Suicide is - obviously - not a funny topic. For all the people who die by their own hands, there are lots of devastated people they leave behind wracked with guilt - how could I have missed the signs? What could I have done to help? Was it my fault? Ending your life goes completely beyond the basic human self preservation instinct. Most people find the idea repugnant - sometimes on a religious level. God gave us life - how can we take it away by our own hands? Suicide is very unique to each victim - they all have their own reasons and story to tell. Given that, I have selected eight very different tales of Cinematic suicide that I hope you will 'enjoy'
8. Suicide Club (2002)
A notorious hit in horror movie festivals around the world when it debuted, Suicide Club has quite the cult following and is a bloody, gory little movie indeed. The film, which lasts 6 days, starts off with the mass suicide of 54 Japanese schoolgirls who jump in front of a train. Later two nurses jump to their death in a hospital. Pieces of flesh from the victims is recovered from the death scenes rolled up in a ball. The next day a bunch of schoolchildren plummet from the school's roof to their death. The city is alert, looking for a suicide club. By the next day, people are jumping off buildings left, right and centre. A boy phones the police of an imminent mass suicide but it proves to be a false lead. AND people are still jumping to their deaths. The police pick up a degenerate man called Genesis, who was tormenting one of the film's leads by jumping up and own on sacks of cats and dogs whilst singing. The police arrest him and assume the suicides will cease. Mitsuko, a girl involved in the events is invited to a children's concert where they take special interest in her butterfly tattoo, shaving it off. The next time we see Mitsuko, she is standing on a train platform, ready to jump. The Suicide Club is spectacularly surreal and is wide open to interpretation. I must admit that I was too stupid to figure out what it was - I think it says something that is peculiar to Japanese society. The film's treatment of suicide is very strange. None of the victims seem particularly depressed. They are committing suicide just for the hell of it as far as I can see - the school rooftop suicide was staged to go one better than the schoolgirls who jumped in front of the train. Watching the film with Western eyes does not work, you have to see it through Japanese goggles to understand the film. I will not try and interpret the ultimate meaning of the film but it is weird that all of these happy children are annihilating themselves for no good reason.