Suicide Circle anyone?
By Mike • Feb 28th, 2006 • Category: Japan, internet, movies, newsA BBC article writes on the significant rise of internet deaths in Japan. Not just any deaths, but suicides by means of interaction on the internet. The death toll doubled last year from the years preceding at a recorded 91 deaths. Pacts are made by groups of various internet people to end their lives at the same time.
Suicide Circle, a Japanese horror film released in 2002, serves as a decent visual of this unanswered phenomena. The film doesn’t exactly leave the viewer in horror but rather in a confused state of mind.
Check out the film here..
If you’re able to put a finger behind the theme in this movie, please enlighten me. It leaves me in utter confusion every time I watch it.
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The theme I understood from Suicide Club was society’s suceptibility to popular trends(the mass media/the idol/pop-group dessert). In this case, suicide happened to be the cool thing to do. Like lemmings.
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I know it’s over a year since you posted this questions, but I decided to answer anyways. =P
I pretty much had the same initial reaction as you: what the hell did I just watch? After doing a little snooping around on the internet, and a few repeated watchings… the movie makes a lot more sense to me now (and is pretty good, too!)
I think brent hit it pretty well on the nail; the director and writer of the movie, Shion Sono, had a friend commit suicide shortly before he started writing the script for the movie. In a way, this film is a way for him to come to grips with his friend’s suicide, as well as give a social commentary on suicide in general.
In the movie, Sono argues that, everyday, we are surrounded by people who are sad, depressed, lonely, etc. and we do little to deal with it. In one scene, when Kuroda, the police detective, is sitting on the subway… going home, we are presented with different shots of the various passengers; none of them look very happy. However, nobody bothers to do anything about it; they just sit there, drowing in their own misery. In a way, this “coldness” to others fosters the suicidal tendency in people. Shion, though, seems to suggest that suicide can really happen anywhere… sometimes where we least expect it, because it is the “normal” cheerful people who actually seem to kill themselves in the movie.
When Kuroda comes home, we are shown how disconnected he is from his family. He’s completely caught up in his work and outside, social responsibilities. This issue is mentioned by the strange boy on the phone, who asks Kuroda if he’s connected to himself. Shion is stating that people get caught up so much in their societal roles, that they become empty within themselves and with those that they care about. They miss signs of trouble displayed by their loved ones and pay attention, instead, to the louder and flashier messages of pop culture/ commercialism. Kuroda’s whole family is depressed, and Kuroda is completely oblivious to it. When his daughter says “hi” to him, completely covered in blood, he doesn’t even bother to turn around.
In a way, Shion is saying that we have lost something by becoming such a commercialized society (although he is aiming this message to Japanese, I think it applies to most industrialized countries today). We spend more time watching television and on the internet than we do with our own families. The Bat is a good example of this: she sits in a darkened room with her friend, and ignores the pleas of her father who is sitting only a room away. There is a definite divide growing between young and old as a result of technology.
So now that we’ve established what is fueling the suicides (the loss of self as a result of trying too hard to fit within a commercialistic and shallow society), what role do the children play, and better yet… what’s up with the rolls of human skin???
I’ve read a few “theories” on the net, and this is the best one that I’ve come across…
Remember that Japan is a Shintoist and Buddhist society. In Japanese culture, there is no religious, negative connotation towards suicide. Indeed, some Japanese might feel it is the “honorable” thing to do, if it will save their family from disgrace. Reincarnation and nature are huge themes within Japanese religious culture, which explains the chicks in that one creepy room, towards the end of the film; they represent rebirth and a new beginning, in a sense.
The children themselves, represent a sort of God-like presence. They’re kind of like spirits reborn, who are aware of the misery in the world, and have taken it upon themselves to test people to see if they’re worthy of life; if they’re “connected” to themselves. The test is administrated through mass media, through the female pop group, Dessert. The children, themselves, are still untainted by the “dirt” of society, and are still in touch with themselves.
In the final scene, the girl Mitsuko is standing at the tracks of the subway train. She is pulled back by a detective, who thinks she is trying to commit suicide. She pulls away from him, gets on the train, and leaves. This is sort of Shion’s final message regarding suicide: it is totally in the hands of the person. Mitsuko doesn’t commit suicide, because she has decided that she is connected to herself. Even though she participated in the same ritual as the other suicides, she decides to live.
Anyways, I hope this clears the movie up some for you. I’m not even going to claim that this really IS the explanation, since the movie is really so open to interpretation; this is just what I’ve gathered from watching the movie a few times, and from what I’ve read from different people on the net.
Bye!
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