin chains? And if so does that mean that the kids had a set number of people they were going to test? What role do Dessert actually play other than being a key to a riddle? Are they themselves part of this whole thing, or are they being controlled? Do they even exist? We never see them other than on television or in print. What of the arena itself? Is it some mystical place or merely a conduit to the realm where those creepy little kids interrogate J-Pop fans? Why was it Dessert's last performance? Again, does that mean there was a set number of people needed for the skin chains? Oh, and perhaps most importantly, WHO THE HELL ARE THOSE LITTLE KIDS?!?!?!?!
The only thing I feel that I completely understand was the purpose for Genesis and his "Suicide Club." A Suicide Club that only kills others and not themselves mind you, reinforcing the notion that there is indeed NO Suicide Club. I don't believe their purpose was for some Rocky Horror homage or sheer shock value. If you watch The Bat and her friend's expressions before they are kidnapped they are practically giddy about the prospect of contacting the people responsible for the suicides. She even signs her BBS post to "my DEAR Suicide Club". She went looking for some sort of idealized evil, but instead of getting what she had romanticized about she found true depravity. It's not unlike teenagers in our own culture who worship serial killers or mass murderers because they think it makes them dark and outsiders and therefore cool. Oh and yes, she did die after Genesis and his merry band caught her typing. Think about it. He wants to get caught, but more importantly he wants to be infamous. The higher the body count, the higher the level of infamy. Also think about what happened the FIRST time he told one of his goons to be entertaining.
I really did like this movie a lot despite its many flaws. It's seemingly contradictory metaphors and puzzle pieces that don't quite fit (make them fit! whoo!) I'm sure that a lot of those contradictions and dead-ends exist solely to move along the plot or provide cooler imagery, but that doesn't bother me as much as it probably should. Even now as I write this I'm pondering all those unanswered and unanswerable questions, but not in a bad way. I'm curious rather than frustrated. And even though I wish the film gave more concrete answers, I agree with the person who said that the overall feeling the movie leaves you with is far more important than the solution to the puzzle.
Which is good, because frankly I kind of doubt there even IS a solution.
Description of Suicide Club (Suicide Circle)
A wave of unexplainable suicides sweeps across Tokyo after 54 smiling high school girls join hands and throw themselves from a subway platform into an oncoming train. Are the jumpers part of a cult? What is the connection to the website that chronicles suicides...before they happen? And, what is the connection to the Japanese all-girl pop group "Desert?" Suicide Club is a stylish, bizarre thriller that examines pop culture and disaffected youth.Similar DVDs, VHS Video, Audio CDs
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