The Virgin Suicides and Melancholia
The Virgin Suicides is a 1999 film, directed by Sofia Coppola, that takes place in a suburban town in Michigan in the mid-1970’s with a group of teenage boys that become obsessed with 5 mysterious and beautiful sisters. The film is told through the boy’s point of view as they get a glimpse of “the imprisonment of being a girl” after the youngest sister, 13-year-old Cecilia, cuts her wrists in an attempt to kill herself.
A doctor suggests that the girl’s parents should allow them some more social interaction, so the parents decide to throw a small ‘get together’ at their house. However, the party doesn’t seem to help poor Cecilia, played by the young Hannah Hall, as she kills herself by jumping from her second-story bedroom window in the middle of the party. Leaving Lux, age 14, Bonnie, 15, Mary, 16, and Theresa, whose 17, to cope with the loss of their younger sister.
Sofia Coppola is the daughter of the famous producer and director Francis Ford Coppola and ex-wife to the popular producer and director Spike Jonze. Due to her close relationship to these 2 well-known directors Coppola created some skepticism preceding this film however through The Virgin Suicides she has shown us that she is a confident and imaginative filmmaker all on her own. Sofia has also directed many other films, some of these being, Lost in Translation, Somewhere, The Bling Ring and The Beguiled. Her film Lost in Translation won her an Oscar, Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay, as well as the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture.
The cinematography in The Virgin Suicides is part of what makes the film so great. Sofia has a unique approach on colors and lighting. She relies mostly on natural light causing most of her colors to be more neutral and muted rather than vibrant and bright. There are many scenes where you see this distinctive style of hers, where she uses specific colors and certain times in the day to get a certain type of light. The first scene that comes to mind is the scene when she wakes up, alone, in the field. The entire image is a shade of blue, tinting her face, dress and the grass to match (watch here 0:30–1:10). Another great use of light is in the scene when the boys are reading Cecilia’s diary and read about Lux’s love for the garbage man, Kevin (watch here 0:57–1:44). All the girls are out in a field as the sun is rising, the entire scene is tinted orange by the sun. Coppola loves to use and emphasize pastel colors, and this is portrayed throughout this entire film. One scene in particular stood out to me and this was the scene where the girls are all together looking at magazines and books after they are taken out of school by their mother as a result of Lux’s failure to make curfew (1:03:45–1:03:58). In almost all of her movies there is a scene where the camera views the character from outside a car window or from the inside of the car with the character looking out the window. Through these scenes she represents the captivity that the character is facing at that point in the film and once they get to step out of the car door or open up the window you get to see the illusion of freedom even if they may not truly be free. Even the title could be considered a work of art due to the figurativeness of it, the girls weren’t necessary virgins, but the term is referring to their youth and innocence.
Kirsten Dunst plays the provocative rebel 14-year-old, Lux. At one point in the film, Lux becomes a focus of the boys as she copes with the death of her sister by sleeping around with different boys every night. Dunst emphasizes all that makes up Lux, from the intelligence to the endless scenes of seductions. The smooth talking, attractive Trip Fontaine, played by Josh Hartnett, is used to being wanted by all the girls so then when Lux does not show an interest in him, he becomes infatuated with her. After time goes on Lux begins to fall in love with him as well. Coppola remembers casting Dunst because she was struck by her bubbly all-American cheerleader look but also the depth in her eyes that gave off a wise kind of sadness. Obviously, Dunst is well liked by Coppola as she is also the star in 2 of Coppola’s other films, Marie Antoinette (2006) and The Beguiled (2017). Coppola lists Dunst and Hartnett as 2 actors that she gets excited about.
There are so many important messages that you can take away from this film. One important theme that I took away is that all the girls are depressed due to the isolation that they feel. Cecilia feels isolated in the middle of the party because she knows that she is different from the rest of the group. We also discover from her diary that she is even isolated from herself, a significant warning sign of depression. After Cecilia’s death the girls begin to isolate themselves even more because they don’t know how to cope. Each of the other girls experience an emotional isolation along with the physical isolation of being locked in their house. In the end all the girls commit suicide the same night. This film will forever be one of my favorite films as I too know what it is like to be a struggling teenage girl.
In The Virgin Suicides, the girls are all facing the feeling of being misunderstood and alone. Basically they are at the coming of age emotional turmoil that is teen angst. The teenage years are a constant battle between childhood and adulthood. During these few years we are told that we are going to determine the rest of our lives. We are tangled between a variety of activities and obligations causing us to be stressed, anxious, and fearful of what the future will be like. Most every teenage feels some level of this angst however everyone’s experiences with it differs. However, true adult melancholy is different, melancholy is when someone has a strong and deep feeling of sadness without any apparent cause. It is often considered a severe form of depression and is treated the same way. Melancholy is a much deeper and longer lasting feeling than the teenage angst dealt with in The Virgin Suicides. We see the effects of feeling this deep sadness in the movie Melancholia, as both the main characters struggle in different ways.
The film Melancholia is split into 2 parts. The first part being about Justine’s battle with depression on her wedding night and the second was focused on Claire’s battle with depression and the destruction of the Earth by the planet Melancholia. This film is directed and written by the famous Danish film director and screenwriter, Lars von Trier. The ending of the film is revealed right away in the beginning, leading us to wonder “if we already know what is going to happen, what is even the point?”. Von Trier states that is interesting to see how the characters will react to the planet approaching Earth. He also relates this situation to a James Bond movie and how we expect the hero to survive yet it is still thrilling to see how it happens and everything they encounter along the way.
A Lars von Trier film is bound to get a reaction from audiences all around the world. Von Trier believes that if you have limitations when creating a film then you become forced to use your imagination. At the root of von Trier films is the break down and rebuilding of the anatomy of cinema as if the previous rules never existed. Within his films, he not only searches to solve the problem faced by the character but also the mystery of cinema itself. Von Trier finds ways to replicate real life and at the same time shatters the cinematic illusion by having a character look directly into the camera. His films often have to do with the journey to the nature of the human heart, showing what people will do for their lovers, for their children, or for their safety. A significant difference between von Trier’s films and other dramas is that he takes very real situations and concepts and amplifies them to almost unreal levels. By breaking the barrier between the film and real world the story becomes not only the characters but also our own. Because of such a broad topic, most of his films become split between the side regarding humanity and a side regarding symbolism. Emotion is also a huge part of von Trier’s films however he portrays this very differently than most. Instead of having a scene run on longer to let the feeling sink into the audience, von Trier’s approach is to cut out the “How” and leave us with the “What”. By doing this he captures the moments with the absolute peaks of emotion that occurred within a single space. And if the structure doesn’t expose enough of the drama, acting does. Often in a von Trier film, the actors have to make up the scene as they go and then he reacts to what they have put together. This allows his actors to improvise and allows for more natural drama and emotion within a scene. One thing that emphasizes von Trier’s unique style is the static camera, having more in common with the painted image as opposed to the cinematic one. Much of von Trier’s films are considered pessimistic, most likely due to his grim and dark subject matter. However, it is not like he goes out of his way to make shocking films, he goes out of his way to make honest films. Von Trier shows us that art has no limitations and to break its boundaries is what it means to be a true artist.
The film was nominated for multiple awards at the Cannes Film Festival in 2011. These included Kirsten Dunst for best actress and Von Trier for the highest award of the festival, the Palme d’Or. During a press conference at the festival, von Trier referred to the film as a “German Romance” and as a result was asked about his German roots. He joked that her now understands and sympathizes with Hitler and ended with saying that he was a Nazi. Obviously, this brought quite a lot of controversy, causing people from all over the world to discuss the scandal across social media. He later put out a formal apology about the incident, admitting that he was not sober and was most definitely not a Nazi. The actors of Melancholia, Dunst, Gainsbourg, and Skarsgard, defended the director relating the incident to his provocative sense of humor and depression. He was however, banned from the festival for one year although, the film, Melancholia, was not removed from competition.
Kirsten Dunst also plays the main character, Justine, in this film (you see the pattern?). Dunst often plays the character that is in some sort of trouble. This is shown in both Melancholia and The Virgin Suicides but also in her character Mary Jane in the Spiderman movies. In this film Dunst is the personification of Von Trier’s own depression. The other main character in this film is Claire, played by Charlotte Lucy Gainsbourg, she is terrified that the planet Melancholia is going to destroy the Earth however, Claire’s husband John, played by Kiefer Sutherland, ensures her that scientists have proved that the planet will simply “fly-by” and Earth will not be harmed. Surely enough the rogue planet that has entered our solar system does simply “fly-by” however the next day they discover that it is on its way back towards Earth.
Throughout the first part of the film we see how Justine battles with depression. Much of Justine’s unhappiness comes from her dysfunctional family, her brother-in-law that makes her feel bad about the amount of money he spent on her wedding (even though he is filthy rich), her narcissistic father, and her dull and brutally honest mother. However, the one family member that always seems to be there for her is her older sister Claire. In the second half of the film the role sort of flipped, after Justine gathers herself again she is able to help Claire through the episodes of panic attacks.
Gainsbourg has appeared in many of von Trier’s films including Antichrist (2009), Melancholia (2011), and Nymphomaniac Volumes I & II (2013). In each of these films she is one of the main characters and suffers from some sort of mental illness. Similarly to Dunst, she plays this type of character extremely well. Gainsbourg being familiar with taking on the persona of von Trier’s own depression from the film Antichrist, has to take on a different position in this film as she is the controlling older sister. Gainsbourg states that in every film she has done with Von Trier, he has asked her to do something animal like and in Melancholia it took them three days to get the scene exactly how he wanted it.
Another person that is in many of Lars von Trier’s films is Stellan Skarsgard. Although he is typically not a main character, he appears in the films Breaking the Waves (1996), Dancer in the Dark (2000), Dogville (2003), Melancholia (2011), and Nymphomania (2013). In an interview Skarsgard states that in Von Trier’s films, the male parts are never as strong as the female parts.
Although the differences in the two films are tremendous, the similarities are as well. Both films face the struggles and realities of living with a mental illness. These films can help us cope if we are suffering from a mental illness as well as show us how we can help a loved one that is suffering.
