''Landscape Suicide'' is a 1987 American crime and drama film directed and produced by James Benning. The film stars Rhonda Bell and Elion Sucher in the lead roles.

Background

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 Structuralism is an intellectual current and methodological approach, primarily in the social sciences, that interprets elements of human culture by way of their relationship to a broader system. It works to uncover the structural patterns tha ...

approach with documentary filmmaking.

Plot

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 Kirsten Marina Costas (July 23, 1968 – June 23, 1984) was an American high school student who was murdered by her classmate Bernadette Protti in June 1984. The daughter of Arthur and Berit Costas, Kirsten Costas and her brother, Peter, grew ...

, who was stabbed by her high-school friend Bernadette Protti in

Northern California Northern California (commonly shortened to NorCal) is a geocultural region that comprises the northern portion of the U.S. state of California, spanning the northernmost 48 of the state's List of counties in California, 58 counties. Northern Ca ...

in early 1984. The second half is devoted to the infamous homicides and taxidermies committed by

Ed Gein Edward Theodore Gein ( ; August 27, 1906 – July 26, 1984), also known as "the Butcher of Plainfield" or "the Plainfield Ghoul", was an American murderer, suspected serial killer and Body snatching, body snatcher. Gein's crimes, committed a ...

Wisconsin Wisconsin ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest of the United States. It borders Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michig ...

in the 1950s.

Reception

In a contemporary review, ''

Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is an American daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Founded in 1847, it was formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper", a slogan from which its once integrated WGN (AM), WGN radio and ...

'' film critic

Dave Kehr David Kehr (born 1953) is an American museum curator and film critic. For many years a critic at the ''Chicago Reader'' and the ''Chicago Tribune,'' he later wrote a weekly column for ''The New York Times'' on DVD releases. He later became a c ...

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."

Availability

The film was released on DVD by Edition Filmmusuem alongside his 1984 film '' American Dreams: Lost and Found'' on October 2011.

Cast

* Rhonda Bell as Bernadette Protti * Elion Sucher as

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Landscape Suicide 1987 films 1987 crime drama films Films directed by James Benning Cultural depictions of Ed Gein American crime drama films 1980s English-language films 1980s American films English-language crime drama films