| Landscape Suicide | |
|---|---|
| Directed by | James Benning [1] |
| Written by | James Benning [2] |
| Produced by | James Benning |
| Cinematography | James Benning |
Release date |
|
Running time | 95 min. |
| Country | United States [3] |
| Language | English |
Landscape Suicide is a 1987 American crime and drama film directed and produced by James Benning. [4] The film stars Rhonda Bell and Elion Sucher in the lead roles. [5]
Prior to the release of Landscape Suicide, Benning had already built a reputation for his exceedingly long, stationary camera shots of landscapes and industrial scenes. Landscape Suicide sought to combine his structuralist approach with documentary filmmaking. [6]
The film recounts and parallels two murders that took place 30 years apart. The first half of the film is based on the murder of Kirsten Costas, who was stabbed by her high-school friend Bernadette Protti in Northern California in early 1984. The second half is devoted to the infamous homicides and taxidermies committed by Ed Gein in Wisconsin in the 1950s.
In a contemporary review, Chicago Tribune film critic Dave Kehr awarded the film three and a half stars and wrote: "It's part of Benning's project in Landscape Suicide to reclaim these deaths from the realm of popular fiction and place them again in a real world. His method is, alternatively, both to refuse to look (the killings, made familiar and even banal by their endless cinematic representation, are not depicted) and to look harder than anyone else. ... The prosperous California suburb is linked to the depressed Midwestern farm town through a shared sense of isolation, desolation and quiet despair. We finally come to understand that both of these towns are located in the same place, somewhere in the dark recesses of the American Dream." [7]
Norman Bates is a fictional character created by American author Robert Bloch as the main protagonist in his 1959 horror novel Psycho. He has an alter, Mother, who takes from the form of his abusive mother, and later victim, Norma, who in his daily life runs the Bates Motel.
Edward Theodore Gein, also known as the Butcher of Plainfield or the Plainfield Ghoul, was an American murderer, suspected serial killer and body snatcher. Gein's crimes, committed around his hometown of Plainfield, Wisconsin, gathered widespread notoriety in 1957 after authorities discovered that he had exhumed corpses from local graveyards and fashioned keepsakes from their bones and skin. He also confessed to killing two women: tavern owner Mary Hogan in 1954, and hardware store owner Bernice Worden in 1957.
James Benning is an American independent filmmaker and educator. Over the course of his 40-year career Benning has made over twenty-five feature-length films that have shown in many different venues across the world. Since 1987, he has taught at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). He is known as a minimalist filmmaker.
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Kirsten Marina Costas was an American high school student who was murdered by her classmate Bernadette Protti in June, 1984.
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